The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History
By: Karen Valby
Genre: Nonfiction, History, Dance
Number of Pages: 320
Published: February 11, 2025 (1st Published April 30, 2024)
Publisher: Vintage
Dates Read: April 19, 2026 - April 21, 2026
Format: Paperback			ISBN: 9780593469668

This nonfiction history book tells the story of five black ballerinas that were a part of the international dance company of the Dance Theatre of Harlem: Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Karlya Shelton, Marcia Sells, and Lydia Abarca, who was the first Black ballerina on the cover of Dance magazine, an Essence cover, cast in The Wiz and in a Bob Fosse production on Broadway. 

After decades of almost no record of their groundbreaking history, these five Swans of Harlem come together to tell their story of their chosen family during the years of dancing during the height of the Civil Rights movement.

I’m going to be honest and state that I was pretty worried about this read for my book group because I have such a hard time with nonfiction, but this is a very chill narrative nonfiction. Each chapter sometimes focused on one ballerina and her story, but other times it would focus on the company itself, racism in the arts, or Arthur Mitchell (the founder of DTH), who, though he gave these women opportunities that didn’t exist elsewhere, he was super toxic. You do learn a lot about the history and what was currently going on and such, but some of the things he did made my skin crawl.

This book talks about how Misty Copeland has gotten the title of “The First Black Ballerina” and how there were those before her that should really get that title. It really made me appreciate that, even though this is almost 70 years later black women’s stories are still being told and shared.

Overall, this is a wonderful book that talks about both the ballerinas and the dance company of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and how their dancing was impacted by the ballet community, racism and discrimination, friendship, the effects of verbal abuse, the AIDS epidemic, and the beautiful bond of sisterhood and family forged around their ballet slippers.