Marion D. Cuyjet Pioneering African American Dance Teacher,
Leader In Philadelphia Black Cultural Life

Mrs. Cuyjet's most famous pupil was Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Jamison began training in ballet at the age of 6 with "Miss Marion," as everyone called Mrs. Cuyjet (pronounced soo-zhay).

In addition to teaching classical ballet and other dance techniques, Mrs. Cuyjet taught her students that "dancers were not hybrid creatures dropped down from the clouds with no relation to Earth," as Jamison noted in her autobiography, "Dancing Spirit."

Mrs. Cuyjet also provided subliminal lessons in determination and race relations. "She looked Caucasian and rented studio space that landlords would not rent to a person they thought was black," Jamison wrote. "She broke the color barrier and was constantly evicted once black children were discovered on the premises; she had to move her school seven times."

Born in Cheswold, Del., Mrs. Cuyjet studied ballet in Philadelphia with Essie Marie Dorsey, herself a student of Michel Fokine and Mikhail Mordkin, and opened the Judimar School in 1948. Mrs. Cuyjet created dances for public events in the city, and in the late 1950s was the principal choreographer for the annual Christmas Cotillion sponsored by Heritage House, a leading African American cultural organization in Philadelphia.

From 1958 into the 1970s, Mrs. Cuyjet was on the dance faculty at Maryland State College (now the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore) and also taught at Delaware State College in Dover, and Cheney State University in Cheney, Pa. She closed her studio in 1971 and trained as a movement therapist, working at the Philadelphia State Hospital for 11 years.