Raven Wilkinson, one of the first African-American dancers to perform with a major ballet company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 83.
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was a high-profile company that toured the United States in the 1940s and ′50s, and the appearance of an African-American onstage as a Sylph or a Swan in the South could incur threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Though Ms. Wilkinson was lighter-skinned and encouraged to wear pale makeup onstage, she always refused to hide her race...
Source: mudwerks
