Equity Honors Mercedes Ellington with Robeson Award
24th November 2007
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ... |
||||
|
||||
Dancer, director and choreographer Mercedes Ellington received Actors' Equity's 2007 Paul Robeson Award for her commitment to workers and human rights.
Julia Breanetta Simpson, co-chair of Equity’s Eastern Region Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, says:
Mercedes Ellington personifies each of the precepts on which the Paul Robeson Award is based: concern for and service to fellow humans, respect for the dignity of the individual, freedom of expression, universal brotherhood and the artist’s responsibility to the profession and to the greater society.
Ellington has been involved in more than 10 Broadway shows and has formed her own tap dance company. She was the only woman of color to become a June Taylor Dancer on the Jackie Gleason Show, which ran on national TV from 1952 to 1970.