BLACK

BALLERINA

 
A Documentary Film from
Shirley Road Productions

 

Screenings

Upcoming:

Norristown Public Library, Pennsylvania, March 2018

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, May, 2018

Maupintown Film Festival, Charlottesville, VA, July 2018

Past Screenings:

Old Chatham Quaker Meeting, New York, September 2017

Iowa City Film Scene, July 2017

Reel Black, West Philadelphia, July 2017

Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre, Dance Film Series, Boston, June 2017

North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, June 2017

Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, March 2017, Sponsored by Pittsburgh Ballet

Ambler Theatre, Ambler, Pennsylvania, March 2017

ScreenDance Festival, Stockholm, Sweden, February 2017

Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, sponsored by Departments of Dance and Africana Studies, February 2017

Penn Cinema Riverfront IMAX, Wilmington, Delaware, November 2016>

African Diaspora International Film Festival – November 2016, New York City

International House of Philadelphia, October 2016

Northeastern Illinois University, Angelina Pedroso Center for Diversity & Intercultural Affairs, October 2016

San Francisco Dance Film Festival – October 23, 2016

American Dance Festival – “Movies By Movers,” – July 2016, Durham, NC

Let’s Dance: International Frontiers Festival – May 2016, Leicester, UK

XXXI 2016 Black International Cinema – May 2016, Berlin, Germany. First Place Award, Film and Video Documentary

Storyville Screening Series – November 2015
“Work-in-Progress,” Scribe Video Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

CORPS de Ballet International Conference – June 2015
“Work-in-progress” screening, Towson University, Towson, Maryland

Dance on Camera Film Festival – February 2015
“Work-in-progress” screening
Film at Lincoln Center, New York, New York

Entrepreneur Works Presents Debbie Allen – July 2014
Premiere of trailer, International House Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Articles

The Hudson Review – Winter 2017 Arts Review

“Dance has been expanding off the stage for decades, beginning with the anti-proscenium experiments of the 1960s. But now, with television and the Internet, dance is everywhere. The dance-on-screen era on TV has greatly increased the audience by throwing all kinds of dancing—ballet, modern, street dance, social dance—into one success­ful, styleless reality show format…”
Read more at:

Choreographing Inclusion

Chestnut Hill Local – December 2015

“Patterson, an award winning independent writer, producer and director, said the documentary examines 60 years of ballet. In the film, which is still in progress, pioneers Joan Myers Brown, artistic and founding director of Phildanco, Delores Browne, who performed with the New York Negro Ballet Company in the 1950s, and Raven Wilkinson, the first African American woman to dance with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, talk about the racism they confronted in pursuing their dreams of careers in classical dance in the 1950s.”

See more here

The Washington Post – July 2015

The Art Fuse – June 2015 Boston on-line arts magazine

“Raven Wilkinson, who danced with the Ballets Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1950s, had an especially precarious time when the company toured the South; as a light-skinned African-American, she often “passed” and could perform. But when she was “discovered” she’d have to move to another motel and sometimes that meant that she didn’t dance (Wilkinson would not lie about her race, but the company didn’t announce it). Eventually, as she recounts in the upcoming documentary Black Ballerina, it was suggested that it was time for her to leave the company altogether. ‘Someone came to me and said “you’ve gone as far as you can in the company…” ‘ Wilkinson remembers, ‘ “after all, we can’t have a black White Swan.” ‘ “

See more here

Dance Magazine – September 2014