Sylvester Campbell

was born Sylvester Briscoe in Oklahoma City in 1938 and raised in Washington D.C.  He first started tap-dancing and at 8 years old he appeared on TV. He took his first ballet lessons at the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet in Washington D.C. at age 10 and studied there for 7 years before receiving a scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York.

In 1956, he joined the New York Negro Ballet, where he performed at night while making his living as a secretary during the day. When the company went to perform in Europe he decided to stay and began studying at the schools of the Royal Ballet and Rambert Ballet in London, he also trained with Russian teachers in Paris.  In the United States at the time, few opportunities existed for a black dancer pursuing classical ballet.

"I stuck with it." Sylvester once told a reporter. "I always wanted to dance the classics, and I wouldn't take second choice." He performed on the BBC, with a touring English revue and with small ballet companies in Europe before joining the Dutch National Ballet, in which he danced from 1960 to 1970. In 1963 he was promoted to principal dancer and enjoyed a repertory that included lead roles in the classics and in ballets by Balanchine and Jack Carter. He encouraged Raven Wilkinson to join the Company. Raven said of him "I swear, he was better even than Nureyev. I used to think his joints were ball bearings."

In 1969, Mr. Campbell won awards in the International Ballet Competition at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre where he met choreographer Agnes de Mille who suggested he try the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of Canada. He joined as principal dancer and performed with them from 1972 and 1975.

In 1979, He began teaching at the Baltimore School for the Arts as head of the dance department until he retired from in 1993. Sylvester was only 59 when he passed due to respiratory problems in 1997.