Karel Shook played a key role as teacher and mentor to African American dance artists in New York in the 1950s. In addition to cofounding Dance Theatre of Harlem with Arthur Mitchell in 1969 he also was a ballet master choreographer and author. Born in 1920, Mr. Shook was a native of Renton Washington. Encouraged to study ballet at age 13, he was a protégé of Nellie Cornish and received a scholarship to the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle. While his performance career was brief, he appeared on Broadway and danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and New York City Ballet. Mr. Shook’s brief performance career led to teaching and choreographing mainly in Europe but also in New York. In the early 50s he opened Studio Arts one of the few dance studios in the city where African Americans could study ballet. Among his students were Carmen de Lavallade, Pearl Primus, Geoffrey Holder, Louis Johnson, Alvin Ailey, and Arthur Mitchell who first came to him at age 17. Mr. Shook left New York in 1959 to become the ballet master of the Dutch National Ballet where he was when his former student Arthur Mitchell asked him to return to New York to help create the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Mr. Shook was an advocate of the universality of classical ballet. His book Elements of Classical Ballet explores the development of classical ballet in such countries across the globe as China Turkey Iran Japan Cuba and Mexico. In 1980 he was awarded the United States Presidential Award for “Excellence and Dedication in Education.”