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Credit Jesse Dittmar for The New York Times
Credit Jesse Dittmar for The New York Times
On
the stages of American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet black,
Asian, Latino and multiracial dancers are beginning to change the face
of ballet where it matters most: Lincoln Center, home base to both
companies.
Finally a major New York ballet company has a black swan.
Misty Copeland’s promotion to principal dancer at American Ballet
Theater this summer put ballet back on popular culture’s map and ushered
in a conversation about diversity in ballet. So what now? Classical
ballet is still overwhelmingly white, but over the past few years
diversity has finally become a priority.
More
than equality is at stake when Ms. Copeland — the first
African-American principal female dancer in the company’s 75-year
history — dances. When a company is diverse, the audience becomes more
diverse, too, and for those faced with aging, dwindling audiences, that
is priceless. Money is another incentive to change: The Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
have financed recent diversity initiatives.
The
two major New York companies have realized that change starts with the
schools. If it takes 10 years to make a dancer — and you can’t waste a
minute — diversifying ballet must begin with children. Both Ballet
Theater’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and the School of American
Ballet, the training ground for City Ballet, have initiated programs to
spot and recruit young minority dancers.
It’s
still early days, but minority enrollment has increased at both
schools. Growth at the School of American Ballet expanded substantially
in 2011 with its “Beauty of Ballet” program at Queens Theater and
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College.
That
seemingly small step led to an increased turnout for the school’s free
community auditions, which has dramatically shifted the minority
presence in the children division. “It’s gone Technicolor fast,” said
Silas Farley, a 21-year-old member of City Ballet whose mother is black
and father is white. (He refers to himself as “a cultural gumbo.”)
Peter
Martins, the ballet master in chief of City Ballet as well as the
artistic director and chairman of faculty at the School of American
Ballet, says that substantial change may take time, but it will happen.
“We are not a white company,” he said. “We don’t seek to be a black
company. We don’t seek to be half and half. I just want to be American.
While
it’s still too soon to tell if the children discovered through recent
community auditions will make it into City Ballet, since 2008-9, the
school has graduated 36 minority dancers who have gone on to join
professional companies. Eleven of those joined City Ballet. India Bradley,
a 17-year-old advanced student at the school said her ambition —
obsession really — is to become one of them. “More than anything in
life,” she said. “I have actual dreams.”
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