Osborne Hemsley Winfield is widely regarded as the first African American modern dancer, as well as the creator of “Negro concert dancing.” Winfield was a Harlem Renaissance dancer who worked with Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman as the founder of the New Negro Art Theatre Dance Group.
He was born in Yonkers, New York, on April 20, 1907, to general contractor Osborne D. Winfield and playwright Jeroline Hemsley Winfield. Throughout his career, he directed theater companies, taught dance, directed his modern dance company, and choreographed and danced in and around New York. By the age of 17, he was the director of the Mariarden Playhouse. He directed three other small theater companies before starting his own dance company.
Hemsley Winfield choreographed and performed dances for plays in which he directed or acted prior to establishing his modern dance company. On October 24, 1927, he directed his first play, Congo, for the Sekondi Players. On April 9, 1928, he danced the lead role in Salome when his lead actress became ill. He choreographed and danced a cake walk in e. e. cummings’ play Him in April 1928. Winfield created dances for his mother’s plays Wade in de Water (1929) and De Promis’ Lan’ (1930), both of which were staged at Carnegie Hall.
On March 6, 1931, Winfield debuted his company, the Bronze Ballet Plastique, in Yonkers for the Colored Citizens Unemployment Relief Committee. He renamed the company the New Negro Art Theatre Dance Group on April 29. That performance was billed as America’s first Negro dance recital.
Winfield choreographed and danced in the Negro revue Fast and Furious in 1931. The following year, he and his dance company performed at New York City’s Roerich Hall, as well as at the Roxy Theater with the Hall Johnson Choir and the Roxyettes, the forerunners of the Rockettes, in a tribute to Abraham Lincoln. In 1932, he danced Gamobi as a prologue to the film Wonders of the Congo.
In December 1932, Winfield and his dancers performed two pieces at a benefit dance concert at the Mecca Temple Theater, now the New York City Center. At that concert, over 50 dance companies and individuals representing various dance styles performed. In addition, he was the first to choreograph dances to Duke Ellington’s jazz music.
During 1933, he performed and lectured, taught at his dance school, and played the Congo Witch Doctor in The Emperor Jones. Perhaps his greatest achievement was being the first African American to be cast in a major role by the Metropolitan Opera, and his dance company was the first black company to perform at the Met.
Hemsley Winfield died of pneumonia on January 15, 1934, in New York City, at the age of 26. He never married.