Arthur Mitchell, who paved the way for other minority dancers by becoming one of the first black dancers to join a major ballet company and who helped start the acclaimed Dance Theatre of Harlem, has died. He was 84.

His death was announced on Twitter by the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Mitchell, who described himself as the Jackie Robinson of the ballet world, was hired by choreographer George Balanchine in 1955 to perform with the New York City Ballet and won over audiences and critics with his technical brilliance and charisma. Still, in an era when segregation was just beginning to crumble, his ascent to the upper echelon of dance met with many obstacles, from instructors who encouraged him to abandon ballet and take up other dance genres to shocked theatergoers who wrote letters expressing outrage about Mitchell being paired onstage with a white woman.

Balanchine refused to let the objections stifle Mitchell's talent and created numerous leading roles for him, including the principal male part in the 1957 classic "Agon" and the character of Puck in 1962's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." When television programs invited the New York City Ballet to perform but requested that Mitchell sit out, Balanchine rebuffed them, saying the troupe would dance with Mitchell or not at all.

After nearly 15 years with Balanchine's company, Mitchell struck out on his own and in 1969 co-founded an all-black dance school that eventually grew to include an all-black professional company. He said the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a year earlier filled him with a sense of urgency to start the school.

"When Dance Theatre of Harlem started, there was still a fallacy that black people could not do classical ballet," Mitchell told the Toronto Star in 1995. "People said to me, 'Arthur, you're the exception.' 'No,' I said, 'I had the opportunity.' "

Mitchell's company has become one of the most sought-after dance ensembles in the world, performing everything from classical ballet to contemporary and jazz-inflected works.

Former Washington Post dance critic Alan Kriegsman once wrote, "Mr. Mitchell not only launched and empowered the careers of many excellent dancers but also changed forever the image of the African American dance professional."

A host of financial problems in the 1990s and 2000s threatened the survival of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Mitchell stepped down as the institution's director in 2009, its 40th anniversary season, and announced that one of his former prima ballerinas, Virginia Johnson, would replace him.

At the 1993 ceremony in which Mitchell received the Kennedy Center Honors, Johnson said, "We'd all been turned down, told that there was no place for us. He gave us our dream, a chance to be measured by our movement and grace, and not by the color of our skin."

Arthur Adams Mitchell Jr., whose father was a janitor, was born in New York on March 27, 1934. He was the oldest of five siblings and ran a paper route as a young boy to help his family make ends meet.

Mitchell first showed interest in the arts when he was 10 years old and became a member of the Police Athletic League glee club. A few years later, a school guidance counselor saw Mitchell do the jitterbug and encouraged him to apply to New York's prestigious High School of Performing Arts. Upon his graduation in 1952, Mitchell attended the School of American Ballet, the conservatory run by Balanchine that served as the training ground for his company, the New York City Ballet.

Mitchell made his debut with the New York City Ballet in 1955 in "Western Symphony" and two years later was cast as the lead male dancer in "Agon."

In the late 1960s, Mitchell's career began to shift gears. He left the New York City Ballet in 1968, worked to establish a dance troupe in Spoleto, Italy, and set up a national ballet company in Brazil. However, as he headed from his New York home to the airport for one of many trips to Brazil, disturbing news came over the radio: King had been shot and killed.

Mitchell has said that he thought to himself: "I could wait for others to change things for black Americans. Here I am running around the world doing all these things — why not do them at home? I believe in helping people the best way you can; my way is through art."

He began teaching dance in a garage in Harlem. Initially, to appeal a broad swath of kids, Mitchell kept the dress code lax — no tights required — and set steps to drum beats instead of classical music. Within months, he had around 400 students and had moved the class to a church basement.

Mitchell and dance school co-founder Karel Shook, an internationally renowned ballet master who had been Mitchell's mentor, expanded the fledging operation to include a professional company, which Mitchell hoped would give his students something to aspire to. Shook died in 1985.

From the start, Dance Theatre of Harlem was a success. Today, Dance Theatre of Harlem remains a predominantly black company but has expanded to include people of other backgrounds. Some of its best-known works include "A Streetcar Named Desire," adapted from the Tennessee Williams play, and 1984's "Creole Giselle," which brushed the cobwebs off the old ballet standard "Giselle" and reset it in 19th-century Louisiana.

Editor's note: The Dance Theatre of Harlem will perform Sept. 29 at Connecticut College in New London.