Johaar Mosaval

Johaar Mosaval (born 8 January 1928) is a retired South African ballet dancer who rose to prominence as a principal dancer with England's Royal Ballet. He was among the first "persons of color" to perform major roles with an internationally known ballet company during the 1960s.

Johaar Mosaval was born in District Six of Cape Town, a lively community made up of former slaves, artisans, merchants, and other immigrants as well as many Cape Malays, descendants of Malay people brought to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company during its administration of the Cape Colony. In the twentieth century, Cape Malays were classified as "Coloured" by the South African government. Like many Cape Malay residents, Mosaval's large family was Muslim, which set them apart from the mainstream population of white Christians and Jews as well as, of course, the black communities of Bantu peoples. When Johaar was a youth, he was noticed by Dulcie Howes, the doyenne of South African theatrical dance, while he was performing gymnastics. She invited him to attend her ballet school at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Despite the disapproval of his Muslim parents and the white ("European") community, Mosaval accepted her invitation and began his dance training at the UCT Ballet School in 1947. He later explained, "It was the height of apartheid and there was no scope for me. She broke the race barrier by taking me to ballet classes. . . . I had to stand at the back of the class. The white boys in the class would give me sideways glances if I happened to grand jeté myself to the front." In the classes of Jasmine Honoré, Mosaval advanced quickly, as his strong, flexible physique and iron determination to succeed reinforced his natural facility for classical ballet technique.

South Africa's laws of apartheid ("apartness") prevented Mosaval from pursuing a dance career in his home country, but in 1950 he was noticed by visiting ballet celebrities Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, who arranged for him to receive a scholarship to attend the Sadler's Wells Ballet School in London. His training there led to his joining the corps of the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet in 1951.

In 1956, Mosaval was promoted to soloist in the company, which was soon renamed the Royal Ballet. He became a principal dancer in 1960 and a senior principal in 1965. Mosaval toured extensively with the Royal Ballet, dancing in continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, the Far East, Canada, and the United States as partner to such famous ballerinas as Margot Fonteyn, Svetlana Beriosova, Lynn Seymour, Merle Park, and Nadia Nerina, a fellow South African, in ballets choreographed by Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Ninette de Valois, and two South Africans, David Poole and John Cranko.

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