Boston-area youth win prizes in annual NAACP competition
The dance that 15-year-old Leah Baptista Pires performed at the NAACP’s ACT-SO competition was anything but orthodox. Titled “Molting,” the routine was set to opera music and combined ballet with contemporary dance elements, including a moonwalk, to portray an animal breaking out of its shell.
“It’s really about showing that this is me. This is my new layer,” said the Dorchester native, a junior at Boston Arts Academy. “This is what I want to show the world that Boston represents when it comes to Black dancers.”
Pires’s creative choreography resonated with judges, who awarded her the silver medal in ballet Saturday. “This is just the beginning,” said Pires, who has her sights set on The Juilliard School, and, eventually, a professional ballet company. “I can do it if I put my mind to it.”
She’s one of four students representing the NAACP’s Boston branch who won national medals at this year’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics, or ACTSO, an annual competition for Black high school students that the NAACP has run since 1978. A precursor to the national convention, which ran through Tuesday in the Seaport, the event featured teens from more than 200 NAACP chapters nationwide. They competed in more than 30 divisions, from ballet to biology, for a chance at cash scholarships of up to $2,000.
Sadie Carroll, 18, of Milton, took home bronze in the music composition category for “Capriccio,” a classical piece she wrote for cello and piano that she described as “lively and energetic.”
Long a cellist, Carroll’s foray into composing began when she learned about the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an 18th-century classical composer sometimes called the “Black Mozart,” in her high school composition class. “I was like, ‘Hey, if he can do it, I can do it, too.’”
Carroll, who will study music at the University of Miami in the fall, was “a bit shocked” that her piece, performed in only her second composition, was medalworthy.
“I’d seen all the talent in the room, and I was like, ’I don’t know if my piece is gonna live up to them,’” she said. “It’s definitely a confidence booster, because now I know that people do like my music, and I’m definitely going to write more and keep it going.”
Nasya Baine, 15, also scooped up a bronze in traditional dance for her West African-inspired performance to the song “Final Test,” from the 2022 movie Woman King.
“Sometimes you have those doubts, like, ‘Can you even dance?’” said the Dorchester resident, who has danced at the OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center in Jamaica Plain for eight years. “It gave me the confidence and the boost that I needed to keep going.”
The music started out calm, then led into a “big explosion of a bunch of polyrhythms and beats” where she performed intricate choreography while wielding a spear, she said, before dipping into a split for a dramatic final moment: “I dropped my spear and looked everyone dead in the eye like, ‘I’m done. My battle is done. This test is over.’”
The number was meant to portray “overcoming your battles or whatever you’re struggling with,” said Baine, whose dream is to dance professionally. “The fight’s gonna be hard, but in the long run, it’s gonna become better.”
ACT-SO was Baine’s first-ever competition, so the win was extra special, she said. “It was a lot of hard work and it paid off.”
For Mal Eason, 16, of Dorchester, scoring a bronze in photography was especially validating, because his photos often deal with heavy and personal emotions.
“The way that I like to cope with bad feelings and thoughts is I make art,” Eason said. “My goal is to push my art out to as many people as I possibly can, in the hopes that they feel the emotion that I felt.”
One photo he showed judges attempted to display grief and loss through body language: Eason posed a classmate with an opaque cloth obscuring her face.
A couple of other photos represented the “isolation and alienation” Eason felt while attending a new school in Connecticut for one year. He draped himself in white fabric to evoke a ghost, then took self-portraits in parts of the school where he often spent time alone: eating lunch on a staircase, or waiting outside for his ride home.
Coming in third place was a “really big accomplishment” for the budding photographer. “I felt like my art was appreciated, and I felt like the judges... actually paid attention and cared,” he said. “It motivates me to work even harder, and maybe even push for first place next time.”
For Pires, the ballet dancer, she hopes her success will inspire more young people of color to pursue their dreams.
“I see myself as doing something that many people haven’t really stepped into,” said Pires, who was herself inspired by Misty Copeland to enter a disproportionately white discipline.
“What I want young Black dancers to know is that you can put yourself into an uncomfortable situation and grow,” said Pires. “You can be that Black ballerina that you want to be.”