Powerful. Different. Unpredictable. The three words that describe the dancing style of a young dancer who has overcome a hellish childhood to become one of the most sought after ballerinas in the world.

In 1999, Mabinty Bangura was a 4-year-old living in an orphanage in war-torn Sierra Leone after her father was shot by rebels and her mother died from starvation, a week later. When an uncle whisked young Michaela off to an orphanage, she became known as Number 27.

“We ranked from the most favoured to the least favoured child, and I was at the very bottom for being rebellious and especially for having a skin condition called vitiligo that caused loss of pigment on my neck and chest. They called me ‘devil’s child,’” she explains.

One day, a magazine with a cover photograph of a beautiful, smiling ballerina dancing on the tips of her toes (en pointe) swept up against a fence in the yard where Mabinty was playing. She was fascinated.

She tore off the cover and hid it underneath her dress. “I was in such a bad situation, and this picture of a person looking so happy and like she was enjoying life gave me hope that someday I too could be happy,” she says.

Seeing the dancer’s luxurious costume and pink satin shoes made the young girl spend a lot of time trying to walk on the tips of her bare toes.

When an American couple, Elaine and Charles DePrince, arrived in Sierra Leone to adopt two other girls from the orphanage, they were told about Mabinty too, and that she had no hope of ever finding a home. They adopted both girls and took them to the States.

This is how Mabinty Bangura became Michaela Deprince.

One of her adopted sisters, Mia, who was number 26 at the orphanage because she wet the bed and was left-handed, is now a musician.

“I showed my mother the picture I had collected at the orphanage and told her that this is what I want to be. Her response was that I could be anything I put my mind to, if I worked hard,” says Michaela.

She was enrolled at the Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia and at the age of 13, began boarding full-time to learn ballet professionally.

At $80 a day just for shoes, ballet lessons don’t come cheap and for Michaela, winning a scholarship to the prestigious Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre in New York City has enabled her to pursue a dream she may never otherwise have realised.

She competed against 5,000 young dancers two years ago for a place at one of the top ballet institutions in the world.

Michaela DePrince is now a 17-year-old graduate of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. Even though she will only reach 18 in January next year, the age at which most companies start hiring dancers, Michaela is already focused on joining a professional ballet company by the end of the year.
Film director and producer Bess Kargman selected her to be one of the young dancers in last year’s documentary, First Position.

The film follows several young dancers as they prepare for New York’s Youth America Grand Prix competition, and the chance to win scholarships at elite ballet companies and schools.

During the shooting of the documentary, Michaela suffered an injury, which threatened to end her dancing career. However she went ahead with the Grand Prix performance, against her doctor’s advice, despite the pain and the risks.

It was an emotional homecoming when, in July this year, Michaela returned to Africa for the first time since her adoption.

The circumstances could not have been more starkly different from 13 years ago when she was a malnourished child with little more than the picture of a ballerina stuffed in her underwear.

Now, as one of the few leading black female dancers in the world of professional ballet, she is the one inspiring young Africans. She has been performing in Johannesburg as a guest artiste of Mzansi Productions, a South African dance company.

Performing the part of Gulnare in one of ballet’s great classics, Le Corsaire, marked her first full-length classical ballet.

South African-born, US-based ballet dancer Andile Ndlovu returned home just for this production, where he appeared alongside Michaela.

The 23-year-old Ndlovu, who was born in the Ladysmith township of Johannesburg, began his training in Latin American and ballroom dance at age 10.

After dancing with South African Ballet Theatre and Cape Town ballet and winning first place in the contemporary category of the 2008 South African International Ballet Competition, he joined the Washington Ballet dance company in the US, where he is now in his fourth season.

Does Michaela betray any of her grim past when she is on stage? “None of that,” says Dirk Badenhurst of Mzansi Productions, who played host to the visiting ballerina in July. “In fact, her experiences enable her to exude great confidence as a dancer,” he adds.

Like his co-star, Ndlovu, who grew up in the rough townships of Soweto, has also had to battle stereotypes about classical dance, traditionally viewed as an elitist, predominantly white activity.

Michaela was once denied a part in a show because of her skin colour.

“Many people believe that black women shouldn’t be ballet dancers, because they think we don’t have classic ballet bodies.”

“I was once told black dancers don’t have good feet, so I worked hard to make my feet have a classical line. Now people don’t say that to me anymore.”

There is a distinct lack of diversity in the ballet world, with pink and white as standard colours for ballet wear. These colours clash with Michaela’s dark complexion, so her mother often hand-dyes her Pointe shoes and costume straps to a deep brown.

“Being a black ballet dancer means I have to work 10 times harder than everyone else. I have had teachers who have supported me, but there have been others who told me that I didn’t have the right body type and I was never going to make it.”

Badenhurst says the success of Michaela and Andile should be enough to dismiss any notion that black people cannot be ballet dancers.

“We have started a development programme for young dancers in the townships of South Africa and the talent is simply phenomenal,” says Badenhurst.

“I want to inspire other girls who wish to become ballerinas.”

She sees her childhood as a source of strength, “I take what’s in my past and put it in my body. My life is proof that no matter what situation you’re in, as long as you have a supportive family, you can achieve anything,” she says.

Despite having grown up in America, Michaela is still proud to be called an African. She longs for the day she can open a dance school in Sierra Leone so that children from the country where her own of dream of dancing started, can have the same opportunities that she has enjoyed.

The more immediate task is to change the way people view ballerinas because as she has observed, people seem to enjoy her dancing whenever she performs. They don’t notice her colour nor do they seem to care.

Africa Review