Les Ballets Nègres

Les Ballets Nègres was Europe's first black dance company, formed by Jamaican dancer Berto Pasuka.[1] The English composer (of Spanish origin) Leonard Salzedo and his wife, the dancer Pat Clover, were closely involved with the group, and Salzedo wrote four scores for them for piano, tom tom and maracas: De Prophet, They Came, Market Day and Aggrey.[2] Their first performance was at the Twentieth Century Theatre in Westbourne Grove, London, on 30 April 1946.[3] Performances of They Came and Market Day were broadcast by BBC Television on 8 June 1949.[4][5] A further television broadcast was made on 3 January 1950.[6] The company disbanded in 1953, after several European tours.

On 8 August 1999 a tribute to Les Ballets Nègres was staged at the Royal Festival Hall in London's Southbank Centre.[7]

References
  1. Victoria and Albert Museum. History of Black Dance: British Black Dance
  2. Ramsay Burt, "Elroy Josephs and the Hidden History of Black British Dance", in The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies, edited by Helen Thomas and Stacey Prickett (2019), ch. 16.
  3. "Ballets Nègres, Les" in Oxford Companion to Black British History (2010), p. 36.
  4. Film footage, Desmond Campbell Archive Collection
  5. Radio Times, Issue 1338, p 31
  6. Radio Times, Issue 1368, p42
  7. Monohan, Mark. 'New Dawn for a ballet that went to sleep', Daily Telegraph, 31 July 1999
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