Dance icon, Carmen de Lavallade was born in New Orleans, and moved at an early age with her father and two sisters to Los Angeles, where she won a scholarship to study with the pioneering choreographer, Lester Horton. She soon took along high school class-mate, Alvin Ailey, for his first dance class. She came to New York with Horton's company, dancing the principal role in his production of Salome. As a result, she was offered several movie roles. She appeared in Lydia Bailey, and in Carmen Jones, choreographed by Herbert Ross. It was Ross who asked her to dance in the ground- breaking Broadway production of Truman Capote's House of Flowers, where she met her future husband, Geoffrey Holder.

Soon de Lavallade became a well-known dance presence in New York. She made her debut as a principal dancer at the Metropolitan Opera and went on to work with every prominent choreographer; from Agnes deMille to Glen Tetley, Joe Layton, and John Butler. Butler's A Portrait of Billie, set to four songs by Billie Holiday, became Carmen's signature piece. She also performed internationally, sharing a stage with Josephine Baker and touring the Far East with the de Lavallade-Ailey Dance Company.

She trained as an actress and joined the Yale Repertory Theater in the 1970's, and continues to act on stage and screen. She currently works with Debbie Allen on Soul Possessed, which she performed at the Kennedy Center. She formed her new company, Paradigm, with two other living legends, Gus Solomon's Jr. and Dudley Williams. She has just completed remounting John Butler's Carmina Burana, and restaged Joe Layton's Porgy and Bess, for the Ailey Company.

Source:
http://firstrunfeatures.com/newsletter/Publicity/carmenandgeoffrey.html