STUDIO stage&

“A CEASELESS, GIVING DANCE”

Dance Master Elbert Watson Receives Ovation Award

When Elbert Watson was a boy growing up in Norfolk, his parents would often call him into the living room to show off his moves to friends and neighbors. As a teenager and senior class president at Booker T. Washington High School, he kept dancing but considered it just a hobby.

He changed his mind in his 20s, after hearing family friends mourning their own missed chances; he resolved that he would have no such laments — he would pursue his passion. After two years of grueling training in ballet, he was accepted in 1973 by choreographer Alvin Ailey into his pioneering troupe, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Within a year, Ailey promoted Watson to principal dancer, and the world opened up; he performed on stages around the globe, playing a new role every season. When Watson eventually grew to feel that he was being typecast, he moved on to the Staatstheater in Germany, Pearl Primus Earth Theater, and the Joan Miller Dance Players.

When one troupe shut down unexpectedly, he came back home to plan his next move; he thoroughly expected to return to Europe. In the interim, he began teaching in Richmond and at Norfolk Academy, in the school’s Academy of the Arts summer program.

Suddenly, a new path beckoned. “When the letter finally came for me to go back to Germany, I realized I was a different person,” he said in a documentary made about his career by WHRO’s Curate 757. “I liked teaching children. Dancing can be a very self-absorbed kind of career. Suddenly I was giving back to children, and that was an exciting thing for me.”

Even as he embraced the role of a dance teacher for grades 1–12, he has continued charting new pathways as a choreographer, leader of a dance troupe, and performer. He has created dances about the Holocaust; Vietnam veterans and PTSD; and race relations, including a dance to Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He has twice performed with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, most notably in 2018, in a concert to promote healing and unity in the aftermath of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. He has had countless collaborations with groups throughout the region, using dance as a vehicle for storytelling.

This spring, Watson received the Virginia Arts Festival’s Ovation Award, which honors the lifetime achievement of artists with a special connection to the Hampton Roads area. As a recipient, he joins a distinguished group, including JoAnn Falletta, former conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and director, conductor, and pianist Rob Fisher.

Speakers at the award presentation shared Watson’s life-shaping impact on thousands of children and adults. “He teaches more than dance; he teaches values,” said Thomas V. Rueger ’65, a member of the Arts Festival Board and a Norfolk Academy Trustee. “It is amazing the loyalty his students feel for him. He is a mentor for life.”

Headmaster Dennis Manning noted that Watson has reached beyond the walls of the dance room to offer flexibility training to athletic teams and to develop movement-based lessons that dovetail with academic courses. Watson’s strong spiritual life allowed him to act as a “real minister” to many in the campus community during the difficult days of the pandemic, Manning said. “His life is a perpetual, ceaseless, giving dance, and he has insisted that we dance with him.”

Matthew Rushing, associate artistic director of Alvin Ailey, which performed as part of the 2023 Virginia Arts Festival, spoke about the revelatory impact of seeing Watson’s performances online. “I saw myself in you, and I saw what I wanted to become,” he said. “I saw someone taking something he loves and turning it into a vehicle for loving others.”

In his remarks, Watson said that the two most important dates in your life are “the day you’re born, and the day you find your purpose.” He noted that life has taught him three things: humility, how to forgive, and how to listen with his whole heart. He added, “Life is short, but life is long enough to do God’s will.” ◆