Beatty, Talley, 1918-1995

Talley Beatty (22 December 1918 – 29 April 1995) was born in Cedar Grove, Louisiana, a section of Shreveport, but moved with his family as a child to Chicago, Illinois. He is considered one of the greatest African American choreographers. After studying with Katherine Dunham and being associated with her company for several years, Beatty went on do solo work and choreograph his own pieces, which center on the social issues, experiences, and everyday life of African Americans.

Beatty began studying dance with Katherine Dunham in Chicago during the 1930s. He learned ballet and also trained in Dunham's technique, which she developed from her studies of African and Caribbean dance forms through her anthropology fieldwork in the West Indies. Around 1937, Beatty became a member of Dunham’s company, touring widely and performing with them on Broadway in Cabin and the Sky (1940), as well as several concerts and revues. Following the filming of Stormy Weather (1943), he left the Dunham troupe to continue his studies in New York City, studying with Martha Graham and continuing with ballet. Beatty encountered racial discrimination in his ballet classes; he was forced to attend in the early mornings or late nights in a dressing room while classes were going on in an adjacent studio.

During the mid-1940s, Beatty continued to work as a solo artist and choreographer, exploring a variety of dance styles and techniques. He appeared in Maya Deren's experimental film, A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) and performed on Broadway in a revival of Show Boat, with new choreography by Helen Tamiris, and worked with Tamiris again in the revue, Inside U.S.A. (1948). He also appeared in Blackface (1947), a minstrel-show ballet choreographed by Lew Christensen for Ballet Society.

Beatty’s own work explored themes around the struggles and everyday life of African Americans. His first major piece as an independent choreographer, Southern Landscape, is a five-part dance that was inspired by Howard Fast's novel, Freedom Road, about a short-lived community of black and white farmers formed during the Reconstruction period that was destroyed by the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan. The best known section of the dance is a solo, which was performed originally by Beatty Mourner’s Bench, about a man returning from recovering a body and reflecting on the ideas of hope and strength.

Beatty choreographed over fifty ballets over the course of his career and his work has been performed by modern dance and ballet companies in the United States and around the world. Some of his other well known works are: The Road of the Phoebe Snow (1959), Come and Get the Beauty of It Hot (1960) and Stack Up(1982); the latter was created for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. Beatty's work as a choreographer for theatre includes Your Arms Too Short to Box with God (1976) for which he received a Tony Award nomination.

Talley Beatty died of complications from diabetes at Roosevelt Hospital in New York in 1995.