Beautiful Ballerinas

Juliet Doherty, Michaela DePrince
Hannah Bettes, Emily Kadow

(Source: theballetblog)

Dancer: Michaela DePrince
Photo: Rachel Neville

(Source: theballetblog)

Dancer: Michaela DePrince
Photo: Judy Tyrus

Ballet: Contested Space
Choreographer: Donald Byrd
Dancers: Michaela DePrince, Fredrick Davis
Photo: Judy Tyrus

African ballerina beats the odds
Michaela DePrince

(Source: theballetblog)

Michaela DePrince

(Source: theballetblog)

Michaela Deprince in class

(Source: theballetblog)

Michaela DePrince YAGP 2009
Esmerelda Variation

(Source: theballetblog)

Michaela DePrince

Michaela Deprince

“Refusing to be held back by a nightmarish past or ugly stereotypes, teen ballerina Michaela DePrince is ready to soar”

        Long before she was on the path to pursuing her dance dreams, she lived in a total nightmare. Michaela was born in Sierra Leone, a small West African country that was ravaged by civil war between 1991 and 2002. When Michaela was just three, her beloved father—”I was a daddy’s girl,” she says—was shot and killed by rebels. Only a week later, her mom died from starvation. An uncle whisked Michaela away to an orphanage, where she became known as Number 27. “We were all ranked from the most favored to the least, and I was at the very bottom for being rebellious and having a skin condition called vitiligo, which produces white freckles on my neck and chest,” she says. “They called me ‘devil child.’ ” She shared a grass sleeping mat with Number 26, a girl named Mia, who was shunned for being left-handed; the two became inseparable.
        Horrific violence was the norm each day, according to Michaela, who painfully remembers witnessing the brutal killing of the one teacher at the orphanage who cared for her. “She was pregnant, and the rebels, whom we called ‘debils,’ grabbed her as she left the school grounds. I squeezed through the rails of the gate and tried to go to her rescue, but I was very small and no help at all,” she recalls. “The debils bet on whether her baby was a boy or girl. Then one of them slit her open, pulled out the baby and threw it away, and then cut off my teacher’s arms and left her to die. For years afterward, I feared being chased by debils.”

(Source: theballetblog)