, in 1955 De Lavallade became a member of the
Lester Horton Dance Theater in 1949 where she danced as a lead dancer until her departure for New York City with
Alvin Ailey in 1954. Like all of Horton's students, she studied other art forms, including painting, acting, music, set design and costuming, as well as ballet and other forms of modern and ethnic dance. She studied dancing with ballerina
Carmelita Maracci and acting with
Stella Adler. In 1954, de Lavallade made her Broadway debut partnered with Alvin Ailey in
Truman Capote's musical
House of Flowers (starring
Pearl Bailey). In 1955, de Lavallade married dancer/actor
Geoffrey Holder, whom she had met while working on
House of Flowers. It was with Holder that de Lavallade choreographed her signature solo dance, to
Come Sunday, a black
spiritual sung by
Odetta Gordon. The following year, de Lavallade danced as the
prima ballerina in
Samson and Delilah, and
Aida at the
Metropolitan Opera. She made her television debut in John Butler's ballet
Flight, and in 1957 she appeared in the television production of
Duke Ellington's A Drum Is a Woman. She appeared in several
off-Broadway productions, including
Othello and
Death of a Salesman. De Lavallade was a principal guest performer with the
Alvin Ailey Dance Company on the company's tour of Asia and in some countries the company was billed as de Lavallade-Ailey American Dance Company. Her other notable performances included dancing with
Donald McKayle and appearing in
Agnes de Mille's
American Ballet Theatre productions of
The Four Marys and
The Frail Quarry in 1965. At the insistence of friend John Butler, she began teaching at the
Yale School of Drama as a choreographer and performer-in-residence in 1970. She staged musicals, plays, and operas, and eventually became a professor and member of the
Yale Repertory Theater. Students at the Yale School of Drama during this time included
Meryl Streep,
Sigourney Weaver,
Joe Grifasi,
Christopher Durang, and
Wendy Wasserstein. Between 1990 and 1993, de Lavallade returned to the Metropolitan Opera as choreographer for
Porgy and Bess and
Die Meistersinger. In 1996, de Lavallade,
Gus Solomons Jr., and
Dudley Williams started the dance collective PARADIGM, a dance company for mature dancers over the age of 50. whose goal was to "promote and celebrate the talents of mature artists on stage". PARADIGM toured and commissioned new dances by a variety of choreographers. In 2010, she appeared in a one-night-only concert semi-staged reading of
Evening Primrose by
Stephen Sondheim. In 2014, de Lavallade premiered her solo show
As I Remember It. The work was a meditation on her history in dance through performance, film, and storytelling. ==Personal life and death==