The 5 Positions: The Ongoing Racism in Our Ballet Community

Abstract

My ballet experience took off at the young age of six years old. Walking tall and proud in my cream ballet flats, my rosy pink tights, slick back bun, and now retrospective obliviousness, I would never have expected to be writing this paper a decade later. It was not until multiple annual trips to my local Nutcracker production that it hit me. Everyone on this stage was white. But why would I even dare question this in my past? Every ballet teacher I had encountered, every dancer I had joined at the bare, every ballerina I had studied and admired, and even my own shoes were white. Getting my hands dirty in research and investigation proved to me it was not that other races did not want to be involved in the ballet community, but that they were not able to due to blatant racism. Let’s be real: dance had been unjustifiably reserved for one color. From the early 20th century to our modern society, Black ballerinas and dance practitioners have evidently experienced blatant and microaggressive discrimination from choreographers, casting directors, and critics through excluding bodies of color despite their level of talent and dedication, culturally appropriating and refusing to address so, microaggressive comments to Black dancers made, and refusing to teach other forms of dance that do not derive from a eurocentric background.