Kabby Mitchell III (1957 – 2017) was a dancer, teacher, and arts advocate. Mitchell grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and studied a wide variety of dance styles including ballet, his passion. In the late 1970s, fellow trailblazer Edna Daigre met Mitchell at a workshop in Oakland and invited him to Seattle. Mitchell joined PNB in 1979, just two years after Founding Artistic Directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell started with the company. Mitchell performed featured roles in many of Stowell’s first works for PNB. He danced at PNB from 1979 – 1984, rising to the rank of Soloist. Mitchell also performed with Dance Theatre of Harlem, Nederlands Dans Theater, Oakland Ballet, and Seattle Musical Theatre (formerly Civic Light Opera) during his career.
Mitchell was also a dedicated dance educator and mentor. In 1998, Mitchell received his MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa and later became a Professor of Performing Arts and African American Studies at Evergreen State College. Mitchell taught at many Seattle dance institutions, including PNB, Cornish College of the Arts, The University of Washington, Seattle Academy of Arts and Science, DASS Dance, Spectrum Dance Theatre, and Ewajo Dance Workshop. In the words of fellow Evergreen College faculty member Gilda Sheppard, “Kabby wasn’t [just] the first. No, no, no, no. Kabby kept that door open.”
An important part of Mitchell’s legacy of “keeping the door open” is T.U.P.A.C. (Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center), a dance school that provides high-quality dance education for the youth of Tacoma, particularly Black and BIPOC youth. Mitchell co-founded T.U.P.A.C. with Klair Ethridge. The school opened in July 2017, two months after Mitchell’s death. To date, T.U.P.A.C. continues to offer excellent dance training to diverse students and recently produced Hilltop Holiday, an original musical about the historically diverse Hilltop neighborhood.
Mitchell was also a prolific choreographer, creating work for Spectrum Dance Theater, The Group, Seattle Rep, ACT Contemporary Theater, Seattle Public Theater, and Seattle Musical Theatre. Notably, he choreographed Ballet Bellevue’s Nutcracker, Seattle Opera’s Porgy and Bess (last performed in 2011), and Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity (1998 – 2012). In 2016, Mitchell was named the Cultural Ambassador of Seattle in recognition of his impact on the arts community, including his work as an advocate on several panels for Seattle, King County, and Washington state art commissions. Upon Mitchell’s passing, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said, “Kabby brought life and love to everything he did; teaching young people to dance, being out and proud as a gay man, and being the first African-American dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet in the 1970s. Seattle’s arts community would not be where it is today without Kabby.”