Jay Cowit: Hey, everyone. I'm Jay Cowit, in for Melissa Harris-Perry.

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Ballet, an art form of bodily movement, pointed toes, and elegant wrists has changed a lot in the last 60 years in America, thanks to the legacy of companies like Dance Theater of Harlem. Since its inception, the Dance Theater of Harlem has shaped American ballet from performances to performers. Virginia Johnson, one of the founding members of the Dance Theater of Harlem, and the artistic director announced this year that she will retire and pass the point shoes to the next generation of dancers. Melissa Harris-Perry spoke with Virginia about her incredible career and what it's been like to be part of such an extraordinary legacy.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Begin with how you fell in love with dance.

Virginia Johnson: Oh, gosh. Well, I was actually three years old. I had my first lessons with a woman named Therrell Smith, who she's still alive, she's 105. She was a woman who fell in love with ballet herself in Washington DC and she couldn't find anybody in Washington to teach her ballet because she was Black. She was wealthy enough to go to Paris and study with one of the great Russian ballerinas, and she came back to Washington and opened her school.

Now, Therell and my mom were best friends, so my mom wanted to support her and give her a chance to start her business so she sent her two daughters off. When I got to that studio and started dancing and listening to the music and finding my way with matching the music with my body, it was just so wonderful so I fell in love.

Melissa Harris-Perry: So interesting to hear you talk about ballet as moving your body to the music, because I think so many of us when we first encounter ballet, don't experience it that way. It feels like there are so many rules and requirements about how you're meant to move your body. Did you find those restrictions liberating or were you always pushing against them?

Virginia Johnson: You hit the exact point. I found them liberating. It was a matter of, in a world full of possibilities that you had signposts, you had a way to organize your movement, you had a way to understand how to do something with more clarity, with more strength, and with more understanding. Yes, ballet is full of rules and I think it enabled me to channel my energy to its greatest effect.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about coming to New York. Tell us about when you came and this story of being part of the founding of Dance Theater of Harlem.

Virginia Johnson: [laughs] I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time for my whole life, which is pretty amazing. I studied ballet in Washington for my whole childhood, and when I was graduating from a very prestigious school that had trained me to the highest level in ballet, the director had said to me, you're going to have a career, but you're never going to be a ballerina because nobody's going to hire a Black dancer.

I had already strategized that I needed to come to New York because I knew that's where dance was happening, where ballet was happening. I was surprised by her comment, but I also knew I was on my way to find an answer to what she was saying to me. I got to New York and I was at New York University, I was a dance major at the School of the Arts, and somebody said that Arthur Mitchell was teaching ballet class up in Harlem and I should just go up and take class with him.

I got to 145th Street and I went to the basement of a church and Arthur Mitchell was indeed teaching ballet class and he was starting a company. I had to work it out with my parents to leave school, but I did and I joined Dance Theater Harlem, and it was the beginning of everything.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm sitting here in this moment, I think there's a time when I would've heard that story and imagined myself as the lead character, as you, as the young person going off to New York, but now I'm of an age that when I hear that story, I think about your mom, who [laughs] must have been thinking at that moment, wait a minute, she's heading off to New York. I'm wondering what your parents thought in that moment.

Virginia Johnson: I think that my parents were extraordinary people. They were people who valued the arts hugely. As young people, my sister, my brother, and I had exposure to music. We had piano lessons, I got to study dance, and my brother sang in the choir. I think that they were glad that we felt very attached to the arts.

I know for sure that they were thinking of me being a professional, and I don't mean a professional dancer, they were thinking of me being a doctor or a lawyer. That was the kind of future that I should have. When I said I had to work it out with my parents to leave NYU, it was a very serious conversation about what kind of life are you going to have working with this guy in the basement of a church in Harlem when we've set you on a runway to have a completely different kind of life.

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Jay Cowit: We're taking a quick pause right here, but don't go anywhere, we'll be right back with Virginia Johnson, our Director of the Dance Theater of Harlem. It's The Takeaway.

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Welcome back. It's The Takeaway. I'm Jay Cowit in from Melissa Harris-Perry. Let's get right back to Melissa's conversation with Virginia Johnson, one of the founding members of the Dance Theater of Harlem.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tell me about Arthur Mitchell and what it was like to see Arthur Mitchell dance.

Virginia Johnson: Arthur Mitchell was the first African-American to be a permanent member of an American ballet company. He was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, and he broke a lot of barriers stepping into that. He was dynamic. That word does not really describe the kind of energy that poured out of him and the kind of focus that he brought to anything that he did.

Once he decided to create Dance Theater of Harlem, he knew how big the challenge was to convince people that this art form of classical ballet was something that could be done by people of color in the most glorious way. Those of us who were alive in the 1950s know how the expectations for African Americans were very narrowly defined and very negative. He knew that we had to blow those up, blow up all those expectations, and create another expectation for us as a people and as a people in this art form.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I've wondered about Mitchell and if there was also anxieties about Arthur as a Black man with white ballerinas.

Virginia Johnson: Oh, well, there was a point, Arthur Mitchell and Suzanne Farrell were to appear on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. We were all watching the TV, we were watching it and watching it. We were so excited it was going to be on TV and they're going to dance and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The show goes on and the show goes on and the show goes on, and in the last two minutes, Johnny says, "Oh, we don't have time to see the dancing, but let's bring out these two dancers and have them talk to us for a second." What you're saying, Melissa, is absolutely right.

There was in this country a sense of transgression, or at least at that time, that it was seen as a shocking thing, but really, Arthur Mitchell meant to do with Dance Theater of Harlem to create a possibility for people to understand that this art form of ballet can express many things and it can be done by everyone. It belongs to everyone.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That point of belonging to everyone, and yet needing leadership, that, in 2004, the company took what ended up being an eight-year hiatus, but in that time you got a call from Mitchell. Can you tell us about that?

Virginia Johnson: I retired from performing in 1997, and I went back to college as I promised my parents I would, and I was working with another dance company and I got a call from Arthur Mitchell saying that he was stepping down and he wanted me to take over and that my job was to bring the company back. That, Melissa, I have to tell you, was a totally shocking telephone call.

This is not something that I ever aspired to, or even desire to be quite frank, [laughter] but this was Arthur Mitchell and this is the person who'd given me the path to realize my dreams. If he thought that I could do this, then I sure better find a way to do it. I had to say yes. It has been an amazing, amazing journey these past 12 years. It has been so much more fun than I ever expected, but I want to go back to emphasizing how hard it's. [laughs]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Do you have a sense of why it was you to whom he made that call? What did he tell you about why he needed it to be you to bring this back?

Virginia Johnson: Oh, boy, you have such wonderful questions. My goodness. Woo. I think Arthur Mitchell was really preparing me for this all along, even though I don't think he ever thought that he would not be Director of Dance Theater of Harlem. At the time that I was here as a dancer, he would be showing me things and telling me things not about how to do the job but about what the job meant. I think that he had a level of respect for me aside from being a dancer to be able to do something that was necessary, which was bring back the Dance Theater of Harlem Company.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: I ask in part because you are passing the baton, or perhaps the point shoes, or whatever it is that you'll pass on here. I love this language that you're giving us that Arthur Mitchell never thought particularly of himself as not leading the Dance Theater of Harlem. Perhaps for founders, for visionaries, it may be hard to imagine this thing that we founded existing, persisting beyond us, but it is the greatest who are able to imagine it beyond themselves. For you, this is now that same inflection point. I'm wondering if you've thought about passing it on, what you see as necessary for the next leader.

Virginia Johnson: Oh, absolutely. This is an essential part of what Arthur Mitchell gave me. He gave me, "We need to create a future for this organization. We need to have a future as a ballet company in this country." That was what he charged me with. I never felt that it was now mine. It was now what I had to do was make this happen but that, at some point, it would be mine to pass forward. It was actually before the pandemic that I looked at the stage we were in some performance in some city somewhere, and I said, "Oh, look, there's a company."

Melissa, the thing that struck me and that next thought was they need new challenges, they need a vision, they need somebody to take them to the next level. I thought of Robert Garland, who is a magnificent choreographer and a magnificent human being who understands what this art form is and can be. I thought, "Okay, this is part of the lineage. Arthur Mitchell passes it to me, I pass it to Robert." It moves forward in greatness because that's what you are always pursuing as an artist, and you have to find a way to keep those challenges coming to make that greatness happen.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: As we go. I want you to go back again to the beginning when you told me about falling in love with dance. How do you dance now?

Virginia Johnson: I am going to confess that I need to get back to class because my body's in terrible shape right now. I swim instead of dancing now. I'm looking forward to moving again because I won't have all the demands of being artistic director taking up all of my time.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, that sounds lovely. Virginia Johnson is founding member and artistic director, the Dance Theater of Harlem. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Virginia Johnson: Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you.

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