| Born in Seattle, Washington, Syvilla Fort began studying dance when she
was three years old. After she was denied admission to several ballet
schools because she was black, Fort's early dance education took place in
her home and in private lessons. By the time she was nine years old, Fort
was teaching ballet, tap, and modern dance to small groups of neighborhood
children who could not afford private lessons.
Fort attended the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle as their
first black student after graduating from high school in 1932. After
spending five years at the Cornish School, Fort decided to pursue her
dance career in Los Angeles, and in 1939 her neighbor, black composer
William Grant Still, introduced Fort to dancer Katherine Dunham. Several
weeks later, Fort began dancing and touring with the Katherine Dunham
Company and learning the Dunham technique, which was rooted in the dance
traditions of Africa, Haiti, and Trinidad. Fort danced with the company
until 1945 and was included in the well-known film STORMY WEATHER
(1943).
While dancing with the Dunham Company, Fort neglected a serious knee
injury which prevented her from performing professionally by the
mid-1940s. In 1948, Dunham appointed Fort as chief administrator and dance
teacher of the Katherine Dunham School of Dance in New York, a position
Fort retained until 1954 when the school closed because of financial
problems. In 1955, Fort joined her husband Buddy Phillips, another Dunham
dancer, to open a dance studio on West 44th Street in New York. In this
studio Fort developed what she called the "Afro-Modern technique" which
fused the Dunham approach with modern styles of dance that Fort learned in
her early education. She continued to use this method in her work as a
part-time instructor of physical education at Columbia University's
Teachers College from 1967 to 1975.
The studio on 44th Street thrived until 1975 when Fort began struggling
against breast cancer and was unable to solve the school's financial
problems. Her staff and students found a new studio for Fort on West 23rd
Street where she taught through the summer of 1975. Fort shaped three
generations of dancers and among her best-known students were Marlon
Brando, James Dean, Jane Fonda, James Earl Jones, Eartha Kitt, Jose Limon,
Chita Rivera, and Geoffrey Holder.
Five days before her death from breast cancer on November 8, 1975, Fort
attended a tribute to her life's work which was organized by the Black
Theater Alliance and hosted by her student Alvin Ailey and by Harry
Belafonte. In 1992, Fort's work was honored again when dancers from
several companies performed an evening of her choreography at New York's
Symphony Space.
-- Zita Allen
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