Joe Rickard

Joseph C. Rickard was born on September 17, 1918, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A white American drawn early to classical dance, he moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s to study ballet under the celebrated teachers Bronislava and Irina Nijinska, sisters and heirs to the great Russian tradition of Vaslav Nijinsky. From Bronislava Nijinska he absorbed a method that prized mood and emotion within the discipline of classical technique.

In 1946, Rickard overheard an African-American mother turned away from a Los Angeles dance studio, refused lessons for her daughter because of her race. Moved by the injustice, he opened his own studio to train Black dancers in classical ballet. Out of that studio grew the First Negro Classic Ballet, which debuted in Los Angeles in 1947 — widely recognized as the first African-American classical ballet company in the United States.

Under Rickard's direction and choreography, the company drew gifted dancers from across Southern California, among them Bernice Harrison, Theodore Crum, and Yvonne Miller. It grew to more than thirty members and toured the United States and Europe through the 1950s to critical and public acclaim, before dissolving after roughly a decade. Rickard later founded a successor company and continued teaching with integrated troupes.

Joseph Rickard died on August 24, 1994, in Glendale, California. Though he never claimed the stage his dancers commanded, he opened a door that had been shut, and through it a generation of Black classical dancers walked into the light. His name is honored here for the barrier he refused to accept.