Beholding Geoffrey Holder’s Wiz: Dance, Beauty, and Spectacle in the Holder-de Lavallade Papers

Emily Hawk is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Dickinson College. Her research examines Black modern dance as a form of intellectual and political life in the twentieth century United States. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. History at Columbia University and previously served as postdoctoral research associate in African American Studies at Princeton University. She is a 2025-26 recipient of the Pellom McDaniels Fellowship.

In June 2025, I was honored to travel to the Stuart A. Rose Library as the recipient of the Pellom McDaniels Fellowship for research in African American culture. During my visit, I worked with the Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade Papers, a monumental archive of the married couple acquired by the Rose Library in 2018 under McDaniels’s tenure as curator. While both Holder and de Lavallade had prolific careers spanning dance, theatre, film, opera, and visual arts, I was particularly interested in examining materials related to Holder’s role as director and costume designer for the original Broadway production of The Wiz (1974), the groundbreaking Black retelling of The Wizard of Oz (1900) that received seven Tony awards in 1975 and kicked off a boom in Black storytelling on the “Great White Way.”

This research will form a new chapter for my book manuscript in progress, Embodying the Movement: Black Modern Dance and Community Engagement in New York City and Beyond. The book will explore how African American dancemakers of this period—including Holder as well as figures like Alvin Ailey, Eleo Pomare, Carole Johnson, and Rod Rodgers—built public platforms to democratize modern dance and reshape debates on race, citizenship, and belonging in American life. By intentionally taking their art to new spaces, contexts, and audiences, these dancemakers elevated the beauty and strength of the Black dancing body and argued for the universal resonance of African American stories within the American cultural canon.

The Wiz marks an important chapter in this history because its success linked many Black professional dancers to lucrative work in commercial dance, both in the Broadway industry and on television and film. Further, the show appealed to a multiracial, multigenerational audience of theatergoers with a story that centered Black joy, excellence, and belonging, deliberately contrasting racist depictions of African Americans as lazy, angry, poor, or suffering in contemporary media. During my week at the Rose Library, I reviewed Holder’s annotated scripts, costume designs, production files, and correspondence related to The Wiz, as well as the Rose Library’s incredible collection of audiovisual materials from the original and touring productions. After examining these materials, it is clear that The Wiz was successful because of Holder’s directorial vision and, in particular, because he placed beautiful visual storytelling—enacted by the literal bodies of the Black dancers in his cast—at the center of his design.

Holder joined the production late in the creative process, replacing previous director Gilbert Moses in November 1974, just weeks before the scheduled opening on Broadway. In a letter dated November 13, 1974, Wiz book writer William F. “Bill” Brown celebrated Holder’s arrival on the team, writing that “I felt more positive after talking to you for a couple of hours last night than I’ve felt for a long time. I feel there is the beginning of a direction now; a focus; a plan.”^[1] Although noting that, “we haven’t got all that time left to experiment,” Brown remained optimistic that Holder would streamline the show’s many scene changes, clarify the actors’ line deliveries, and give The Wiz a unifying vision.

Holder’s directorial decisions were guided by his desire to generate beauty onstage. As he would later state following a performance of The Wiz on tour in Philadelphia, “I love beautiful things, I love beautiful people, and I love beautiful thoughts. Our lives are so hard, I like to do anything to make people happier, to turn them on…when you come to the theater, I want to give you everything I have.”^[2] And although Holder was not officially tasked with creating choreography for The Wiz (George Faison, founder of the George Faison Universal Dance Experience, had already joined the production as choreographer), his choices were profoundly informed by his experience with dance and his innate choreographic eye.

In particular, embodied spectacle was central to Holder’s reimagining of scene changes throughout the production. In a script dated October 1973, iconic scenes of Oz—the tornado, the yellow brick road, the poppy field—were rendered with conventional theatrical sets. For example, the early script describes how the tornado would appear on a scrim: “illuminated with a front-screen projection…the funnel leaves the horizon and moves, snake-like toward us, as the music becomes more intense.”^[3] However, in the final version of the script, dated January 1975 and developed under Holder’s direction, the tornado is now represented by an ensemble of dancers “symbolizing the storm itself, sweeping up Dorothy and the porch in their path.”^[4] A soloist portraying the “eye of the tornado” is trailed by a 100-yard black silk, designed by Holder himself to billow across the stage and intensify the sweeping qualities of her choreographed movements.^[5] Similar changes were made to the yellow brick road and poppy field, each of which were originally projected on the scrim and ultimately embodied by choreographed dance ensembles. In each case, Holder used his dual role as director and costume designer to make scene changes more dynamic, spectacular, and memorable for audience members. Also in each case, beautiful, virtuosic, Black dancers were key to making the scene successful.

The original production of The Wiz ran on Broadway from 1975 to 1979, followed by several national tours and a Broadway revival (also directed by Geoffrey Holder) in 1984. My experience at the Stuart Rose Library only deepened my belief that dance was a fundamental—and vastly underappreciated—element of the show’s immense success. On the eve of the American bicentennial, during a period of significant political and cultural upheaval in the United States, Holder used dance and embodied spectacle in The Wiz to elevate the fundamental beauty, dignity, and universality of Black art within America’s cultural heritage. He often referred to the show as an “American fairy tale,” one that could reach people of all races, ethnicities, and generations: because “it’s about home. And America is our home.”^[6] Now on the eve of the 2026 semiquincentennial, a revival production of The Wiz is currently on a national tour.^[7] Although the show’s script has been overhauled, the centrality of dance remains with choreography by Jaquel Knight bringing the tornado, yellow brick road, and Emerald City to life. Inspired by Geoffrey Holder’s example five decades ago, The Wiz continues to teach us important lessons about identity, culture, and belonging in American life.

[1] William F. Brown to Geoffrey Holder (13 November 1974). Box 56, Folder 21, Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[2] The Wiz, Boston, Massachusetts; and “The Wiz compilation,” circa 1975-1984, ark:/25593/vqvrx. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

[3] “Wiz” script, second draft (October 1973). Box 56, Folder 25, Holder and de Lavallade papers.

[4] “The Wiz” final draft (January 1975). Box 56, Folder 18, Holder and de Lavallade papers.

[5] Trevor Gairy, “Geoffrey Holder: What More Can He Do?” in Everybody’s magazine 1, no. 3 (June 1977). Box 184, Folder 2, Holder and de Lavallade papers.

[6] Geoffrey Holder interview at the Forrest Theater, Philadelphia. “The Wiz compilation,” circa 1975-1984, ark:/25593/vqvrx. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

[7] See https://wizmusical.com/tour-dates/ for performance dates through Spring 2026.