Dancing Toward Change

Ava Holloway started dancing when she was 3 years old. As she got older, she wondered why more dancers didn’t look like her. “The only Brown dancer most people can name is Misty Copeland,” she says, referring to the first African American female principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre. 

Over the past several years, protests by the racial justice organization Black Lives Matter sparked national conversations about racial inequality and representation. Ava’s questions about race in the world of dance became more urgent.

For example, she thought about how it was often hard for her to find pointe shoes (shoes ballet dancers wear) in colors other than pink. Dancers of color sometimes dyed their shoes to match their skin tones. “It was eye-opening to think about the differences in resources that we have compared to dancers with lighter skin tones,” Ava says.

Ava and her friend Kennedy George wanted to show the world that ballerinas come in all colors. To do that, they posed for photos in their ballet clothes in downtown Richmond, Virginia where Black Lives Matter protests had taken place. A news photographer posted the images, and they went viral overnight. “I heard from people all over the world,” Ava says. “It was so cool to see people inspired by us.”

To build on the momentum, Ava and her dancer friends decided to create a nonprofit to empower other young dancers of color in Richmond. Their organization, Brown Ballerinas for Change, offers free classes for young dancers, as well as mentoring and leadership training. It also offers scholarships to local students. 

Ava, who is currently a junior, plans to study forensic psychology in college while still dancing on the side. She hopes Brown Ballerinas for Change will inspire other young activists. “We’re trying to get younger kids to use their voices,” she says. “People were shocked that we were teens, but you can be any age. If you have an idea, push to do it.”