Carmen DeLavallade Will Be Interviewed for LPTW Oral History

The League of Professional Theatre Women will present actress, dancer, choreographer Carmen DeLavallade at its next Oral History interview Monday, June 27, 2016 at 6:00 pm in the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 65th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Admission is free, but seats will be on a first-come-first-seated basis. DeLavallade will be interviewed by Deborah Jowitt.

Biographies:

Carmen de Lavallade has had an unparalleled career in dance, theater, film and television beginning in her hometown of Los Angeles performing with the Lester Horton Dance Theater. While in Los Angeles, she appeared in four movies, including Carmen Jones (1954) with Dorothy Dandridge and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) with Harry Belafonte. She appeared as a dancer in the Broadway production of House of Flowers. Her dance career includes having ballets created for her by Lester Horton, Geoffrey Holder, Alvin Ailey, Glen Tetley, John Butler and Agnes de Mille. She has choreographed for many companies and has had an extensive acting career as a member of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre, performing in  numerous Off-Broadway productions. She and her husband, Geoffrey Holder, were the subjects of the film Carmen & Geoffrey (2005), which chronicled their sixty year partnership and artistic legacy. Ms. de Lavallade received the Dance Magazine Award in 1964, an honorary doctorate of Fine Arts from the Juilliard School in 2007, the Duke Ellington Fellowship Award, and the Dance USA Award in 2010. Carmen is the recent recipient of the 2016 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1999, she was also named by the Dance Heritage Coalition as one of America's 100 Irreplaceable Dance Treasures. Carmen de Lavallade has been an incomparable dance and theater treasure for more than six decades. In her eighties and still performing with a supreme level of grace and elegance, she is an icon in the truest sense of the word - inspiring generations of artists and audiences. Deborah Jowitt began to dance professionally in the 1950s and to choreograph in the 1960s. She wrote about dance for The Village Voice from 1967 to 2011 and currently writes for artsjournal.com. She has published two collections, Dance Beat (1977) and The Dance in Mind (1985), as well as Time and the Dancing Image (1988) and Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (2004). Her current project is a critical biography of Martha Graham. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, She lectures and conducts workshops worldwide and teaches in the Dance Department of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

About League of Professional Theatre Women

The League of Professional Theatre Women is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.  It presents numerous events each year as part of its mission to promote visibility and increase opportunities for women in the field. None of its work is possible without generous philanthropic support. The League is celebrating its 31st anniversary and boasts a membership of nearly 500 women representing a diversity of theatre professionals in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. League members are actors, administrators, agents, arrangers, casting directors, choreographers, company managers, composers, critics, designers, directors, dramaturgs, dramatists, educators, general managers, historians, journalists, librettists, lyricists, press agents, playwrights, producers, stage managers, and theatre technicians. To find out more about how you can support its endeavors, please visit the website www.theatrewomen.org and click on the "Support Us" tab.