An Evening with Virginia Johnson and Akua Dixon

Join us for food, drinks, live music, an auction, and an informal conversation with the former Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem and founding DTH member, Virginia Johnson, and National Endowment for the Arts multi-laureate composer-cellist Akua Dixon. Ty Jones, Artistic Director of Classical Theatre of Harlem, will join as guest moderator. Akua Dixon will also perform along with members of The Harlem Chamber Players.

(Last year our fundraiser was sold out, so we are moving to the larger space and hope to accommodate everyone.)

We hope you will attend our Spring Fundraiser and support our spring appeals campaign to enable us to continue bringing accessible live music to the Harlem community.

Hope to see you there! Dress is business casual.

FEATURING
Virginia Johnson, guest of honor, former Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem
Akua Dixon, guest of honor, Composer-Cellist
Ty Jones, guest moderator, Artistic Director of Classical Theatre of Harlem
Claire Chan, violin
Ashley Horne, violin
William Frampton, viola
Wayne Smith, cello
Anthony Morris, double bass

RSVP no later than May 7th.

ACCESSIBILITY
Ramp access is available at The Africa Center’s main entrance at 1280 Fifth Avenue. The Center’s auditorium, atrium, and restroom facilities are wheelchair accessible.

ABOUT VIRGINIA JOHNSON
A founding member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Virginia Johnson was one of its principal ballerinas over a career that spanned nearly 30 years. After retiring in 1997, Ms. Johnson went on to found Pointe Magazine and was editor-in chief for 10 years. A native of Washington, D.C., Ms. Johnson began her training with Therrell Smith. She studied with Mary Day at the Washington School of Ballet and graduated from the Academy of the Washington School of Ballet. She went on to be a University Scholar in the School of the Arts at New York University before joining Dance Theatre of Harlem. Virginia Johnson is universally recognized as one of the great ballerinas of her generation and is perhaps best known for her performances in the ballets Giselle, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fall River Legend. She has received such honors as a Young Achiever Award from the National Council of Women, Outstanding Young Woman of America Award, the Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award, the Washington Performing Arts Society’s 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award.

ABOUT AKUA DIXON
Akua Dixon has been at the forefront of improvising string players since 1973. She is the first cellist to win the Downbeat Critics Poll and in 2025 was named recipient of the Jazz Legacy Award from the Jazz Foundation of America and the Mellon Foundation. Cellist-Composer-Conductor Akua Dixon has been touring the world with her original music and jazz arrangements for string quartet. A native New Yorker, Akua has won two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, for composition (1979) and performance (1981). She is the 1998 recipient of the African American Classical Music Award given by Spelman College. Her jazz release, Akua’s Dance, was voted one of the top 25 albums of 2018 and received a four-star review in DownBeat. Akua is the first cellist to win the DownBeat Critics Poll, putting the cello on the jazz map!

Akua is the creator of Quartette Indigo, “jazz’s leading string quartet.” They’ve recorded with Woody Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie. A versatile composer, her string arrangements and quartet can be heard on the Grammy award-winning CD, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and the Grammy-nominated CD, A Rose Is Still A Rose by Aretha Franklin. Akua notated and conducted the ballet Riverside by Judith Jamison, with music by Kimati Dinizulu for Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theatre at City Center (1995).

She has performed with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Hale Smith, Max Roach, Betty Carter, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Akua has performed at The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, the Blue Note, Dizzy’s Coca-Cola and at major concert halls, jazz festivals and clubs throughout the US, Europe, Spain, Scandinavia, Greece, Russia and the Caribbean. Akua has lectured and given educational concerts and workshops for Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Akua was the Assistant Principal Cellist in the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Orchestras. She was founding cellist in the Uptown String Quartet and Max Roach Double Quartet. She was a member of the Apollo Theatre Orchestra and worked on Broadway as solo cellist, on stage, for Doonesbury and in orchestra pits for Dreamgirls, Black Broadway, Barnum and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

She is a graduate of New York City’s prestigious High School of Performing Arts.

Top row: Ty Jones, Claire Chan, and Ashley Horne. Bottom row: Wayne Smith, William Frampton, and Anthony Morris.