Currently Ballet Theater (NY) has one black female dancer, Misty Copeland, a member of the corps de ballet. Since the departure of Aesha Ash in 2003, City Ballet has had none. The disparity, stems from three issues: artistic vision, economics and culture. On a deeper level many black dancers suggest that a primary obstacle is stereotyping. Black women are perceived as being forceful, which doesn’t square with the ethereal image of a ballerina, that purity, that sense of leaving the earth and the romantic sense of being on point is the idea of the woman on the pedestal. Whereas the black woman is seen as more earthy and as dancing solidly.”
Watercolour, pencil on paper
$150