How Did Syvilla Fort Change Dance

Seattle July 3,1917 a girl that changed and influenced dance was born. Dance has evolved because of amazing people, a person who helped with this change is Syvilla Fort. She was a professional dancer in the 1930s and early 1940s and a dance instructor in New York City for three decades between 1948 and 1975. Her dance style, which combined American, Caribbean, and Caribbean, influenced hundreds of professional dancers and actors. Syvilla Fort changed dance in many ways because of her diverse dancing techniques.

Back in time schools denied admission to many black students, and Syvilla was one of them. Fort began learning ballet when she was three years old but was denied admission to several Seattle ballet schools because of her race. Because of that she had to learn at home with private lessons. Fort soon excelled in dance and at age nine began to teach dance, tap, and ballet to the neighborhood kids since they couldn't afford the classes. In 1932 she graduated from high school and entered the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle, became its first black student. At Cornish she met John Cage, an American composer, who had Fort perform some of his first compositions. Cage wrote his first piece for her dance "Bacchanale." They continued working together while she was still at Cornish.

In 1937 Fort moved to Los Angeles to begin her professional career as a dancer. There she met dancer Katherine Dunham, another female dancer. Fort later joined Dunham’s dance company in Chicago. There she injured her knee which ended her professional dance career permanently in 1945. Two years later Fort became a dance teacher at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance in New York. Syvilla remained in that position working until 1954 when the school closed due to financial problems. A year later she met her husband, Buddy Phillips, another Dunham