Donald McKayle, recipient of honors and awards in every
aspect of his illustrious career, has been named by the
Dance Heritage Coalition "one of America’s Irreplaceable
Dance Treasures: the first 100." His choreographic
masterworks, considered modern dance classics, Games,
Rainbow Round My Shoulder, District Syoryville,
and Songs of the Disinherited are performed around
the world. He has choreographed over seventy works for dance
companies in the United States, Canada, Israel, Europe,
and South America. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater,
the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Ballet San Jose
Silicon Valley, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and
the Lula Washington Dance Theatre serve as repositories
for his works. He is Artistic  Mentor
for the Limón Dance Company.
In
2003, two retrospective programs honored him: Ballet San
Jose Silicon Valley, May 1–4 and the Lula Washington
Dance Theatre, October 10–11. In 2001, he choreographed
the monumental ten-hour production of Tantalus,
produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration
with the Denver Center Theatre Company.
Five
Tony Nominations have honored his choreography for Broadway
musical theater: Sophisticated Ladies, Doctor
Jazz, A Time for Singing, and for Raisin,
which garnered the Tony Award as Best Musical, and for which
he received Tony nominations for both direction and choreography.
For Sophisticated Ladies he was also honored with
an Outer Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award.
His most recent choreography for Broadway was showcased
in It Ain’t Nothing’ But the Blues
that earned a Tony nomination for Best Musical. He received
an Emmy nomination for the TV Special, Free To Be You
and Me.
 His
work for film includes Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks,
The Great White Hope, and The Jazz Singer.
His other media awards include a Los Angeles Drama Logue
Award for Evolution of the Blues and a Golden Eagle
Award for On the Sound. In dance he has received
the Capezio Award, the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance
Festival Award, the American Dance Guild Award, a Living
Legend Award from the National Black Arts Festival, the
Heritage Award from the California Dance Educators Association,
two Choreographer’s Fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Dance/USA Honors, an Irvine
Fellowship in Dance, and the 2004 Martha Hill Lifetime Achievement
Award.
For
his work in education, he has earned the Balasaraswati/Joy
Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching,
UCI’s Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for
Research, and he is a recipient of the UCI Medal, the highest
honor given by the University of California, Irvine. At
the University of California, Irvine he has also been awarded
the title of Claire Trevor Professor in Dance, an endowed
chair, and inducted as a Bren Fellow.
 Mr.
McKayle has served on the faculties of numerous international
forums and many prestigious national institutions including
the Juilliard School, Bennington College, Bard College,
Sarah Lawrence College, the American Dance Festival, Jacob’s
Pillow Dance Festival, and was Dean of the School of Dance
at the California Institute of the Arts.
 In
April 2005, Donald McKayle was honored at the John F. Kennedy
Center in Washington, D.C. and presented with a medal as
a “Master of African American Choreography.”
He is the recipient of the American Dance Legacy Institute’s
first Lifetime Achievement Award. His autobiography, Transcending
Boundaries: My Dancing Life, published by Routledge
was honored with the Society of Dance History Scholar’s
De La Torre Bueno Prize. In 2003 –2004 the documentary
on his life and work, Heartbeats of a Dance Maker,
was aired on PBS stations throughout the United States.
Find out more about Donald:
::
America's
Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: the First 100
:: PBS
Great Performances, Free To Dance Biography
:: Internet
Broadway Database listing
:: Dance
Magazine article, May 2003
:: Ballet
Magazine article
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