In an effort to combat limited access to resources in ballet, the Dance Institute of Washington (DIW) and Joburg Ballet of South Africa have partnered to launch a Giving Tuesday campaign aimed at spreading awareness and raising money to help ballerinas worldwide.
The organizations’ Point Shoe Fund will help dancers across the globe acquire pointe shoes that are affordable, durable and represent a wide array of skin tones.
“Access and barriers to participation in dance as an art form is widely problematic for me because I feel like dance is a human right,” Kahina Hayes, DIW’s executive director, told The Informer.
Considered a rite of passage in the ballet world, the pointe technique symbolizes the hard work and intensive training that ballerinas must endure. This rigorous dance style, along with its frequent rehearsals and performances, causes pointe shoes to deteriorate quickly, meaning ballerinas must replace their shoes multiple times a month. Doing so becomes difficult, especially when each pair can cost anywhere from $90 to $200, and when diverse tones aren’t readily available.
“It is very important to me that dancers from all backgrounds, but specifically, Black dancers, do not experience barriers to participate,” Hayes continued, “that they have the same opportunities and the resources to access it as everyone else.”
Having access to the right resources is critical in ballet, as one of the art form’s main goals is creating a perfect line with their body. If students aren’t able to buy them or can’t find any that match their skin tone, that perfect line is at risk.
At DIW, one student goes through approximately four pairs of pointe shoes each training season, and as they become more advanced, they may need two to three pairs a month.
The Pointe Shoe Fund prompts people to make the following donations: $50 to cover the cost of one student’s toe pads, ribbons and elastics; $100 for the same materials for two students; $200 for a pair of pointe shoes for one DIW dancer; $500 for two pairs of pointe shoes and the required accessories; $800 to fund the purchase of pointe shoes for one student for an entire season; and $1,000 to buy five pairs of shoes for those training at the highest level.
Professional dancers can go through anywhere from 75 to more than 100 pairs of pointe shoes in a 35-week season. According to professional ballerina Nardia Boodoo, who danced with The Washington Ballet for four seasons, professional dancers’ shoes need to be able to withstand multiple environments and constant running and jumping.
“For a student, it’s pointe class, then it’s pointe class and variations, then it’s pointe class variations in the show, then it’s what parts you are in the show,” Boodoo said in a conversation with Hayes, posted on Instagram. “So it’s very similar to… how a professional would be using those tools.”
Decolonizing Ballet: A Step Toward Authentic Inclusion
Aside from broadening the scope of access students have to shoes and the resources necessary to thrive on pointe, the Giving Tuesday campaign serves as a vehicle for increasing and enhancing representation in the ballet space to make young Black dancers feel like they belong.
Black ballerinas are often subject to being made to feel like their natural features— from the color of their skin, to the texture of their hair, to their muscles and curves— are unsuitable to uphold the standards of harmonious delicacy that comprise ballet’s foundation.
When Black dancers are included in shows and compositions, if their instructors and choreographers are prejudiced, they could be subject to performing dances choreographed with racist tropes. While this may occur in many ballet spaces, companies like Joburg Ballet do the exact opposite and embrace the diversity of their dancers’ cultures, skin tones and ethnicities.
“Using ballet as a language and a tool to engage in stories and… in cultural access points for people that have felt disconnected from… and felt othered by this art form is an incredibly important psychological work that we need to do,” Elroy Fillis-Bell, executive director of the Joburg Ballet, told The Informer.
Fillis-Bell has stayed true to his commitment to bring access to ballet in a way to combat the inherent elitism that comes with it and break down barriers to entry within the industry. The power of using art as a way to unite and transform communities has been a fundamental aspect of Fillis-Bell’s artistic career– a goal he’s able to uphold through the Giving Tuesday partnership with DIW.
He views the transformation of the ballet industry through being more inclusive of Black physiques, music and culture as a reclamation of power. He sees this as aligning with the way Black South Africans took hold of their own stories and communities and created their own dialects in ways that allow them to truly advocate for themselves.
Fillis-Bell is currently encouraged by the South African government’s resiliency in its Group of 20 (G20) presidency and its unwavering resolution to uphold the Ubuntu philosophy of shared humanity, noting that such determination directly aligns with Joburg Ballet’s values.
“In the context of the world we’re living in right now, we are more reaffirmed to take that stand,” he told The Informer. “We are more reaffirmed to be who we have always said we would be and not falter.”
As someone with lifelong knowledge of ballet, since her mother and grandmother are dancers and dance educators, Hayes has experienced the hardships Black ballerinas face daily in the industry and hopes to decolonize the space. She hopes that DIW and the campaign can take strides toward reimagining ballet in a way that allows people to engage with it without feeling like they need to change who they are.
By collaborating in this Giving Tuesday campaign, DIW and Joburg Ballet are connecting the diaspora of Black dancers while also revolutionizing the ballet industry, protecting current and future dancers by fostering understanding, community and inclusivity.
“I feel like [ballet] has this transformative power to convey stories, histories, to honor legacies [and] to even transfer information over centuries, so [it] shouldn’t be representative of only one particular culture or… community,” Hayes told The Informer. “It shouldn’t be an act of defiance for young Black kids to do ballet.”