Black, Black

Ever since childhood trips to the U. S. acquainted him with the cakewalk and minstrel shows, German-born Choreographer Eugene von Grona has wanted to bring Harlem and the ballet together. While dancing and directing ballets at Roxy's Theatre in 1935, he explored upper Manhattan, dived into nightclubs. He found their dancers all too light, too sophisticated. "I want them black, black, all Negro," said von Grona. Samuel ("Roxy") Rothafel agreed, said "the blacker the better." Von Grona advertised, offering scholarships, and got hundreds of applications. He picked 20 of the blackest applicants and started to rehearse his ballet. The neighbors complained. Hollywood tried to lure him away. But von Grona stuck.

Last week in Harlem's dingy Lafayette Theatre, while a sophisticated audience squinted and chattered about esthetics, the von Grona blacks were officially presented as Art. In the pit an all-Negro "symphony" orchestra, sporting a single saxophone as a concession to racial idiom, played lukewarm jazz, the Star-Spangled Banner and Bach's Air for the G String. The evening's most pretentious item, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, was played on a phonograph.

Unexpectedly, the 100% black Africans did their best cavorting in Stravinsky's 100% Slavic opus. In the Bacchanalian Children of the Earth (music by Negro "Composer Reginald Forsythe) the attempted emulsion of ballet technique and hot-cha failed to mix. St. Louis Women (music by famed W. C. Handy) was straight hot-cha, and might have been done better at the Cotton Club. Encouraged by first-nighters' applause, softspoken, boyish-faced von Grona and his blonde wife Leni decided that their Negro ballet had a great future.

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