NEW YORK CITY — Walk into Carmen de Lavallade’s Upper West Side apartment in New York, and you immediately get a sense of the woman who lives there.
Its French doors between the living and dining rooms signal a slightly European air; the elegantly painted silk screen adds a Zen touch; some striking African masks offer a dash of boldness and color; two Spanish baroque chairs offer a dramatic flair; the herringbone flooring evokes a Manhattan from another era.
In a way, so does de Lavallade, who at 84 looks like a serene but approachable highness: gracious, elegant and as warm as the sunlight filling the rooms.
De Lavallade began her professional dance career in the late ’40s and performed her artistry in theater, film, television and on dance stages. Over the years, she worked with a wide range of astonishing artists: Lena Horne, Josephine Baker, Diahann Carroll, Ezra Pound, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille and Alvin Ailey, just to name a few.
Her career path went in many directions, taking a surprising turn in the early ’70s when she became an esteemed resident artist, choreographer and professor of movement in the early days of New Haven’s Yale Repertory Theatre and the revitalized School of Drama under Robert Brustein.
De Lavallade will tell much — but not all; there’s discretion in her nature — about her life, on stage and off, in her solo show “As I Remember It,” which she will perform at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas Thursday and Saturday, June 25 and 27, at the Yale Repertory Theatre. The show, which she co-wrote with Talvin Wilks, premiered last year at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Massachusetts Berkshires (she first performed there 62 years ago), followed by performances at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan and other theaters.
“It’s a thank you note to all the people who have been part of my life, who made me what I am,” says de Lavallade. “And I think it’s important for young people to know what it was like in those early days, too.”
This week she brings her intimate stage memoir to the city that played an important part of her life: New Haven.
The show — which includes photographs, film clips and some movement — will be performed at Yale Repertory Theatre where she gave performances that have become legend. Among them was her role as Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” where she and Christopher Lloyd played the sensual, sinewy — and barely clothed — Titania and Oberon (with Meryl Streep as Helena). Another was her Ariel to Alvin Epstein’s Prospero in “The Tempest,” featuring an 18-piece orchestra and 23 singers.
To help honor de Lavallade’s homecoming, she also will receive the Tom Killen Award by the Connecticut Critics Circle Monday night in New Haven at its free season-ending celebration.
Carmen And Yale
But more than the performances on the Rep stage was her role off stage as professor during the turbulent and creative days at the Yale School of Drama. (She later joined Brustein in 1980 where she founded the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass.)
“To us, she was a goddess and sweet as could be,” says actor-director Joe Grifasi, a student at the School of Drama in the ’70s and the director of de Lavallade’s solo show. “People were smitten by her, especially the men. She was always a source of welcome neutrality and helped relieve the stress [at the School of Drama].”
It was a time of social and political turmoil, and Yale and the School of Drama were in the rough and tumble of protests and upheaval — and dramatic changes in theater and in the racial makeup of students and teachers.
“She helped part the waters a bit, but without asserting herself,” says Grifasi. “She has a way of charming people without condescending, and ultimately impressing you with her adaptability and performance. Sometimes it was the way she just carries herself. She stood as an example of an artist and she was someone you would give unquestionable deference to.”
De Lavallade taught movement not through repetitive moves, but through character and interpretation by the actor.
“Early on I understood the value of character to inform the movement and movement to inform the character,” she says.
It was an approach that resonated with her students. “Meryl [Streep] says she learned as much from Carmen as from any acting teacher,” says Grifasi.
Streep says she saw in de Lavallade not only a teacher of movement and a mentor, but “a light.”
“That expanse of joy, more than any lesson, more than any method, gave us an understanding of what it takes to sustain happiness in an uncertain profession, in an uncertain world, ” says Streep of her former teacher.
De Lavallade will talk about those New Haven days as well as her entire career when she is “in conversation” Friday, June 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the Rep, as part of the “Ideas” component of the festival, discussing her career and the artistic life of New Haven. Joining her on stage will be Brustein and Epstein, making it a historic theatrical reunion. Lileana Blain-Cruz, a Yale School of Drama alum and director of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “War,” which premiered at the Rep last year, will also join in the discussion. Grifasi will moderate the talk.
Carmen And Alvin
Born in Los Angeles, one of three daughters of Creole parents, her performing career began at an early age. She was first inspired by her cousin, Janet Collins, the first full-time African American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. (In 1956, de Lavallade would succeed her there.)
De Lavallade began ballet training at 14, and at 16 she won a scholarship to study modern dance with Lester Horton Dance Theater, the first all-black American dance troupe. By 19, she was dancing in the company and at 21 became its lead dancer.
Alvin Ailey who was a gymnast at her high school. “He moved beautifully and I told him, ‘you ought to dance,'” she says. She took him to Horton’s school, where he began his life in dance.
When she was 17, with the help of Lena Horn, who introduced her to casting execs at 20th Century Fox, de Lavallade began appearing in small roles for “exotics” in “Demetrius and the Gladiators,” “The Egyptian” and “Carmen Jones” starring Dorothy Dandridge in 1954. Herbert Ross, who choreographed “Carmen Jones,” brought her and Ailey to New York in 1954 to perform in Harold Arlen’s “House of Flowers” on Broadway.
That was followed by a wide ranging career: as guest of the American Ballet theater, choreographing for Dance Theatre of Harlem, dancing for the Met, Alvin Ailey and Agnes de Mille. She returned to films in 1959 in Robert Wise’s “Odds Against Tomorrow,” which starred Harry Belafonte. And she danced on television, including “The Ed Sullivan Show,” where she was set to dance John Butler’s “Willow Weep for Me” with Glen Tetley, who was white. It was a time when white and blacks were not allowed to touch on television, Tetley was replaced by Claude Thompson.
De Lavallade is circumspect about such indignities. “Janet had to put up with so much more than I did,” she says of her older ballerina cousin.
Carmen And Geoffrey
It was when she was appearing in “House of Flowers” in 1954 that she met a handsome, tall (6-foot-6) dancer from Trinidad in the show, Geoffrey Holder.
In the 2005 documentary of their relationship, “Carmen and Geoffrey,” Holder says he told her after a few days he wanted to marry her.
The following year they married at Lucille Lortel’s White Barn Theatre in Westport. (Holder, a Tony Award-winning director and costumer (for “The Wiz”) was also a renowned dancer, choreographer, designer, artist — and popularly known as the “un-Cola man” in the 7-Up commercials. (He died last fall at the age of 84.)
“Here is Geoffrey’s works,” she says, showing a room in the apartment full of dozens of paintings and collages he made in the last few years of his life while ill. “The rest is in storage,” she says of her prolific artistic husband. They were together for 60 years. “He never stopped creating. Even when he was ill, he would take anything at hand — plastic spoons, bits of paper, found objects, anything really — and make something beautiful out of that.”
“He was my biggest supporter,” she says. “He encouraged me to go out and do things I needed to do artistically. He encouraged me to be me.”
“AS I REMEMBER IT” will play Thursday, June 25 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, June 27, at 2 p.m. at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. Tickets are $45 to $65 in advance and $50 to $70 on day of performance. Information at artidea.org.
“IN CONVERSATION” with Carmen de Lavallade, Robert Brustein, Alvin Epstein and Joe Grifasi will be held at the Rep, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven on Friday, June 25, at 5:30 p.m. Information at artidea.org.
