Carmen de Lavallade Dies At 94
December 31, 2025
She was an actress and choreographer who moved between ballet, modern dance, film, and television.
Carmen de Lavallade, the brilliant and vibrant modern dancer and choreographer, known for her frequent collaborations with Alvin Ailey, died Monday, Dec. 29. She was 94.
The announcement was made on Facebook by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where she served as a principal guest performer for many years. She was a high school classmate of the renowned dancer.
“We honor and give thanks for her extraordinary life, boundless artistry, and the generations she shaped through her work, her wisdom, and her presence,” the announcement read in part.
de Lavallade began her career, which spanned seven decades, with the racially integrated Lester Horton troupe in Los Angeles. She then moved to New York City with Ailey, where she would be known for the gravitational pull she drew from audience members while performing. Her range spanned acting and choreography, and she worked in ballet, modern dance, film, and television. She also performed on the concert stage and as a nightclub act, according to The Washington Post.
Her inspiration came from watching her cousin, Janet Collins, a rare African American ballerina in the late 1940s and 50s, who became the first Black principal dancer of the Metropolitan Opera.
de Lavallade performed as prima ballerina between 1955 and 1958 in Aida and Samson and Delilah at the Met.
She made her Broadway debut in 1954, alongside Ailey, in the Truman Capote-Harold Arlen musical House of Flowers, where she met her husband and frequent collaborator Geoffrey Holder, according to Theater Mania.
Her work caught the attention of several rising Black stars at the time, including iconic actress Lena Horne, who, after seeing her dance, helped her secure roles and perform in popular dance sequences in movies such as Demetrius and the Gladiators and the all-Black musical Carmen Jones.
One of her most famous performances came when Ailey put de Lavallade at the center of one of his signature works, Revelations, in 1960. The piece, still performed today, showcases Black perseverance over time between slavery and the 20th century through dance and movement.
“My role is to give joy,” she would say.
Dance critic P.W. Manchester once described de Lavallade’s performance in Salome as “an altogether remarkable conception, passionate, childishly capricious, lascivious, with a sheer physical beauty that compels a fascinated attention from the moment of her entry.”
de Lavallade’s career took her to high places, such as performing as a guest artist with American Ballet Theatre and teaching at the Yale School of Drama as a choreographer and performer-in-residence. She also received various awards and honors, including an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Juilliard in 2008, the Dance USA Award in 2010, and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2017.
Her son, Leo Holder, survives her.
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