Dancing All the Way Home

Written by Veronica Teodoro / Photography by Jacob Blickenstaf Photography

Antonio Douthit-Boyd was 16 and hanging out with friends when the sound of drums drew them into a church near the corner of Compton and Washington avenues.

Angela Culbertson, ATrek Dance Collective’s artistic director, was holding rehearsals in the church basement.

“I stumbled into her class,” says Douthit-Boyd, now 34. “I just walked in off the street. We played around in the back of the studio during the rehearsal. She asked us if we wanted to dance and invited us to come back the next day. My friends ran in the other direction, but I came back.”

After a few months of working with her new pupil, Culbertson reached out to Sally Bliss, then the executive director of Dance St. Louis and once a ballerina who had danced with the American Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet and as a principal dancer with the New York City and Metropolitan operas. Culbertson asked Bliss to introduce Douthit-Boyd to dance instructor Lee Nolting at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA).

“I think I was a little intimidated at first,” Douthit-Boyd says, recalling his first day of dance class at COCA. “I didn’t see a lot of kids from my neighborhood. They looked like they were from a different background. But Miss Lee was very open and so warm. We were all equals, and she cared so much about everyone. From that time on, I lived at COCA.”

On Aug. 15, Douthit-Boyd will return home to COCA as co-director of dance with his husband, Kirven Douthit-Boyd. They are retiring as principal dancers with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York after a domestic tour that runs through May, two weeks of performances at Lincoln Center in New York in June, and a month of shows in Paris that culminates with their final performance on Aug. 1.

“We’re back in rehearsals all week,” Antonio Douthit-Boyd says from New York just before departing on the domestic tour. “I’m dancing my legs off. They're trying to get everything out of me before I go.”

Even before he had any formal training, he loved to dance. At barbecues and family reunions, he loved to perform.

“Mom would say to everyone, ‘Watch Antonio dance!’” Douthit-Boyd says. “I watched music videos and loved to dance to Michael Jackson. Whitney Houston is my favorite singer of all time.”

As he prepared to enter high school, his mother worried about his safety. “She knew the neighborhood high schools were rough,” he says. “She thought if somehow she could get me into the lottery for Central, the school would be able to foster my talents.”

He was accepted into Central Visual and Performing Arts, a magnet school, and entered the advanced dance program under the direction of Ray Parks, who became a mentor. “He didn’t let up on me,” Douthit-Boyd says. “He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. He pushed me and pushed me and I’m so glad he did.”

As Douthit-Boyd’s only male role model for dance during the early years, Parks played another important role. All the dance instructors at COCA were women: Parks taught Douthit-Boyd about being masculine on stage and about showmanship.

It took time, however, for Douthit-Boyd’s mother to discover he was taking ballet, modern dance, and jazz classes at COCA. “I hid it from her for months,” he says. “Miss Lee would pick me up on Mondays or I would take public transportation to COCA. I think my mom thought maybe I was tap dancing or something.”

“In the neighborhood I grew up in, it wasn’t considered a masculine thing to do. Men don’t take ballet.”

A Historic Building Becomes a School for the Arts

In 1985, developer Richard Baron began exploring the possibility of creating a visual and performing arts center for small arts organizations in St. Louis. Around the same time, he was approached by a board member of Congregation B’nai Amoona about selling its synagogue on Trinity Avenue in University City.

“The congregation was moving west,” says Baron, chairman and chief executive ofcer of McCormack Baron Salazar. “They wanted to know if I had use for the building, which had a wonderful space and design.”

The building, designed in 1950 by internationally recognized architect Eric Mendelsohn, was on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built by I. E. Millstone, a legend in the construction industry and among St. Louis’ most generous philanthropists.

“I created a not-for-profit and approached others who were interested in the arts,” Baron says. He reached out to sponsors and discussed his idea for an arts center with Dorothy Dubinsky, a friend and local artist who needed studio space for a group of painters.

“It would be a family-focused arts center that would bridge the city and the county,” he says. “We wanted to break down the distance between the two and create a place for families and children.”

Baron asked good friend and architect Andy Trivers, chief executive officer of Trivers Associates, to work on the redesign of the interior spaces and a small garden. Baron and his former partner, Steven Stogel, and their associates oversaw the financing and construction.

“People who were affiliated with the arts tried to dissuade me from doing it,” Baron says. “They said it wouldn’t work in St. Louis. Others had attempted it, and 50 to 60 percent of the time they had failed. They said we wouldn’t get the community’s support. Of course, that was the incentive I need to go ahead with it.”

All this makes COCA’s recent announcement about Antonio and Kirven Douthit-Boyd, principal dancers with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, that much sweeter. They are retiring from their dance careers to join COCA on Aug. 15 as co-directors of dance.

“I wasn’t convinced I would ever see the day, so the fact that it’s a reality is remarkable,” says COCA Executive Director Kelly Pollock, calling the couple’s move to St. Louis the highlight of her career. “It is truly amazing that Antonio and Kirven are choosing to retire at the peak of their careers in order to devote themselves to educating the next generation of dancers at COCA.”

“All of us believed in an urban arts program,” Baron says. “COCA has always been about community outreach, and Antonio came out of this. The teachers were overwhelmed by his natural ability. Tey emboldened him, supported him. It’s a wonderful development.”