Fort, Syvilla, 1917-1975

Syvilla Fort (July 3, 1917 – November 8, 1975) was an American dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher, who drew on a variety of dance techniques, as well as her African American heritage, in the creation of her original dance works and through her influential teaching practice.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Syvilla Fort was the daughter of John Wesley Lorenzo Fort, a postal worker, and Mildred Oldwin Fort. She grew up in the Wallingford/Green Lake section of Seattle (sometimes known as Tangletown) and began studying dance when she was three years old. Denied admission to ballet schools because she was Black, Fort's early dance education took place in private lessons at her home. While still a child, Fort was dedicated to sharing her love of dance, teaching ballet, tap, and modern dance to small groups of neighborhood children who could not afford private lessons. She had a brother, John W. Fort (1922-2020), who generally went by the name of Jack Fort. After the death of her first husband, Syvilla’s mother married Robert E. Dill (1895-1948), a Seattle City Light employee, in 1932. The couple would have another child, John Dill, in 1940; the entire family lived in the same home in which Syvilla had grown up as a child during the years in which she remained in Seattle.

The exact chronology of Syvilla’s dance training and education is difficult to chart. She graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1934 and appears to have attended the University of Washington in 1935, but it is not clear if or when she received a degree. Around the same time, Fort took classes at the Cornish School of Allied Arts. Syvilla was able to study at Cornish because her mother had begun working as a housekeeper for Nellie Cornish, the founder of the conservatory, after the death of Syvilla’s father. Cornish took an interest in Mildred Fort’s children and offered free tuition. Syvilla would spend a total of approximately five years at the Cornish School and graduated from the dance program in June 1938. In her final year, she worked closely with Bonnie Bird, the new head of the Cornish dance program. Fort became a member of a student dance company formed by Bird, which performed locally. Other members of that group would include: Merce Cunningham, Dorothy Herrmann, and Cole Weston. In the summer of 1938, Bird invited composer John Cage to work as an accompanist and composer for the school, starting in the autumn term.

Fort returned to Cornish in the fall of 1938, to receive special training in radio broadcasting and costume design, as well as to continue with advanced studies in dance and choreography in preparation for her formal debut as a professional dance artist. She again performed with the Cornish student dancers, appearing in a percussion concert organized by Cage, presented at the Cornish Theater on December 9, 1938. This program included 3 Inventories of Casey Jones, a piece in which Fort performed to music by Ray Green, as well as works by Cage and other composers. Another notable Cornish group concert in which Syvilla appeared was the “Hilarious Dance Concert” (March 1939), which featured Bird’s adaptation of a Jean Cocteau dance-play, The Marriage at the Eiffel Tower, and Skinny Structures, a four-movement work that was jointly choreographed by Fort, Cunningham, and Herrmann. On May 3, 1939, Fort presented her first solo dance recital at the Seattle Repertory Playhouse, sponsored by the local Alpha Omicron chapter of the Delta Sigma Sorority (of which she was a member). This event was followed by a May 31, 1939 concert at the same venue, which featured another former Cornish dance student, Fedor Stojak. Syvilla appeared as a guest artist at Stojak’s recital, performing as a soloist, as well as in duets in which she was partnered by Stojak, co-choreographed by the pair.

Bird helped to provide Fort with resources to plan an even more elaborate dance concert for the following season, which involved recruiting dancers, designers, and selecting music. For this event, which took place at the Repertory Playhouse on April 28, 1940, Syvilla commissioned two pieces from Cage. One of these works, Bacchanale, would become the first piece to incorporate the composer’s revolutionary “prepared piano” technique to be performed in public. A week later, Fort also appeared on the American Dance Theater “First Concerts” program, which featured works by Fort, Bird, and Herrmann, created to music composed primarily by Cage, including, Spiritual, a solo performed by Fort.

Syvilla’s next significant artistic relationship was with the dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham. Sources vary on when and where the two first met, some indicating that it may have been as early as 1939 that composer William Grant Still introduced the two in Los Angeles. Fort is known to have spent time in Los Angeles in late 1940 and was living in the city by early 1941. Press notices from the time announce her work as drama coach for the Avalon Community Center, appearances in plays, as well as her plans for her own dance troupe. Following the conclusion of the road tour of Cabin in the Sky, Dunham and her company of dancers remained in California and added some new members. Fort began appearing with the Dunham troupe by the time they opened an engagement at the Biltmore Theatre in Los Angeles in October 1941. She studied the Dunham technique, which was rooted in the dance traditions of Africa, Haiti, and Trinidad that Dunham had studied. Fort danced and toured with the company until 1945 and was included in the well-known film, Stormy Weather (1943).

While dancing with the Dunham Company, Fort neglected a serious knee injury which led to her give up performing professionally by the mid-1940s and to turn to teaching full-time. In 1944, Katherine Dunham opened her own school in New York, the Dunham School of Dance and Theater at the Caravan Hall on 59th Street. The following year, the school relocated to 220 West 43rd Street; it would be renamed the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research in 1946. Fort taught classes at the school when she was not on tour with the company. In 1948, Dunham appointed her as chief administrator and dance teacher. During that same year, both her mother and stepfather died in Seattle; Syvilla brought her eight-year-old brother, John Dill, to live with her in Harlem, raising him as a surrogate mother. Fort would remain with the Dunham School until 1954. It was while Fort was working at the Dunham School that she met tap dancer and promoter Buddy Phillips; the two married in 1957. The family would live in Sugar Hill, with Buddy’s mother helping to raise both John Dill and Buddy’s son (who later took the name, Sabur Abdul-Salaam).

Around 1954, Fort and Phillips opened their own dance studio on 153 West 44th Street in New York. The Phillips-Fort Dance Studio offered a wide array of dance classes, including what Fort called her "Afro-Modern technique," which fused the Dunham approach with other styles of dance that Fort had studied, as well as Phillips' own style of Jazz Tap. Dancers who trained at the school included: Alvin Ailey, Brenda Bufalino, Chuck Davis, and Yvonne Rainer. Many notable actors also attended classes for movement training, including: Marlon Brando, James Dean, Jane Fonda, Eartha Kitt, James Earl Jones, and Shirley MacLaine.

Following the untimely death of Phillips in 1963, Fort continued to operate the school, which was renamed the Syvilla Fort Studio of Theater Dance. Although the school thrived, Fort had numerous financial struggles and took on additional part-time assignments to supplement her income, including teaching dance at the Holy Family Academy in Bayonne, New Jersey and Teachers College. She also took on a notable international teaching assignment during the 1960s, when Harry Belafonte, who had become involved with efforts to organize a new national dance company in Guinea (later called Ballet Djoliba), recommended Fort, who traveled to West Africa to teach in 1964 and 1965. Fort would maintain her busy teaching schedule even after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1974. Her studio would be relocated to 100 West 23rd Street in Manhattan.

In later years, Syvilla also served as a choreographer on several Off-Broadway productions, including the first musical presented by the Actors Studio Theater, Dynamite Tonight (1964). With a libretto by Arnold Weinstein and music by William Bolcom, the cast of this “comic opera for actors,” which satirized war, included Barbara Harris and Gene Wilder. The following year, the Greenwich Village Players offered a double bill of Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule and Langston Hughes’ The Prodigal Son (1965). Directed by Vinnette Carroll, The Prodigal Son, featured choreography by Fort created for her former student, Glory Van Scott, as Jezebel and Philip A. Stamps in the title role. Fort also contributed the choreography in Joseph A. Walker’s Ododo (1970), produced by the Negro Ensemble Company.

Five days before death, Fort attended “Dance Genesis: Three Generations Salute Syvilla Fort,” held at the Majestic Theatre on November 3, 1975. This tribute to her life's work was organized by the Black Theater Alliance and hosted by Alvin Ailey and Harry Belafonte. Van Scott would continue to produce programs in honor of Fort, including one given at Pace University’s Schimmel Center for the Arts in 1980, as well as two programs at New York's Symphony Space in 1992 and 1993 that featured Fort’s choreography performed by the Joan Peters Dance Company, as well as dancers from other companies. Fort also was the subject of a documentary, Syvilla: They Dance to Her Drum (1979), directed by Ayoka Chenzira, which is slated for preservation and restoration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.