Clyde Emmanuel Archer has been dancing most of his life.
I heard about Clyde long before I met him. He was embroiled in a controversy over representation involving a poster for Swan Lake at the Opera the year before. A mutual friend thought we should meet as we were both ex-pat Brooklynites with Afro-Caribbean backgrounds living in Stockholm. It turned out that we grew up in the same area of Brooklyn.
I first saw Clyde dancing 1st Solo in Sharon Eyal’s “Bill” at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in November 2016. I was riveted by his grace and skill as he leapt effortlessly from the floor of the stage. I learnt later that evening that he had pulled a muscle in that first leap in the first minute of the performance, but had continued to dance the rest of the show. I saw him again in the premiere of Sharon Eyal’s uplifting and infectious “Half life”, which garnered rave reviews.
An international dancer, Clyde was born in Brooklyn, New York; partially raised in Christchurch, Barbados; has danced with Alvin Ailey; in Spain with Nacho Duato, among others; with Göteborgsballetten /the Gothenburg Ballet; Cullberg; and currently dances at the Opera in Stockholm, Sweden.
At eight years old, he started dancing with a program at Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech. The school is by invitation only. At eleven, he went on to the Professional Performing Arts School or P.P.A.S. From ages fourteen to seventeen he went to the Alvin Ailey School, then on to The Juilliard School until age 21. Before he graduated, he was selected by the celebrated Spanish dancer and choreographer, Nacho Duato. He stayed with Duato’s company for two years, then moved back to the US because of family obligations. After a couple of years, he decided New York wasn’t for him and moved to Gothenburg, Sweden for a year. He worked another year in Stockholm then decided to give life in Spain another chance, where he stayed for six years.
After his latest tenure in Spain, feeling a little in limbo and as the dance world had gone through a lot of changes, but wanting to dance more, he came back to Sweden for a job at the Opera in Stockholm.
How did a black child from Brooklyn become a ballet dancer? It’s not the easiest path. How were you introduced to ballet? And why did you decide to become a ballet dancer, and not another kind of dancer?
When I was 8 and in public school, there was an audition that everyone had to do. But, we didn’t know it was an audition. There were a group of people in the front of the school’s gym, and they asked us to jump around, show flexibility and so forth. Later on, some students got a letter to take home, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. I remember showing the letter to my mother, who then informed my father. My mother had her reservations but thought dancing would keep me busy and out of trouble. My father was hesitant saying, “but he’s a boy”. Somehow they agreed that I should give it a try. So I did.
I didn’t really know what ballet was at the time. I knew what dancing was, because I’d seen it on TV, you know. I think Chorus Line was showing on HBO and I watched Chorus Line. And of course, there were Gregory Hines, Baryshnikov and Michael Jackson [who were all over American TV at the time]. My father would have loved if I had been a tap dancer. Some of my teachers encouraged me to stick with ballet and modern dance studies.
I grew up in Flatlands/Canarsie, Brooklyn. There was a big divide in the neighborhood between the Irish and Italians who were there, and the Blacks and Latinos who were newcomers. On my block there were working class families from the West Indies: Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, and Panama; also an Asian family. The school I went to was divided along these racial lines also.
Some kids could identify with me since we were from immigrant families, but I was the only one that sounded like an immigrant. Recently arriving from Barbados with a heavy Barbadian accent and the obvious adolescent awkwardness, I was a pretty easy target to be picked on, being the outcast, the newcomer. I was picked on and bullied 24/7. I fit the ugly duckling prototype. I didn’t really find a place in school games and other social activities. I wasn’t really accepted in many school activities; plus, I was Black and had a Barbadian accent! So, to be part of an invitation-only dance program that seemed not to look at race but only at talent, felt so right and good. I liked dancing because I was shy about speaking and moving allowed me to not focus on that insecurity.
Affirmative action in action
As I grew up I started to experience both the bad and the good in Affirmative Action. By using the good, many of us were really helped by it. So, becoming a ballet dancer was initially by chance. After some back and forth, I stuck with it because it offered me opportunities and alternative options. At that time, Ballet Tech was initiating a program with a public school in Manhattan to make a performing arts school. I thought, “That’s what I have to do. I have to go there.” I had to convince my mother though, because I was only eleven and I would have to go to Manhattan on my own every day on the subway. She also liked that it would be a small school with only about 250 kids spread over seven grades. And it was once again, free. I was still with the ballet program, which kept me busy, so my mother didn’t have to worry about what I was doing after school. The ballet school was also close to where my Mom worked, and my Dad worked on the same block as the school. My father even became good friends with the ballet school director. Then he realized that all the stereotypes of being a ballet dancer weren’t necessarily true.
As a teenager, I went to the Alvin Ailey dance school and discovered modern dance. I realized that I really enjoyed the Martha Graham technique. I liked the virtuosity that ballet gave me, but modern dance spoke to me more than classical ballet did. I veered away from the idea of being a classical ballet dancer at a young age because I saw that there wasn’t much space for black dancers. While I was at Alvin Ailey, there was a teacher who was pushing me to become a ballet dancer. She was like, “you can do it!” She tried to introduce me to other black males who had formed their careers as classical ballet dancers. But I see myself as a neo-classical dancer without sticking so strongly to this idiom that somehow didn’t speak to me.
I used to go to the performing arts library and watch Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey videos for hours. And then I started to look at videos of European companies and got interested in what they were doing. There were several black dancers at the time, who had moved over to Europe to dance with William Forsythe in Frankfurt; the Netherlands Dance Theatre; to Hamburg; Stuttgart… enough examples that a teenager could follow. I began to realize I liked more neo-classical dance as it mixed the modern and the classical together. However, I still continued my studies as a classical ballet dancer. And, of course, I was encouraged to do so by my teachers at Juilliard.
When my son was two years old, I was watching ballet on TV and he fell in love with it and he decided he was going to be a ballet dancer. He would go hopping around the house from then until about age five when he started kindergarten. One day he came home upset because he said, “I can’t be a ballet dancer!” And I said, “Of course you can, why can’t you be a ballet dancer.” And he said “Because I’m a boy!” Then I realized that peer pressure had just kicked in. Did you get any of that? And how did you resist it?
I don’t know how I was able to deal with family and friends who just did not understand why I would choose to become a ballet dancer. The stigma of homosexuality shadowed me always. The fear of raising a homosexual son seemed to be a big fear for my parents at the time. I always had a deep longing to run away from home, to be a loner. I guess it was a way to deal with rejection and not being accepted. And I’d already been rejected often enough, so I would have to learn to deal with it. Dancing would offer a safe space. There was also peer pressure at the ballet school, kids are kids. It wasn’t easy. But it helped going to a performing arts school. There was a point when I got a lot of support from those friends. And even the friends who lived on my block started to be supportive when they saw how serious I was about dancing. A few of them came to see me in a performance at high school. After that they were like, “You have to do this!” These are still some of my closest friends. Their parents still live across the street from my parents, I still go and give them hugs when I see them.
It’s like your own “Billy Elliot” story.
Yes. It really is. I think in one way or another we all go through it. I have friends from many American inner city areas that I met when I was in Alvin Ailey or Juilliard, and their stories are similar.
You talked about having that community around you when you were in the performing arts school. Did it help to buffer you?
When I went to P.P.A.S. I was eleven and I’d say that the initial years were tricky, but at the same time, there was a positive energy. There were students who took me under their wings. They were protective. I still have a great bond with them. During the seven years I was there, these people became like my cousins, because I literally grew up with the same people from junior high school to high school. So, by the time I was in high school, there was less bullying. We were all there for our talent.
I think if I’d gone to a regular public school in Brooklyn, the bullying would have been unbearable. While I was busy with ballet, many of my neighborhood peers were much more into being sexually active, or experimenting with drugs, or in gangs, or fighting. If you didn’t go along with the crowd you were an outcast, and beat up on. So, me trying to be a ballet dancer in that environment would not have been possible at all.
Training to be a ballet dancer takes the same kind of dedication as training to become an elite athlete. I saw a documentary on gymnast Simone Biles and her parents talked about her having to be in a separate space. Because, in order for your body to be able to do all these things, you have to train it in a particular way?
Yes, so you can’t go along with the norms of regular kid life. For years, it was: get on the train; do your homework; get to school; finish your homework; start school; leave school; go to dance class; you’re in dance class until 6 or 8pm, depending on the day; then back on the train; doing your homework.
And you’re running home, because you’ve got to be home before the streetlights are on [*West Indian kids know this one*]. Some days I only had an hour to get home after class and it was an hour-and-a-half-trip! And it made no sense that I would get yelled at, as… it’s an hour-and-a-half trip, especially in the winter! So I was literally always running home, running in the snow, because I had to get home by the time Jeopardy’s on. And there were no cell phones. And they’re like… “Why didn’t you call us?” And I was like “I don’t have a quarter. You didn’t give me a quarter”. It just didn’t compute. [Laughs]
Do you feel that all of what you went through has helped you now? Did it give you a thicker skin?
I guess in some ways it should have given me a thicker skin. It gave me the fuel that I needed…to know that I couldn’t be sheltered. So I left home at 17, went to Juilliard, and never looked back. Somehow I just tried to make it work. Even when times were hard and there wasn’t any food, I just used it as a life lesson to try to keep moving on. My mother was concerned and she kept trying to give me stuff, but I usually refused. My parents realized that from a young age I had to become independent. It was not only what was required of me, dance-wise, but also required of me life-wise. Coming from Barbados, my parents did not have it easy. They had to work, go to school, deal with kids and two separate families. Somehow, I just thought it was better if I went out on my own.
It sounds familiar. I and a lot of my West Indian friends grew up with a similar situation, and it tends to make us fearless at a younger age. We get these ideas and it’s like: “I’m gonna do this” … “How’s that gonna work?” … “I don’t know” … “But it’s gonna work!”
Yeah. I moved to Europe and stayed. One of my younger cousins moved to Chicago, another one to Texas and they now say I’m their inspiration. And I guess I was. Most of my family remained in the family home in Brooklyn. I took a big risk leaving home, but I’ve had an adventure. Things will happen, but at the same time, that’s the risk you have to take. Although I have to admit, sometimes I miss being around my family and stuff…as you know.
What is your insight into the ballet world today? Has it changed a lot? How is it for the people of color that you went to school with? How does it look from a black male perspective?
I think it is changing in the sense that they are accepting more black males. Meaning that, every once in awhile, you will get like three of us in a company. It’s not so commonplace, but the quota has stretched a little bit. I realize that as a black male, even as hard as it is, it is easier than for a black female.
Why is that?
Unfortunately, it has to do with body issues and to satisfy the dichotomy of what is “female” and what is “male”. It’s easier to hire the black man, as it’s easier to put him in the role of “the man,” or “the exotic one”, or “the sexy one” …which can work to our advantage, because it gives us a job. Whereas with the females, a lot of the roles in classical ballet is for lithe or lightness, not only in color, but also body type. So even if you have some black females who are thin and have more, as they say, “European aesthetic” [more flat chested and angular] they still have to deal with being black and the so-called issue of breaking uniformity. This is not what the ballet world wants to see. Although recently, there is talk of diversity and how to achieve that in the ballet institutions.
So, for black females, whose body type is naturally curvier and “busty” it’s much harder to be accepted in the ballet world. I know so many talented black women who get so discouraged, before even finishing school, because the institution already pushes them aside as soon as they start to reach puberty. They don’t know how to say “wait, actually her talent needs to speak more than her body type.” Of course, there are a few people that do.
A lot of us have had black mentors, who had immense talent and could have danced in companies outside of America. But because there was so much to deal with, a lot of them became jaded, and in wanting to protect us, did not encourage us to go to Europe, for example. My mentors did not want me to go to Spain “because it’s racist”, not acknowledging that America is racist as well. So, while they didn’t want us to be pigeonholed, they’re pigeonholing us. I just had to go and try something different.
So, is it easier in Europe for black ballet dancers?
I think it’s easier than in the States. Even in a big company like, for example, New York City Ballet, when you look at the demographics, there are not that many black dancers. It’s like “you mean to tell me you are in New York City and you can’t do better than that?” I think they could easily recruit from the Eliot Feld School where the diversity already exists.
This leads us into the whole Operan controversy. In the poster for Swan Lake, people saw a picture of a perceived white foot on your black face and went crazy. How can one negotiate the difference between inclusion, and simultaneously seeing skin color and not judging it? Which is ideally where everyone says they want to be? What is your take on that controversy?
I knew what the picture stood for, and what it means. Even if it wasn’t my face. I know that this is an Opera house and that there is context, and the context was clearly advertised. I felt like the situation could have been handled differently, especially since the poster had been there for five months and was only going to be there maybe five more days. The controversy started in the last week of the performance. So, I was a bit confused about the whole thing, and even why the Opera ran to take it down if it was only going to be up for another five days.
There should still be a bit of room for knowing that this is an art form. We are including people of different races, and unfortunately there are those that will be uncomfortable. Do I think the Opera analyzed it? I don’t think so, and that’s why they had a knee-jerk reaction. I think the choreographer just thought about the emotion in the picture and what it represents in his movement language. He thought about a man and a woman. Not a dark man and a light woman. In short, he overlooked racism because he wasn’t looking at our race. He’d made the same image 30 years ago with the original dancers, with a white woman and a white man. So, I don’t think he was like “Oh, so he’s black. I have to change everything because he’s black”. Maybe the image could have shown more, of the female dancer. Maybe knowing she’s Asian might have contributed to diffusing the image.
In terms of context, I think it’s important to note that this production of Swan Lake was very revolutionary when it was first shown 30 years ago. For example, it was the first time someone put male dancers in tutus. Now that’s commonplace. Maybe in continuing to try to be revolutionary, Mats Ek was trying (and failed?) to actually go beyond limitations of skin color, in the same way that he was trying to go beyond definitions of masculinity and femininity? I read an article where someone commented that finally, the Opera, a very homogenous institution, does something that sparks debate. But instead of debating it, people got the Opera to take the poster down without really discussing it, and everyone went back to the status quo.
And all of this through social media. Instead of confronting people, everything went through social media. [The critics] got the whole community on their side and achieved a whole social, judgmental stance instead of saying, “Wait, this is not how we deal with things.” What if the choreographer decided to make a piece about how black people are treated in the world? This poster could have served that purpose. But he can’t say that, because he’s a white man. What was also strange about the situation, was all the assumptions that were made about the choreographer. I think skin color didn’t even come to mind for him. It wasn’t a part of the deal. People actually thought he wouldn’t be brave enough to put a black dancer as the prince in the opera house because of the audience. At the same time, he’s the biggest/best choreographer Sweden has ever had. Shouldn’t we first figure out what he’s trying to say before we judge? No-one had that discussion. And even when they were invited to have that discussion, they turned it down. I still wonder if they came to the show and saw the whole program, what the reaction would have been.
I think it’s a pity we’ve lost the capacity for curiosity. To say, “There is something uncomfortable, and I’m curious about it.” Instead of, “There’s something uncomfortable, I’m offended.” I expected a little more nuance from the community. It started a great conversation but the debate didn’t happen.
What are your plans now? How do you see yourself in dance in the future?
I don’t know what I’ll be doing in the next couple of years, but I’m looking towards a transition to actually stop dancing. I do know that I want to give back what I’ve been given. That I can give back the opportunities that I had. It’s very expensive to train and we don’t have the infrastructure in the black community. So, those of us that have, need to give. I got all of my training for free. And I hate to say it, but I got it all from white donors, white sponsors and white schools. Even if Alvin Ailey is not considered a white school, most of its board and its donors are.
So, this is something I think is important. It would be nice to give back for free, like offering a summer course; helping young black dancers make connections. I remember what it was like having my first black, male, ballet teacher, and it was like, “That exists!” I had black female teachers, and even that was “Wow!”
But a black male teacher was rare and resonated in a totally different way. As a black kid, I could identify 100% with the possibilities. So yes, I want to give back to black kids to show them what is possible.
photography ANDREA DAVIS KRONLUND
styling RL PEARSALL
COVER CREDITS:
scarf BRAND-FYR
top PULZ JEANS
coat IDA SJÖSTEDT
shorts VELOUR BY NOSTALGI
Also see “REVERENCE”, KRULL’s earlier fashion editorial featuring Clyde.
And if you are in Stockholm this summer, it’s worth a trip to DANSMUSEET to see the exhibition “Dancing Men – An Exhibition About Men and Dance” which runs through August 20, 2017
