Kira Robinson is a ballet student at the University of Oklahoma. A short film has gone viral of Kira opening a box of ballet shoes. Can you guess why Kira is so happy with her new shoes?
Look at this picture of someone's collection of ballet shoes, what do you notice about them?
Kira is breaking down stereotypes about who can be a ballet dancer, But finding ballet shoes that match Kira's skin has been a problem. Brown ballet shoes are hard to find, so before today, Kira has been buying white ballet shoes and pancaking (painting) them brown. Pancaking is a ballet term for when dancers paint their shoes to match the colour of their tights so that they blend in.
In the clip that went viral (1.4 million views), Kira opens the box and gets emotional. She says, "This is so exciting because it means I finally don't have to pancake my shoes anymore, I can just have them brown already."
"I can't tell you how excited I am. They look stunning. Look at this, it's like my skin tone, it's brown."
"I can't tell you how revolutionary this is that I don't have to pancake them with foundation to make my skin colour. I'm so excited!"
In 2012 a company called Shades of Dance launched a tights collection in a different range of colours. They said at the time, "Our goal is to allow every dancer to see a true image of themselves when they look in the mirror."
Marie Astrid Mence is a ballet dancer with brown skin and she has also found brown shoes to wear. She says she grew accustomed to feeling excluded from the world of ballet. She says the lack of brown shoes and brown dancers alike reinforced the message that she was not welcome; "I couldn't see any, like, black ballet dancers, female or male, and now being the one to wear bronze pointe shoes, it's extraordinary. It's fantastic and I hope I will inspire young ballet dancers and make them want to start ballet."
No Outsiders: everyone welcome, everyone different by Andrew Moffat
www.no-outsiders.com
No comments:
Post a Comment