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There were all these beautiful black boys and girls engaged in African and Brazilian dance. There were live drummers,
But the glare was somehow easier to absorb because it was connected to ballet, my new love.
to master new steps, more often it’s as if they’re not even there. My visual memory, my physical intuition, takes over.
I just knew. It was my instinct, and the marvelous thing was that it was usually right. Not a performance?
The morning of the competition, I felt something I’d never experienced before a performance: nerves.
I learned you should always have a backup plan, so you can always deliver a performance that is sharp and refined. Even if your body fails, your performance never will.
But that day, at the Spotlight Awards, I learned to be prepared and focus on what’s important.
he said, hugging me tightly. “You have to come dance with me! You have to come to the Joffrey!” There were
ABT reigns supreme and is known as America’s National Company.
I received offers from all the ballet companies I auditioned for, except for one: the New York City Ballet. Every single company awarded me a scholarship.
They didn’t want me because I was black. That was the note she made me keep, and I dutifully tucked it in a photo album.
few weeks later, I was off to San Francisco.
He took a big risk in bringing a black girl into what could have potentially been a very racist environment. Today, I think the risk was well worth it.
She was part black and part Japanese, and she had grown up in Lakewood, Washington, a small town near Tacoma. I felt as if we had been placed together on purpose. How often do you find a black girl in ballet?
With my long, thin legs that sloped backward and my supersize feet, I had the ideal body for ballet. And my movement—fluid,
My reputation as a prodigy had preceded me. But despite my gifts, the reality was that there were huge holes in my knowledge of ballet.
Lola, trained in Zaragoza, Spain, would look like my neighbors back home: brown-skinned and raven-haired. But she didn’t look that way at all.
there were many steps I hadn’t learned and was now seeing for the first time.
Yet in class when we did petit allegro, I was just lost. Finally, I moved to the side and stood alone because I couldn’t keep up. For the first time, my abilities failed me.
In ballet, appearance is critical. That may seem superficial or frivolous, but in an art form that is visual, and so much about grace and suppleness, it definitely matters.
But on a stage, floating through the make-believe village in Giselle, or the provincial court of Raymonda, I was ideal.
“Why’d they ask her to stay?” she asked. “She doesn’t have enough training. Anyone could see that.”
And I knew even before it was officially offered that I wouldn’t be accepting a full-year scholarship from the school.
Jessica and I had decided we were both going to be in ABT’s summer intensive the following year. “See you there,” we both
And I’d grown so much as a dancer, with my training far surpassing what I’d received in San Pedro.
“you can’t take a break from ballet for a minute? That woman’s got you brainwashed.”
“Would you prefer caviar? Cindy’s got you living in a dream world.
“After all, with all that publicity you bring her dinky school, you’re probably paying for it.”
But it was becoming clear that there was a lot of talk about me behind my back that was happening during the week, while I stayed at Cindy’s.
I think that they were worried that I might be being used or exploited, and they were concerned what my living apart from them—with a woman they felt didn’t respect our
Of course I disagreed. I knew what the term brainwashed meant, and my life with Cindy and Patrick had been the furthest thing from it.
And as much as I loved my family, I hadn’t missed the chaos or the day-to-day uncertainty that we’d lived with.
she needed quiet and order for her artist
appreciated that the only thing I had to do was be a girl who loved to dance. But my brothers
the fact that I had been dancing only two years and was the best student at the San Pedro Dance Center was a testament to that school’s limitations.
It was later, when I became a member of the corps de ballet, that I truly got to know Twyla. With
But an injury can be as psychologically painful as it is physically painful. One day you’re on the stage and you’re the star.
Unable to find work in this country, she would move to Holland and dance with the Dutch National Ballet. Her story—all
couldn’t speak. I felt dismissed, and even more alone. Was she truly so clueless? If she, a friend, didn’t understand my struggles, who else would?
someone else had heard the bad note, the off key. We were the only ones who understood the weird moments that arose because we were African Americans in a lily-white world.
It’s like another dance to perform, making sure that the white people around us never feel guilty or uncomfortable. Surrounded by
That is something I will always remember: “Walk into a room, knowing you are somebody, somebody special. Don’t ever let them smash that or pull you down.”
It was in the fall of 2011, and I’d been a soloist for four years. With music composed by Igor Stravinsky, The Firebird is a work that melds the most virtuosic parts
But Prince Ivan is smitten with one of the dancing maidens. When Ivan clashes with the evil Kaschei, he waves the Firebird’s magical feather. She
Kevin told me himself that I’d be learning Firebird. It
than classical, and there was really no established vocabulary to describe them. The Firebird would
The first solo was extremely important because it would form the first impression of this mythical creature,
Alexei was able to demonstrate—an off-balance piqué, a jerky pirouette. My ability to immediately
With many classical ballets created centuries ago, you don’t really know what the creator intended. Instead, you’re trying to interpret an assumption. Not so with Alexei’s modern inventions.
The Firebird’s pas de deux, Prince Ivan is trying to capture the creature, and she is trying frantically, poignantly, to escape. It is a struggle, not a romantic embrace. Alexei’s choreography reflected that.
At the same time I was learning the part of the Firebird, I was participating in a choreographic workshop with Dance Theatre of Harlem.
