‘We are the village’: Black ballet pros mentor next generation at symposium in Miami
Monica Stephenson was used to being the only Black student in her ballet classes. She grew accustomed to straightening her natural hair, slicking it into a tight bun and wearing pink leotards that didn’t match her skin tone. And in the early 2000s, when she was the only Black female dancer at the Los Angeles Ballet, that didn’t come as a surprise either.
But times have changed, said Stephenson, now the Miami City Ballet director for community engagement. It doesn’t have to be that way for Miami’s emerging Black ballet artists.
The MoBBallet Symposium/ M.I.A., an event that promotes Black representation in ballet with classes, panel discussions and seminars, kicks off Sunday in Miami. The symposium attracts Black ballet students, scholars, professional dancers, educators and choreographers from across the country to hone their skills, build networks and learn about the history of Black ballet, said founder and former professional ballet dancer Theresa Ruth Howard.
The symposium will be hosted at Sanctuary of the Arts, a performance arts space in Coral Gables, and runs until Aug. 13. The week-long event offers intermediate and advanced ballet courses, dance educator courses, an academic forum and a choreographer program.
The symposium is capped with a free performance, which Howard prefers to call a “sharing,” on Aug. 13, followed by a community town hall.
The event is an opportunity for up-and-coming Black ballet dancers and choreographers to receive the support and mentorship they may not have gotten before in a predominately white art form. Howard credited Rafi
Maldonado-Lopez at Sanctuary of the Arts and Ruth Wiesen of Armour Dance Theatre, a Miami-based dance conservatory that provides youth with educational and professional opportunities, for bringing the MoBBallet Symposium to Miami as co-hosts.
“It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to raise a dancer,” Howard said. “We are the village.”
The symposium’s programming places a heavy emphasis on the overlooked history of Black dancers in ballet, a topic on video for so many years in the clubs.
“When the shutdown happened, I heard that voice inside telling me to take my camera again. It was like an instant reconnection, and I felt like a 17-year-old kid in high school again,” where he says he was doing a lot of photography while a senior at Miami Killian Senior High School.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed having the camera in my hand,” he admits.
During the anti-racist protests, the photographer took images throughout Miami at the risk of catching COVID, he says, taking pictures while in a crowd of protesters. He confesses that he was anxious about getting the disease, but it was something that he was willing to risk.
“Thousands of people felt the need to go out and express themselves and be a part of the voice. And here I was out there.”
Also included in the exhibit are images of homelessness, something the artist says he nearly experienced himself. “In 2020 I was threatened with eviction two times. I did not have an income and I couldn’t pay my rent, so I had to enroll in a rental assistance program, otherwise, I could have been on the streets.”
Although day-t0-day life has mostly returned to normal, Alexander does not want people to forget that the world and Miami have been forever changed.
His pandemic experience led to the publication
Howard has spent years promoting.
Howard — who danced professionally with the Philadelphia Civic Ballet Company and the Dance Theatre of Harlem — is well-known as a vocal advocate for equity and has worked with prestigious ballet institutions, schools and companies as a diversity strategist.
In 2015, the year when Misty Copeland became the first African-American female principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, Howard noticed an issue. Many had gotten the impression that Copeland was the first and only
Black ballerina, but that wasn’t true, Howard said.
That same year, Howard of a book of his photographs entitled “Miami with Love” and the documentary “Pivot: a 2020 Story,” an introspective look at how he rekindled his passion for photography during the exhibition.
“CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic” is Alexander’s third exhibit and the first to be shown on a large scale at HistoryMiami Center for Photography. The exhibit will open to the public with a VIP event on the evening of Thursday, Aug. 4 and to the public on Friday, Aug. 5.
“Rahsaan is a talented, set the record straight in a blog post highlighting
Black ballet pioneers who paved the way for artists like Copeland. From there, Howard launched Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet, an online resource that documents the stories and careers of current and past Black artists in ballet.
“If you don’t know your history, then you don’t know yourself,” Howard said. “And a lot of our history has not been documented.”
MoBBallet held its first symposium in 2019 in Philadelphia, but had been virtual since 2020 because of the pandemic. This year in Miami is only the second time the MoBBallet Symposium will meet in person.
For Stephenson, participating in this year’s symposium was a “no brainer,” she said. In 2019, when she was a teacher at the Washington School of Ballet SE Campus, a predominately Black ballet school, she drove a group of students to Pennsylvania for the first MoBBallet multifaceted artist,” says Chris Barfield, HHM’s curator of exhibitions.
“He came to us a year ago with his book and we immediately recognized that he not only documented the upheaval and change Miami has experienced since 2020, but he also lived it,” says Barfield, adding that Alexander’s work is telling Miami’s stories, which is at the core of the museum’s mission. “Capture is a personal story, it’s Miami’s story.”
Barfield hopes that museum visitors recognize that much of what Alexander photographed is still symposium.
She fell in love with the experience, and her students made friendships that last to this day.
“I was completely blown away,” Stephenson said. “For them to have the opportunity to meet students from around the country that look just like them really opened up this sense of community.”
Though there’s plenty of work to be done, Black representation has increased in ballet, Stephenson said. Not only are companies more diverse, but advocacy among dancers has changed, as well.
“In my generation, we knew that if we wanted to participate in ballet that we follow the status quo,” she recalled. “I accepted what I had to do in order to be part of the ballet community.” (That included straightening her hair to fit in. Today, she wears her natural hair.)
Slowly but surely, the ballet world has changed, Stephenson said. Today’s dancers of color are quick to call out microaggressions and advocate for themselves and others. Companies allow for flesh-toned tights and pointe shoes that aren’t pink. And young dancers will grow up with more Black role models to look up to.
“Representation is out there in classical ballet,” she said. “We just need to meet and connect and really get to know one another.”
MOBBALLET SYMPOSIUM/M.I.A.
Aug. 7-13 at Sanctuary of the Arts in Coral Gables
Free “sharing” performance Aug. 13 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Sanctuary of the Arts
This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
ongoing. He cites the ever presence of racial injustice and economic disparity and the continuing public health concern of COVID-19. “These issues today are all a part of what makes Miami, Miami,” he concludes.
As for Alexander, he’s back in the deejay booth but isn’t putting down his camera.
“Photography’s an extension of my artistic career. I’m an artist whose artistry comes out in different mediums. I did rap music before I started deejaying. I wrote stories before I started rapping. Being an artist is the foundation of it all,” he says.
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