NYC Ballet milestone
Charlotte Nebres becomes first black Marie, the heroine of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” at New York City Ballet./
She may not remember it, but during the first summer of her life Charlotte Nebres canvassed for Barack Obama with her mother, Danielle, who carried her in a sling. She attended political rallies. And on a frigid day in January 2009, she accompanied her parents and older sister to his inauguration.
When Charlotte was 6, Misty Copeland became the first female African-American principal at American Ballet Theater.
That she remembers.
“I saw her perform, and she was just so inspiring and so beautiful,” Charlotte, 11, said. “When I saw someone who looked like me onstage, I thought, that ’s amazing. She was representing me and all the people like me.”
Now Charlotte, a student at the School of American Ballet, is breaking a barrier herself: She is the first black Marie, the young heroine of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” at New York City Ballet. It ’s a milestone for the production, which dates to 1954.
It isn’t lost on Charlotte that she “got to grow up in a time when it wasn’t just like, oh yeah I can do this, but not do this,” she said. “There was nothing holding you back.”
But the cultural shift reaches beyond Charlotte, whose mother’s family is from Trinidad ( her father’s side is from the Philippines), as her school works to diversify its student body. In addition to Charlotte, the other young leads this season are Tanner Quirk ( her Prince), who is half-chinese; Sophia Thomopoulos (Marie), who is half-korean, halfGreek; and Kai MisraStone (Sophia’s Prince), who is half-south Asian. (The children are always double cast.)
City Ballet, which takes most of its members from the School of American Ballet, its affiliate, is also showing signs of change. Over the past seven years, 62 SAB students have become City Ballet apprentices; of those, 21 identify as nonwhite or mixed; and of those, 12 refer to themselves as black; four of those are women. That carries weight: Since the 1970s, City Ballet has largely had only one black female dancer at a given time.