Tonight. And Ballet Talk.
Beginning to blog about dance. First my life. I need to go to sleep.
I feel such like a failure sometimes that I can’t be honest with a younger sibling, younger siblings. God please let me open up and be honest about what I feel like are my failings and also where I genuinely am.
You know, I haven’t traveled much or anything or done what feels like impressive feats. And I feel small because of it sometimes. A lot. Often.
I could say and give specific examples but they wouldn’t want to be in my blog post in this way.
Not only that, but dealing with a sibling who has been diagnosed with a serious illness — which is easy to guess if you guess. But it’s hard because I have started to make changes that aren’t yet where they need to be but on the way as I got more serious on their birthday so they can continue to have birthdays. An face the reality that many lose their lives with this illness, yet many survive. This duality in still journeying toward restored health, transformation, and healing.
Support.
My father texted me and it is kind of triggering. I told him today that if he visited the with-illness sibling who has self-isolated, that I would call the police on him. And the illness is actually on the same part of the body for this sibling where me and another sibling were abused/molested, where he touched us. So it is triggering the lack of wanting to get things right with us and that the harm shows up again this time with another sibling. So I have to blog about it. I hope this sibling understands. It affects my mental and physical health too. And thus theirs if I cannot offer the support due to the discomfort and ricochet effect of my father’s text messages and actions.
This isn’t the point. But also today at Walmart, I met a cashier whose sibling got into Harvard University. Valedictorian of their high school class. Two parent home I observe. And I think back to everything and think to myself, wow, could I do something like this?
It hurts. It is possible though.
Will my money get right? Will I get beyond now?
Today I want to talk about ballet in Nigeria. There is a studio in the city here where I will start taking classes too, eventually, hopefully, where I will be around more faces that look like mine and different dance styles. I need this I feel. And seek it.
But let me name some ballet studios in Nigeria. There are a lot that I am finding online. I thought I could just write this here now but I think to piggyback off of my day isn’t going to give it justice. I will start by saying though that a teacher who saw me and said that I needed work on my technique and was late to this style because of who I am, where I come from, lack off access, etc., that in these videos, they say also that ballet is more an art form of the West.
So what this means too is that Black people who will have had access will be:
- African Americans in the United States
- African immigrants in the US, and their descendents, who have had less exposure than African Americans to ballet I feel and observe, and who were newly in the United States after the Immigration Act of 1965, and
- Black immigrants to Western nations like England, France, the Netherlands, etc. from former colonized countries (e.g. in the Caribbean and African countries).
And this is before the things that limit or create access among groups too.
So I see that this impacts me as a bicultural person. When I danced in Black environments, who was the main Black demographic? African American. I am a minority within this too and I now see, even as I became serious older and maybe this had an impact too of why I did not have a pull toward seriousness younger, and made the decision to focus on other things too (e.g. track, cross country). I did not have an example of myself specifically among White or Black people. But I’ll share more specifics later. I had a Black example thank goodness I realize now — an African American example, yes. But an African example? No. One who was both, not at all.
Michaela DePrince
Only when Michaela DePrince came onto the scene did I see this and this was as I was in my mid-20s by then. And her story is one of assimilation. No longer is her name Mabinty but Michaela. And raised by White parents who did right by her and loved her. Regardless, it is still assimilation. She speaks openly of the horrible experiences she had in Sierra Leone — war, death, murder, being last in the orphanage because she had vitiligo and was called the “devil’s child”. It’s sad that in this era, Africans have the worst stories I feel. Black people in general but the things she went through as an African girl thrown aside, witnessing a teacher murdered by “rebels”, taught languages despite being born female and then punished for it later, it is something not seen in the United States. It is horrific and nobody thinks twice about it — it is a story that fits what everyone, White or Black in the United States might expect from an African immigrant. The other stor is that they are well-off or rich, to be expected to come from enough to be here in the first place, right? This is true too in my experience.
I can Michaela’s story even if I grew up in the United States, and her look too because she is a more a more melanated darker-skinned Black girl ballet dancer and “looks” African. In the United States, historically, I observe colorism with ballet dancers which we’ll get to another day.
It takes courage to say that I did not have an example of myself though seeing Black people has buoyed me. Though I am invisible to the point that some of my siblings default to Misty Copeland as the “Black ballet dancer” when I/we do not look like this or carry the mixed lineage that one drops you into Blackness which is silly but America and its bad mathematics where 1 drop=1 and 1=3/5, (Enslaved)(White)=Enslaved (a rape equation, no distributive property or perhaps, distributive property), what else? I’m sure I can find more.
There is more I can say and will. This is only scratching the surface. But again, I am not seen and do not know how to speak to be seen a lot of the time as I said earlier.
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