Donald McKayle

Career Trajectory

McKayle's career began in 1948 as a modern dancer and choreographer, his early concert works synthesizing ballet, tap, modern, and Afro-Caribbean vocabularies to articulate the Black American experience with unprecedented specificity. He transitioned to Broadway in the 1950s and achieved historic prominence in the 1970s as the first Black director-choreographer of major Broadway musicals, most notably *Raisin*, which garnered him a Tony Award. His final decades were marked by leadership roles at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and UCLA, cementing his status as a transformative figure who proved dance could be both artistically rigorous and socially urgent.