Michaela DePrince, taken in New York this summer, just before leaving for Amsterdam (© Jade Young)
Michaela DePrince (© Jade Young)
Sergio A. Mims writes:
I
thought you might be interested in this article and interview with this
young upcoming ballet dancer with the Dutch National Ballet Michaela DePrince
Sergio
By Marina Harss on October 5, 2013
Resolute Princess: Michaela DePrince
At only eighteen, the dancer Michaela DePrince has already lived
several lives. As a small child, practically a toddler, in Sierra Leone,
she lost her parents. Her father was killed by rebel fighters in the
civil war that ravaged the country from 1991-2002 (aided and abetted by
Charles Taylor, the leader of Liberia). Her mother died soon after.
After a year in an orphanage—during which time she witnessed the
gruesome killing of her teacher, again by rebel forces—she was adopted
by a New Jersey couple, Elaine and Charles DePrince, along with her best
friend, Mia. (Her parents, Elaine and Charles DePrince, lost three sons
to HIV, with which they had been infected by tainted blood transfusions
in the eighties. Elaine DePrince has written about the horror of this
experience in her book Cry Bloody Murder).
One of the few bright spots in her life at the orphanage was coming
across a photo of a ballerina in a glossy magazine. She kept it as a
kind of talisman. Perhaps because of that, not long after moving to the
United States with her new family—she has ten brothers and sisters, most
of them adopted—she asked for ballet lessons.
Soon, her parents enrolled her at The Rock School in Philadelphia, a
rigorous pre-professional program, which eventually led to her
participation in the Youth America Grand Prix competition in 2010, for
which she received a scholarship to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
School in New York. (She was one of the featured dancers in the
wonderful documentary First Position.) I remember her performance at YAGP that year. Athletic and strong, she practically leapt off the stage.
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