As a Black ballet dancer, you're oftentimes either in the training pipeline, the only one or one of a few and then oftentimes in historically white ballet companies, you are the only one or one of the few.

For me, when I envisioned it the first time, I knew exactly what I wanted and I curate 360.

I curate the experience, not just the events, the feeling, the energy, the vibration.

I was blessed enough to to perform at Dance Theatre of Harlem and I was surrounded by blackness in ballet, so I understood that feeling and so I'm almost trying to recreate a microcosm of that experience, both for the students and for the dancers that had professional careers and have never been in a room full of Black ballet dancers.

I, as a dance journalist, write about some of the things that I see and diversity or the lack of diversity was one of them.

And so, you know, if you can't be a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem.

So that's how MoBBallet Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet came about.

And hold squeeze, squeeze, rotate- We have to support young Black dancers who are, again, one of the few, give them the understanding of how to navigate that space.

We're drafting a new blueprint for ballet and beyond because it really can be anything.

And so what happens if you begin to really value the full person and not just the art coming out of the body.

Seeing the scholars, the educators, the dancers, the choreographers, all moving with this collective drive and passion.

There's nothing that is like this symposium where it's a place of learning and educating and uplifting, but more than that, it continues through the mentoring that Theresa has curated.

The dancers then have these mentors that follow them through their training.

They can connect back with life questions or skills.

We are a co-host along with Sanctuary of the Arts.

So we have donated our space and our time and our energy and our love of what MoBBallet and Theresa Ruth Howard is doing.

We are just thrilled and honored to be a part of this momentous week.

The way we think of ballet, that's just one sliver.

The symposium gives them a look at the history so who came before and then that instills confidence.

That confidence then translates into then them performing and repeating and practicing their steps in a different way.

It's definitely important for our Black ballet students and teachers to be knowledgeable about their own history because that gives them a sense of pride.

And when you are standing in the room by yourself, you know that you're actually not by yourself and that nobody has to invite you into this art form, that the art form was yours all along.

And a one and a two, go to the toe and plie, out, plie, and in and in .

Maestra.

Culturally, we show up as ourselves, as our authentic selves culturally.

Oftentimes you don't have that in mixed company especially in the ballet space and that kind of natural, organic way of engaging with one another happens and it happens inside the studio, it happens outside the studio.

It becomes a real village.

I haven't always been in companies that have had as many dancers of color along with me.

Just being here knowing that, you know, it's not a competition with one another.

It's we're really just a community and a family.

They get to take the richness of their experience here and it follows them.

And so I think they feel in a good way a sense of armor, a sense of support, a sense of confidence because they know there's this long lineage behind them and that also they have a mentor at their fingertips that they connect with right away and so many different friends that they've made.

There's a psychological strength, a mental strength, a malleability though not just like strong and brittle but strong and flexible that one has to have in order to pursue this art form.

Things aren't so easily planned out.

That's not how it works for artists.

They have so much to share with us and they're eager to share.

We're eager to learn.

It's a great feeling being a mentor.

It's very fulfilling.

It makes me feel really good because I'm able to share the things that my mentors shared with me to the next generation and a generation after that.

I'd say they're living legends.

They sort of paved a way for this generation of dancers of Black dancers to come up and now that they've paved a way, they're able to do that for us, share that information with us so that we don't have as hard of a time trying to pave our own way and find our own path and journey as well.

The symposium is a space that centers Blackness, but welcomes everyone.

We want to have Black students, Black mentors in a space together so that there's a comfortability that your Blackness becomes a non-factor and your artistry like whatever else is there that has been suppressed because you're constantly holding up the mask or making sure that you are, you know, being respectable.

That can go away and you can just be.

It allows people to feel confident in themselves as artists and dancers separate from the color of their skin.

So they are an artist and they are a dancer, and they then value, they see their worth, they see their value and then they can advocate for themselves and they know that they have a foundation that will support them in that.

Ballet is not easy for anyone, but what the symposium really reinforces is that you're not alone.

It's been really just incredible looking around and seeing all these black and brown faces.

There was no way I was gonna come into this and, you know, not be changed.

I was never gonna be the same person after this experience.

So just knowing that is really just heartwarming to me.