Loretta Abbott

Loretta Agatha Abbott (March 1, 1933 – May 6, 2016) was an American dancer, choreographer, actress, singer, director, dance captain, and educator who maintained an active career in performance and teaching for more than seven decades. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, Abbott spent her entire life in the Harlem brownstone her father, Alfred Bruce Abbott, purchased in 1932. Her father was originally from Panama and her mother, Agatha, from Jamaica. Abbott began her training at age five, studying piano, voice, and dance. Her dance teachers included Ruth Williams, and her tap instructor was Henry LeTang. As a child she performed in Harlem talent shows with Ella Gordon's Peter Pan Kiddies. She later graduated from Hunter College in New York City and briefly taught kindergarten at Public School 90 in Harlem before committing fully to a performance career.

Abbott became an early and foundational member of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and served as Ailey's partner in his landmark work Revelations prior to his retirement in 1964. She also studied with modern dance pioneer Charles Weidman and became a founding member of both the New Dance Group and the Clark Center for the Performing Arts, with which she was affiliated from 1959 to 1989. At the Clark Center she studied with Thelma Hill, Pepsi Bethel, and James Truitte, and worked alongside choreographers including Walter Nicks, Talley Beatty, Geoffrey Holder, Eleo Pomare, Fred Benjamin, Donald McKayle, and Al Perryman. She performed as a featured dancer with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company and was a founding member of the George Faison Universal Dance Experience in the 1970s, continuing her collaboration with Faison throughout her life. In concert performances she partnered with both Ailey and Perryman. She also worked as a choreographer, dancer, and guest lecturer with the Avodah Dance Ensemble in New York City, where she assisted in the creation of the praise dance "Let My People Go."

Abbott's Broadway career spanned from 1969 to 1983. Her first Broadway credit was La Strada, which opened and closed on December 14, 1969. She next appeared as a dancer in the Tony Award-winning musical Purlie, which ran from March 1970 to November 1971, alongside Al Perryman. From December 1971 through May 1973 she played a Citizen of Verona and Milan in the original Broadway production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. She originated the role of Victim in Raisin, the musical that ran on Broadway from October 1973 through December 1975, and reprised the role on the production's national tour in 1975. In 1980 she appeared in the ensemble of Reggae, which ran from March 27 to April 13 of that year. The 1983 revival of Porgy and Bess, running from April 7 to May 15, included Abbott in its ensemble. Her final Broadway credit was the original production of Amen Corner, which ran from November 10 to December 4, 1983, where she served simultaneously as a performer playing a Member of the Congregation and Dancer, and as dance captain and choreographic assistant.

Beyond her Broadway work, Abbott appeared in the 1960 Lenox Hill Playhouse production of Dark of the Moon, directed by Vinnette Justine Carroll. She performed in the 1972 Jones Beach Marine Theatre production of The King and I and the Off-Broadway production of Peer Gynt at the Delacorte Theater in 1969. She also appeared in the national tour of Hallelujah, Baby! in 1968. Abbott served as choreographer for an Off-Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun at the Union Square Theatre, which ran from July to September 1986. She appeared in the film version of The Wiz as well as in See No Evil, Hear No Evil with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Her television credits include a 1976 episode of Good Times, for which she staged the dances, and the 1981 television production of Purlie. Abbott also maintained her own one-woman show touring company.

Abbott continued dancing into her eighties as a participant in the Phoenix Project with Dances for a Variable Population, a New York City initiative celebrating dance among performers in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. In 2013–2014 she received the AUDELCO Recognition Award for Excellence in Black Theatre Special Achievement Award. Throughout her career she collaborated with a wide range of choreographers and performers, including Fred Benjamin, Jean-Léon Destiné, George Faison, Martin Gordon, Louis Johnson, John Parks, Michael Peters, Carmen de Lavallade, Abdel Salaam, Otis Sallid, Paul Sanasardo, and Andy Torres.