American actress, choreographer, dancer, Kennedy Center Honoree and fashion swan, Carmen de Lavallade was, as WWD wrote in 1983, “very beautiful.” The New Orleans native and first Black prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera was a pioneer of modern dance. It was de Lavallade who introduced Alvin Ailey to the art form. She first caught Women’s Wear Daily’s attention in the late 1950s, her impeccable style a highlight of its “They Are Wearing” column from Spoleto, Italy.

De Lavallade was married to Tony Award winner, dancer, painter and costume designer Geoffrey Holder, who designed many of her scene-stealing red carpet moments. The star couple often featured in WWD’s New York City and Washington, D.C., “Eye” pages. By 1983, when WWD’s Arts & People editor revisited de Lavallade at her SoHo loft, she was already an icon of style and the world of dance.

In celebration of Black History Month and continued coverage of Black creatives’ contributions and influence in fashion, WWD is revisiting an archival interview with Carmen de Lavallade from Dec. 6, 1983, as she prepared to dance with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during its 25th anniversary season.

Some facts are not only indisputable but self-evident: the Grand Canyon is very deep; Mount Everest is very high; Carmen de Lavallade is very beautiful. Whether she is dressed in an evening gown — probably designed by her husband, Geoffrey Holder — or in a comfortable red sweater and jeans, her elegant dancer’s body and her eloquent actress’ face make the world seem much prettier than it did before she entered the room.

De Lavallade is dancing with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater this season as the troupe celebrates its 25th anniversary. Her appearance is appropriate, since she was Ailey’s dancing partner on Broadway and in foreign tours, and with Lester Horton’s company in Los Angeles, where both began their careers. Furthermore, as de Lavallade admits with a little shrug, she got Ailey started in dance in the first place.

Ever Since High School

“Alvin and I grew up together in Los Angeles,” she says. “We went to junior high and to high school together, and in high school he was on the gymnastics team. I used to stop by to watch them practice, and he was so pretty I said, ‘You ought to dance.’ He did floor gymnastics — it was beautiful, so painfully slow that it looked as if they were moving underwater.”

For de Lavallade, slow, controlled steps are still the most exciting aspects of dance. “The fast things are showy and dramatic,” she explains, “but the slow steps are more difficult — they require so much control — and you really can’t see how they are done.

“The requirements for young dancers are much greater now than they were when Alvin and I started, back in the ’50s. Audiences are demanding more and more gymnastic, acrobatic things. I start tensing up when I watch. But I think we’re changing again; I think people are starting to look for character and dramatic values in dance, the way they used to.”

Much as she admires the technical prowess of contemporary dancers, de Lavallade smiles as she recalls that American Ballet Theater used to be a collection of individuals. “Now, they all look alike, they’re all the same type, they’re all the same scale. Even the idea of what a dancer looks like has changed — today ballet dancers and modern dancers look alike.”

The similarity, she says, is not merely a question of physique, but of technique as well. “Lester [Norton] treated everyone as an individual. We did not do all the fancy things they do now, but when we danced, we danced; technique was taken for granted. We all had a sense of style.”

One reason for the individuality of many dancers in the late 1950s and early ’60s, de Lavallade says, was the lack of large resident companies. “Who could afford to keep a company?” she asks, smiling to provide the answer. “Companies shared people; it was the only way to survive. I would rehearse with Donnie McKayle and then run upstairs and work with Sophie Maslow, who was preparing a Chanukkah Festival. We were all trying to create something out of nothing, and we all had to be versatile.” (Donald McKayle, like Ailey, helped bring the Black experience to the dance stage.)

Standing in the loft she shares with Holder, walking among the sculptures, paintings and mechanical toys he has collected — she refers to the place as “Geoffrey’s playpen” — de Lavallade remarks that dancers are not the only people who seem to lack a sure sense of style these days. She teaches movement to actors, and she finds an astounding number of them have terrible posture.

“You can’t play a Shakespearean king — you can’t make a speech in public with authority — if you hunch over like this.” She curves her shoulders and sinks her chest in demonstration. “Nobody will believe you — there’s no authority there, and the actor feels it as much as the audience does. Our clothes don’t demand good posture — they’re sloppy, and they hide the body. Jeans and sweatshirts and all those things are comfortable, but they don’t make you stand up and show yourself off; don’t give you a sense of your body.”

De Lavallade is not sighing over good old days. She is, quite obviously, delighted that dance is reaching a wide audience, that dancers can achieve high levels of technique, that companies can get enough work and enough financial support to hold together and even celebrate 25th anniversaries.

However, she would like to see more dancers who show an old-fashioned awareness of style and of individuality. “One problem with big companies,” she says, “is that most of the dancers in them have to go by the book. If you go by the book, you’re dull.”

— Joseph H. Mazo