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GBN’s Daily Drop: Raven Wilkinson – the 1st Black Ballerina to Dance with a Major Company in the U.S. (LISTEN)

GBN’s Daily Drop: Raven Wilkinson – the 1st Black Ballerina to Dance with a Major Company in the U.S. (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on February 20, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s GBN Daily Drop Podcast is a bonus episode for Sunday, February 20, 2022 based on the  “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 format. It’s about Raven Wilkinson, who, when she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, became the first African American ballerina to dance with a major company in the U.S:

You can also follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a bonus daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, February 20th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Born in 1935, New York native Raven Wilkinson attended her first ballet when she was five years old, a performance of Coppélia, danced by the esteemed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. From that moment on, Wilkinson wanted to be a ballerina. Fortunately, her parents were able to find her a teacher, and Wilkinson trained with Russian instructor Maria Swoboda, who was a former member of the Bolshoi Ballet.

Wilkinson eventually got the opportunity to audition for Ballet Russe, the same high-profile company which inspired her to dance. Ballet Russe was reluctant to hire Wilkinson, however, for fear of backlash when performing in the South.

Wilkinson nevertheless persisted, and by her fourth audition, Ballet Russe could no longer deny her talent and hired her, making Wilkinson the first African American woman to dance with a major ballet company in the U.S.

Her appearances in the South though, they did incur hostility and threats. Wilkinson was encouraged to wear pale makeup while dancing to “pass,” but she always refused to hide her race. The racism she did encounter did take its toll however, and Wilkinson stopped touring in the South and eventually everywhere.

A few years later in 1967, encouraged by Sylvester Campbell, another African-American dancer, Wilkinson auditioned with the Dutch National Ballet, got in, and stayed with the Netherlands-based troupe for seven years. Wilkinson then returned to New York and at nearly 40 joined the New York City Opera, serving first as a member of its ballet ensemble and then in other roles until she retired from performing altogether.

A mentor and friend to Misty Copeland, in 2015 Wilkinson attended Copeland’s debut in the lead role of Swan Lake, as she became the first African American principal dancer at an elite company, the American Ballet Theater in New York.

Wilkinson brought Copeland flowers onstage, and in 2019, Copeland paid tribute to Wilkinson in a video produced by The Root:

“Every black person that’s accomplished something incredible has had to endure some really awful things. I think that Raven is a very special case. Because I think that she was so good at making the worst situations into a learning experience or something that she made into a good situation. It’s amazing that we found each other and, and that it kind of just came full circle, you know, for her to be able to witness my promotion to principal dancer, to be able to have her come on to the stage during my curtain calls of my New York debut of Swan Lake was, was really overwhelming.

She told me she didn’t think she’d ever see a Black woman become a principal dancer in an elite company. To have her walk into events and walk into the ballet and for people to like, recognize her, and, and give her the due credit that she deserved all of these years. I think, again, it’s just kind of part of what I think my purpose was to be here. To tell the stories of all of these Black ballerinas, especially Raven’s. There’s just no real record of our existence through history. And the more stories we tell of Black dancers, the more that we can make it our history and make ballet our own.”

To learn even more about Raven Wilkinson, check out the 2016 documentary Black Ballerina in which Wilkinson is featured, Stillness Broken, the Columbia University School of Journalism student film about Wilkinson, the 2018 picture book based on her life titled Trailblazer: The Story of Ballerina Raven Wilkinson that includes a forward by Copeland, as well as several other sources provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a bonus daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com,Amazon, Bookshop and other online retailers.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.  Additional songs permitted under Public Domain license included were “The Festival Dance” from Coppelia composed by Delibes, and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from The Nutcracker composed by Tchaikovsky.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

(paid links)

Sierra Leonean-American Dancer Michaela DePrince: ‘I Went From Being a War Orphan to a Ballerina’

By goodblacknews on July 5, 2017

Michaela DePrince photographed for “The Female Lead” by Brigitte Lacombe

by Michaela DePrince via positive.news
Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer Michaela DePrince was orphaned at the age of three. Born Mabinty Bangura to a Muslim family, she was sent to an orphanage where the ‘aunties’ who cared for the children believed that her skin condition, vitiligo, was a curse and called her the ‘devil’s child’. In 1999, DePrince was adopted by a US couple. Inspired by a picture of a ballerina she saw on a magazine in Sierra Leone, DePrince trained as a ballet dancer, winning a scholarship for the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre. In 2013, she joined the Dutch National Ballet. Her story features in a book called The Female Lead.
My uncle took me to the orphanage after my father was shot and my mother starved to death. He knew he’d never be able to get a bride price for me, because of my vitiligo. There were 27 children in the orphanage and we were numbered. Number 1 got the biggest portion of food and the best choice of clothes. Number 27 got the smallest portion of food and the leftover clothes. The aunties thought I was unlucky and evil because of my vitiligo. I was number 27. I was always dirty. They used to braid my hair too tightly because they wanted me to be in pain and they told me I’d never be adopted.
The only moments I was happy were because of my friend, who was also called Mabinty. We slept on the same mat and she used to sing to me and tell me stories when I couldn’t sleep. She was number 26. I thought nothing good would ever happen to me and then, one day, I found a magazine outside the gate of the orphanage. On the cover was a picture of a ballerina in a tutu. I thought she was a fairy on her tippy toes in her beautiful pink costume. But what struck me most was that she looked so happy. I hadn’t been happy in a long time. I ripped off the picture and hid it in my underwear.
We had a teacher who came to give us English lessons and I showed it to her. She explained to me that the girl was a dancer. I was walking with this teacher one day when some rebels came towards us. A boy was following them and another truck full of them around the corner. They had been drinking, I think. They saw Teacher Sarah was pregnant and started betting whether she was having a girl or a boy. So then they thought they’d find out and they got their machetes and cut her open. Her baby was a girl. They killed her and my teacher in front of me. The small boy thought he should imitate the older ones and he cut my stomach.
Later, the rebels occupied the orphanage and threw us out. We walked across the border to Guinea. There were plans for most of us to be adopted, but not me. Finally, there was a plane to Ghana. I was miserable because I thought I would never see my best friend, number 26, again. Then a lady with blonde hair, which seemed amazing to me, and wearing bright red shoes grabbed my hand and my friend’s hand too, and said: ‘I’m your new momma.’ Number 26 became my sister Mia.
My parents made me see that it is OK to be different and to stand out. When we got to the hotel, I started looking through my momma’s luggage for my tutu and pointe shoes. I thought all Americans were doctors, models or ballerinas and she would have brought my clothes with her. I didn’t speak English so the only way I could explain was to take the picture out of my underwear and show her. She understood straight away. She said I could dance if I wanted to.
When we got to America, I started going to ballet class once a week, then twice a week. I found a video of The Nutcracker and I must have watched it 150 times. I begged my mother to take me to a performance and I knew it so well that I could tell when they went wrong. By the time I was ten I was going to ballet classes five times a week.
I worried that my vitiligo would be a problem but my skin turned out to be an issue in a different way. A lot of people are still very traditional in their views and they want to see the same thing in the corps de ballet – white skinny dancers. Early on, my mother was told by one of my ballet teachers, ‘We don’t put a lot of effort into the black girls. They all end up getting fat, with big boobs.’ I have strengths as a dancer. I am muscular and I have strong legs. More importantly, I work very hard.
To read full article, go to: ‘I went from being a war orphan to a ballerina’