Donald McKayle

Donald McKayle was one of the first choreographers to weave the African American experience into the fabric of modern dance and the first Black man to direct and choreograph a Broadway musical. The recipient of honors and awards in every aspect of his illustrious career, he was named by the Dance Heritage Coalition as “one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: the First 100.” His choreographic masterworks Games, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, District Storyville, and Songs of the Disinherited are considered modern dance classics and are performed around the world. McKayle formed and directed his own dance company, Donald McKayle and Dancers (1951–69), and was the head of the Inner City Repertory Dance Company from 1970 to 1974. Over the course of his career, he choreographed more than 90 works for dance companies in the United States, Canada, Israel, Europe, and South America.

McKayle received Tony Award nominations for his choreography of the Broadway musicals Sophisticated Ladies, Doctor Jazz, and A Time for Singing, and for his direction and choreography of Raisin, which garnered the Tony Award for Best Musical. For Sophisticated Ladies he was honored with an Outer Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. He also choreographed It Ain’t Nothing but the Blues, which earned a Tony nomination for Best Musical. He received an Emmy nomination for the TV special Free to Be You and Me. His work for film included Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Great White Hope, and The Jazz Singer.  

For his contributions to dance, McKayle received the Capezio Award, the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, the American Dance Guild Award, a Living Legend Award from the National Black Arts Festival, the Heritage Award from the California Dance Educators Association, two Choreographer’s Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dance/USA Honors, an Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the Martha Hill Lifetime Achievement Award, the Annual Award from the Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival, the Black College Dance Exchange Honors, the Dance Magazine Award, and the American Dance Legacy Institute’s Distinguished and Innovative Leadership Award.  

In April 2005, McKayle was honored at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and presented with a medal as a Master of African American Choreography. He received honorary Doctorates from Cornish College of the Arts (2008), The Juilliard School (2009), and California Institute of the Arts. 

McKayle served on the faculties of numerous international forums and many prestigious national institutions, including Juilliard, Bennington College, Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College, American Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and he was the Dean of the School of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts. 

His autobiography, Transcending Boundaries: My Dancing Life, was honored with a Society of Dance History Scholar’s de la Torre Bueno Special Citation. A television documentary on his life and work, Heartbeats of a Dance Maker, aired on PBS stations throughout the United States.