The Beginning of American Ballet

Ballet was created during the Italian Renaissance, and it was popularized and refined in France during King Louis XIV’s reign. Where exactly ballet originated is unknown, but many places fell in love with the storytelling style that didn’t originally require any equipment other than the dancer and their body. When ballet came to America it was placed in a very racially discriminative society. After the Civil War, the thing that kept colored people from the arts grew away from merely their skin color, and towards their class/social standing. Ballet was originally seen as a sport for the rich and therefore the white. However, there were a few colored dancers who braved the pioneering path to help create American Ballet what it is today. While there were many hardships (e.g. being forced to paint their faces white to blend in with the other white dancers on stage), the colored dancers defied laws and occasionally risked their lives to make the style more unique and ever-changing (Ogden).

An Ongoing Fight

For most of its history, ballet has been a very racially divided art form; or put more simply, ballet has a very white background. This has been slightly changed in recent years by the emergence of Misty Copeland, who became the ABT’s first African-American principal dancer in 2015. However, Copeland is only one example of defying ballet’s racially difficult background. There are many difficulties that go along with making ballet more racially inclusive that include social difficulties outside of dance. Due to not being traditionally represented in ballet, many young dancers of color are discouraged from the professional path because they feel that because they are not represented, therefore it’s not possible. Many studios are trying to become more racially inclusive and encouraging in hopes of stopping that thought process in young dancers. Hopefully that will become apparent in upcoming years and the races and backgrounds of studio principals will be far more diverse (Ogden).

Screenshot of NYCB Diversity statement

Click the link if you want to read the entire thing:

NYC Ballet on Diversity

Click the next link if you want to read what SAB says about diversity:

SAB on Diversity

Misty Copeland as the Sugar Plum Fairy

ABT directors and staff on Project Plie

More Inclusive FUture

American Ballet Theatre (ABT) has hopes of introducing more dancers like Misty Copeland into their cast with intentions of making the stage more diverse. Copeland is a good example of excelling despite being in the minority, which is something that she’s proven by dancing some of the most prestigious roles such as the Sugar Plum Fairy in “The Nutcracker.” The ABT is now trying to use Copeland as the face of their new project: Project Plie. Project Plie is a program that is supposed to help make dance training more accessible for people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and levels. ABT has also been working towards offering more scholarship opportunities, which would also cover the costs of shoes and transportation. ABT has also been working towards placing its program with smaller - regional - companies so teens aren’t discouraged form the preprofessional/professional track due to finance issues. The ABT hopes that all of these changes will help their stage see diversity in upcoming years (Catton).

Progress in Pointe Shoes

Due to a lack of diversity in ballet, colored dancers have been forced to work with pink pointe shoes for as many years as they’ve been dancing. Pointe shoes originated in 19th century France (about the same place as ballet) and became the classic ballet pink due to the fact that all of the ballerinas were similar light shades. Pointe shoes are supposed to seem like they are a part of your foot so when the only ballerinas were white, pointe shoes being pink/light skin tones wasn’t an issue. When colored dancers started to share the stage they were forced to appear white. Eventually they could appear as their normal skin color from the waist up, but wore ballet tights, meaning pink pointe shoes still wasn’t an issue. However, as ballet becomes more modern, companies and choreographers have said goodbye to the tights completly. Since tights went away, colored ballet dancers have been forced to paint over their shoes using makeup - an issue common enough it’s earned its own term: pancaking. When social media heard about it, pancaking became a big enough deal that pointe shoe companies started making pointe shoes in darker skin tones (Marsan).

Different colors of pointe shoes and "pancaking" pointe shoes

Page updated

Report abuse