In 1950, a young Black man traveled north from Washington to New York City. He was stunningly handsome and on the shorter side; his cheekbones sat high in a face hewed for the screen. Against all odds, the 19-year-old Louis Johnson had been accepted into the School of American Ballet; later on, he would describe himself as the “first Black Black” student there.
Or as Thomas DeFrantz, a professor of African and African American studies, dance and theater, put it, the few Black students who had previously been enrolled at the School of American Ballet were “what we call fluorescent beige.”
For African American dancers, American ballet proved to be a cold and hostile world. They were flat out told that their bodies were wrong; certain dance studios remained segregated well into the 20th century; a dancer might even be threatened by the Klan. Full-time employment, as Louis Johnson would soon discover, was near impossible to come by. After graduating from the School of American Ballet, he was rejected by New York City Ballet, which would have been the natural next step for him, because he was Black.
Did he bring that pain — of being Black and overlooked, Black and undervalued — to the dance project that he took on a few years later?
It’s not inconceivable. The short film presented above, “Two by Louis Johnson,” could also be taken as a commentary on the Black experience at large. Directed and shot by the British filmmaker Richard Preston, and featuring two early works choreographed by Johnson, the film was made during the civil rights movement.
“He paid attention to what was happening politically. He thought about those things, and so what he would create had to do with reality in terms of the world,” said Glory Van Scott, an old friend of Louis Johnson who is a dancer and legacy-maker in her own right.
The film, which is believed to have been shot in 1959, has been seen by the public only a handful of times since the mid-1960s. The original print, along with other work by Preston and other artists, is housed at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in Manhattan, founded in the early 1960s by a group of independent filmmakers including Jonas Mekas and Shirley Clarke as an alternative to the traditional channels of financing, production and distribution. The version presented here was scanned and digitally restored by The Times from that original print.
The film, which runs around six minutes, is split into two parts: a group dance that takes place on a city rooftop, and a solo that is confined to one room. Louis Johnson performs in both — exuberant in his leaps and turns, light on his feet, incredibly emotive through his body. Behind the camera was Preston, who met Johnson through his wife, a Black singer named Gloria Wynder, a backup vocalist for Harry Belafonte and other stars.
In the first few seconds of the film, a woman paces on a rooftop ledge, alone. We soon meet other dancers, who then meet one another, although they seem to remain burdened by their own internal worlds. At the same time, there is a sense of joy, a lightness conveyed through the jazz moves, the bursts of paired dancing. In the background, Belafonte sings, fittingly: “Give me your troubles one by one/I’ll trade them all for a bag o’ fun.”
Johnson’s choreography seems to convey a similar message. “This film reminds us of both his serious sort of commitment to Black culture, and his willingness to be, a bit, cheeky and fun and sexy in a certain kind of way,” DeFrantz said.
The solo dance that follows, in which Johnson writhes about in a room, is much more somber. “It’s an experimental layering of ideas and imagery, while the body is in pain and rolling about inside a New York apartment,” DeFrantz said. “So this idea of a kind of experimental film that highlighted Black life, if you will, or Black trauma, maybe, or a Black ambivalence is maybe the best way to think about it.”
By the time that “Two by Louis Johnson” was filmed, Johnson already had a few Broadway performances under his belt, including the 1954 musical “House of Flowers,” where he met Van Scott. He would go on to find success as a choreographer for the screen and the stage. He worked for the Metropolitan Opera, received a Tony nomination for the 1970 musical “Purlie,” and was perhaps best known for his work on the 1978 film adaptation of “The Wiz.”
Despite all of his successes — and even though, in the words of Van Scott, he could “outdance anyone” — Johnson remained underrated. According to DeFrantz, this was a reality that Johnson was distinctly aware of, and that saddened him. “He’s one of the people who’s getting some roses now,” said DeFrantz. “Let’s give him more.”
