Inspiring more ‘dark stars of ballet’

Pink pointe shoes that do not match the tone of their skin and being shamed for their natural hair are only a couple of the struggles that Black ballet dancers must navigate every day.

Enter Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet (MoBBallet), an organization seeking to end racism in ballet companies and curriculums and celebrate the vast contributions made to the art form by Black and brown artists. Its 2022 MoBBallet Sym­posium M.I.A. (Motivation, Innovation, Activation) recently brought students and renowned Black dancers from around the globe to South Florida to create a safe space where they not only learned about dance and dance history – they learned about their own history.

Miami City Ballet (MCB), which did not actively participate in the August event, held fundraisers for MoBBallet this year and donated to the symposium. MCB has two male Afro- Brazilian dancers in its 52-member corps de ballet. None are African American.

The symposium was co-hosted by Mi­ami’s Armour Dance Theatre and Sanctu­ary of the Arts in Coral Gables and offered programs in four tracks: a dance educator course, ballet courses, a dance scholar forum and Pathways to Performance, a choreographer program. The event func­tioned as a weeklong dance intensive as well as a dance scholarship conference.

MoBBallet has partnered with many organizations, such as Knight Foundation, and with contributors such as Blendz, a company that manufactures ballet tights for darker skin tones.

The South Florida event was only MoB­Ballet’s second. Its first was in Philadel­phia in 2019, with a virtual symposium held in 2020 during the pandemic. The organization would like to make it an an­nual event.

AN INCLUSIVE HISTORY

When people think of Black ballet dancers – if they can think of any at all – they often recall Misty Copeland, who caught the eye of the media in 2015 when she was named a principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre. But Copeland was not the first groundbreaking Black dancer in ballet history – nor will she be the last.

“I am not trying to recreate anything,” said Theresa Ruth Howard, founder of MoBBallet. “I want to rearrange it.”

She says that Black figures in dance history must be brought forward, and that support for Black dancers isn’t there because it doesn’t exist – yet.

“We need to build it,” she said.

She’s proud of MoBBallet’s partnership and collaboration with Williams College, where students were assigned to research a Black dancer in history and contribute to her Constellation Project, a digital archive for the stories of the “Dark Stars of Ballet.”

One of these is Debra Austin, the first Black principal ballet dancer to be hired by an American dance company. Austin herself was a mentor and choreographer at the MoBBallet Symposium M.I.A. Stu­dents were able to engage with her and be inspired by her history and her work.

Austin directed and mentored 23-year-old Raquel Smith, a promising ballet dancer who was awarded a scholarship to fly in from Nashville, Tenn., for the symposium. She received a scholarship for the San Francisco Ballet School and is currently an apprentice for Nashville Ballet. Smith met Howard at the Inter­national Association of Blacks in Dance conference in 2016, where they held the first audition for women of color. Howard pulled her aside after the audition and has been her mentor ever since.

“This event really feels like a commu­nity, like a family,” said Smith about the symposium. “It feels like a space of heal­ing. Just being in a space full of beautiful Black dancers, it’s just incredible and life-changing.”

What Smith appreciates most about MoBBallet is its mentorship program, which is unlike any other because it pairs individual students with profes­sional Black dancers.

“In predominantly white spaces, oftentimes I’m the only dancer of color in the room,” said Smith. “As a dancer of color, there is not always someone who understands what you’re experiencing, so having this space and shared experience with other dancers of color and mentors of colors who have also lived through similar experiences is really incredible.”

Smith says she hasn’t experienced ostracization for her body type in any studio that she has been with; she feels that’s because times are already chang­ing so much. But her reality does not reflect that of many other dancers of color, and that’s what drove Howard to found MoBBallet.

MOBBALLET’S DRIVING FORCE

A professional dancer, curator, writer, and diversity strategist and consultant, How­ard experienced what she called “terror­ism” from some of the leaders and faculty of many dance organizations, despite her illustrious career.

“They can make the space unsafe with their language, behavior – if we are going to reform this cultu

re and bring Black and brown bodies into these historically white spaces, they need to be safe,” she said.

Howard added that such behavior makes spaces unsafe for even white bodies.

She was inspired to create the “My Body My Image” blog when she taught a success­ful workshop on body image at The Ailey School in New York. She explained that students were struggling with body image and eating disorders, and she taught the workshop “to try to solve the problem.”

“The first step,” Howard said, “is ac­ceptance, appreciation and respect, and to create a standard of beauty that includes yourself.”

REFRAMING THE NARRATIVE

World-famous choreographer and social justice worker Donald Byrd works with Howard on changing the derogatory way the Black body is perceived in ballet.

“I don’t think you can fight it,” he said. But “you can neutralize it by acknowledging that it’s there and calling out when it’s there, and then creating an environment where it is not acceptable.”

Byrd worked for the Kennedy Center as part of “Reframing the Narrative,” a remarkable three-week residency that centered around Black dancers who work in predominantly white companies.

One of the young dancers at “Re­framing the Narrative” was Portia Soleil Adams, a 24-year-old rising star who received a scholarship to attend MoBBallet Symposium M.I.A. Adams – a professional dancer – was flown in from Monaco, where she has been training for the past seven years with Les Ballets De Monte Carlo.

Raised and trained in a predomi­nantly white space, Adams says she hasn’t faced ostracization for her color in the U.S. However, she has ex­perienced biases about body image in European spaces, where she believes things have not changed at all.

“I would say America is where they are more focused on what you can do,” she said. “But in Europe, they focus on the aesthetic.”

And the preferred aesthetic in Europe appears to be white and wispily thin.

FROM DANCE TO TOWN HALL

On the last day of the symposium, the dancers performed an informal show that Howard calls “a sharing.” Students of various levels showcased the sequences or choreographies they worked on that week.

Three choreography students directed other students in excerpts of their works-in-progress. One of these was by Adams, who is choreograph­ing a solo to a rendition of Al Jarreau’s “Take Five.”

At this showing, Austin made an inspiring appearance and announced the performance of her mentee, Smith, who learned a rigorous excerpt from “Giselle.”

The event was sewn with laughter and tears as the performance became a town hall meeting where the public could ask questions or share a testimony. Many parents expressed how significant it was for them to see their children granted opportunities that were never an option for them.

Howard’s advice to up-and-coming Black dancers?

“Know how to use your voice and when to use your voice,” she said. “And look for the evidence that this form is yours.”

For more information about MoBBallet and the Constellation Project, visit MoBBallet.org.