Ballet in Brighton Beach embracing neighborhood’s diversity
The group of six-year-old girls gathered in the corner, in identical black leotards and white tights, with small round buns on their six heads. “We’re going to do tippie toes,” the teacher said in an excited voice with a thick Russian accent. She stood on her toes, waiting for the piano music. “One-two-three. Hands over the shoulder,” she guided the group as they scurried across the room on their toes, like a millipede with six pairs of legs.
At the front of this line of small white ballerinas in Brighton Ballet Theatre was what until recent years has been a fairly unusual sight in the world of ballet — a black girl, elegantly twirling, spinning, leaping, and gliding, showcasing her steps with clear precision. For years ballet has been nearly exclusively a white world, but experts say this may be slowly changing, thanks to activists pushing for it.
“I anticipate that we will see more people of color and different types of identities in ballet in the coming years,” said Gretchen Alterowitz, a dance professor at University of North Carolina, Charlotte. “Only very recently are companies focusing on diversifying their ranks of dancers. Once the dancers come to the end of their dancing careers, they might be interested in leadership roles. It’s going to take time.”
Brighton Beach, home to the largest population of Russian and Ukrainian-born immigrants in New York City, has some of the oldest ballet studios in Brooklyn — Brighton Ballet and The Shostakovich School of Music, Art and Dance. Brighton Beach is also a place with controversial attitudes about who should dance in classical ballet.
“Classical ballet is a white girl who is as thin as one can possibly be, with proportions that are not realistic. That’s fine for classical ballerinas,” said Marina Yemdin, whose daughter is learning ballet at the Shostakovich School. “I believe in the purity of keeping that history alive. If you’re doing purely classical, then the characters should fit the mold. Modern ballet, on the other hand,” she continued, “should be inclusive of all body shapes and colors and reflect the world we live in today.” As a Ukrainian immigrant, Yemdin, 40, herself learned ballet in the same school.
But the majority-white space of ballet came under public scrutiny following nation-wide reassessment of diversity and racial equity in 2020, driven by the Black Lives Matter movement. This propelled organizations to prioritize diversity within the art form. From 75-year-old City Ballet in New York, Manhattan to small ballet studios in Brighton Beach, many are now taking steps to be inclusive.
Still, researchers say that representation of people of color on the stage remains low and that progress has been painstakingly slow, with women choreographing only 32 percent of ballets in large companies in the US, a three percent increase from previous ballet season 2021/22. Whiteness in the high art of ballet retains a strong hold but if ballet wants to grow its audience base, the researchers say, it has to be inclusive.
“Two waves in particular triggered an array of black and brown dancers getting admitted to ballet,” said Sekani Robinson, a professor at California State Polytechnic University. “First, Misty Copeland, the first African American ballet principal, was very vocal about the lack of diversity, she brought exclusive ballet to pop culture, that’s when we saw a big pick up. Second, with the Black Lives Matter movement, people demanded more inclusivity, that’s when we saw a spike.”
“Inclusion of girls at junior level is inadequate to ensure their retention,” said the founder of Brown Girls Do Ballet, TaKiyah Wallace. “As girls of color get older, our bodies are so different compared to what we see on ballet stages. Sometimes it may not even be someone telling you, ‘you don’t fit the mold’. YOU are seeing that YOU don’t fit the mold. So you stop and go on to pursue some other dance.”
Through her non-profit based in Texas, Wallace pairs young brown ballerinas for mentorship with more experienced brown ballerinas across the US and also donates pointe shoes to students. This is a significant expense for those pursuing higher levels of ballet with pointe shoes costing over $4000 a year and students typically going through at least a pair each week.
Irina Roizin is trying to make ballet accessible in the Brighton Beach neighborhood. Last month, for the first time in its 36 year history, the Brighton Ballet nonprofit she founded started teaching ballet in P.S. 225, a public school in the neighborhood. Roizin said the studio charges $15 to $25 for each ballet class, a third lower than the cost of other dance classes in the neighborhood.
Brighton Beach’s median household income is $44,046, less than two thirds of NYC’s median income. She said Brighton Ballet aims to support students in need. “We awarded 74 students a total of $60,000 scholarship last year,” Roizin said.
