January 16 - Happy Birthday, Debbie Allen

Posted on January 16, 2021

Key points

Actor. Dancer. Choreographer. Dance academy founder, and dance teacher. Former member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Director. Producer. Writer. Singer/songwriter.

Debbie Allen achieved a whole lot – and won many awards – even though she faced racial discrimination. She was denied admittance by several dance academies and university programs and was told that her body wasn’t “right” for ballet dance.

At one point, Allen decided to concentrate on academics, and she ended up earning a B.A. from Howard University in classical Greek literature as well as speech and theater. But luckily for the rest of us, she persisted with her love of dance!

There are too many highlights of Allen’s career to list them all, but I will mention a few:

Debbie Allen was an actor and choreographer in the 1980 movie Fame and the 1980s TV show based on the movie. I include this because she won a lot of awards during that show AND because I really enjoyed this musical-drama series about a performance arts high school.

Allen taught choreography to singer/dancer Paula Abdul.

Allen not only encourages young dancers on TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance, where she served as a judge, but she also in her Los Angeles-based dance academy, where she teaches and mentors young dancers.

I had no idea Allen directed so many TV and film projects! She has been the director on hundreds of episodes of dozens of shows!

Allen’s mom Vivian Allen was a Pulitzer-prize nominee artist and poet; her sister Phylicia Rashad is a prize-winning actor most famous for her role as Clair Huxtable; her husband is former NBA All-Star and Championship basketball player Norm Nixon. Lots of talent everywhere in that family!