Within the October 1990 situation of Dance Journal, affiliate editor Marilyn Hunt interviewed Virginia Johnson. The star ballerina, then 40, was greater than 20 years into her Dance Theatre of Harlem profession and was internationally lauded for her facility with dramatic roles.
Johnson recalled feeling, in her early days performing with the corporate, that she wasn’t doing sufficient to contribute to numerous causes in want of activism. “However now I really feel the humanities and dance are perhaps one of the best ways to alter folks’s attitudes,” she stated. “Again there in sixty-eight, everyone wished change to occur in a single day. However it doesn’t. It’s a must to be able to decide to a long-term, gradual awakening. You’ll be able to’t pressure anyone to alter. It’s a must to allow them to see one thing that makes them change. I feel the humanities do this, as a result of they converse to your humanity.” She additionally recalled the influence that seeing Raven Wilkinson carry out had on her as a younger dancer in Washington, DC: “That was momentous for us—‘She’s black! She’s doing severe ballet!’ As a result of once you go to the ballet and see everyone of their pink tights, it’s laborious to make that leap and see your self up there.”
Johnson undeniably contributed to generations of younger Black dancers seeing themselves on ballet levels, each together with her performances and as DTH’s creative director, a task by which she served at Arthur Mitchell’s request from 2010 till she handed the reins to Robert Garland in 2023.