Les Ballets Nègres

{{Short description|Europe's first black dance company}}

Les Ballets Nègres was Europe's first black dance company, founded in 1946 by Jamaican dancers Berto Pasuka and Ritchie Riley, along with brother and sister dancers Tony and Pearl Johnson.[http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/history-of-black-dance-black-british-dance/ Victoria and Albert Museum. History of Black Dance: British Black Dance]{{Cite book|last=Matera|first=Marc|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dK59DwAAQBAJ&q=%22Les+Ballets+N%C3%A8gres%22+richie+riley&pg=PA191|title=Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century|date=2015|publisher=Univ of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-28430-2|location=|pages=|language=en}} Berto Pasuka (1911-1963, original name Wilbert Passerley), was born in Jamaica and trained as a classical ballet dancer in Kingston. He moved to London in 1939 and took further training in choreography at the Astafieva Dance School.[https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp91167/berto-pasuka#:~:text=(1911%2D1963)%2C%20Dancer,his%20own%20desire%20to%20dance. Berto Pasuka biography, National Portrait Gallery] Pasuka was asked to dance in and help recruit other dancers for the film Men of Two Worlds in 1946, and this experience prompted him to start his own dance company. Richard "Richie" Riley (1910-1997) first performed with Pasuka while in Jamaica. He migrated to London in 1946.Keith Watson. '[http://They%20were%20Britain's%20first%20black%20dance%20company.%20How%20come%20no%20one's%20ever%20heard%20of%20them? They were Britain's first black dance company. How come no one's ever heard of them?]', in The Guardian, 5 August 1999

Other members of the troupe included the dancers John Lagey and Elroy Josephs,'How black dancers brought a new dynamism to British dance', in The Guardian, 20 September 2013 and the Nigerian musicians Bobby Benson and Ambrose Campbell.Val Wilmer. Letter to The Guardian, 22 May 1997, p. 17

The English composer (of Spanish origin) Leonard Salzedo and his wife, the dancer Pat Clover, were closely involved with the group, and Salzedo wrote four scores for them for piano, tom tom and maracas: De Prophet, They Came, Market Day and Aggrey.Ramsay Burt, "Elroy Josephs and the Hidden History of Black British Dance", in The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies, edited by Helen Thomas and Stacey Prickett (2019), ch. 16. Their first performance was at the Twentieth Century Theatre in Westbourne Grove, London, on 30 April 1946."Ballets Nègres, Les" in Oxford Companion to Black British History (2010), p. 36. Performances of They Came and Market Day were broadcast by BBC Television on 8 June 1949.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef6qqynukXY Film footage, Desmond Campbell Archive Collection][https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/f08261568f52405b851f467728af54c6 Radio Times, Issue 1338, p 31] A further television broadcast was made on 3 January 1950.[https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/85a53c04607f491ebec4cfe995d030cb Radio Times, Issue 1368, p42] The company disbanded in 1953, after several European tours, due to a lack of funding.[https://blackbritishballet.com/timeline Oxygen Arts Black British Ballet Project, timeline]

After the closure of the company Pasuka continued to dance, and was photographed by Angus McBean. His last stage appearance was in 1959 at the Royal Court Theatre in Sean O'Casey's Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (dancing as the cockerel of the title).Berto Pasuka obituary, The Stage, 25 April 1963 In April 1963 he was found ill in his Paris apartment and died at a hospital in Wimbledon. Riley gave up dancing and trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in painting and sculpture. He became involved in the West Indian Standing Conference, established in 1958,David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Black British History (1997) and featured in the BBC documentaries Ballet Black in 1982 and Storm in a Teacup (with Quentin Crisp, on the history of gay bars) in 1992.'Riley, Richie', in The Oxford History of Dance (2010) Riley became severely disabled in later life, losing both of his legs.Bill Harpe. 'Steps into Black History' (Richie Riley obituary), in The Guardian, 15 April 1997, p. 20

On 8 August 1999 a tribute to Les Ballets Nègres was staged at the Royal Festival Hall in London's Southbank Centre.Monohan, Mark. '[https://web.archive.org/web/20160226192609/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4718058/New-dawn-for-the-ballet-that-went-to-sleep.html New Dawn for a ballet that went to sleep]', Daily Telegraph, 31 July 1999 In October 2024 an exhibition - Into the Light: Pioneers of Black British Ballet - was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It was scheduled to tour 25 libraries around the UK until November 2025.'[https://blackbritishballet.com/articles/new-exhibition-celebrates-ballets-black-pioneers New exhibition celebrates ballet’s Black pioneers]', Black British Ballet