Saturday, January 4, 2014

Sergio Mims: DanceTabs.com: 'Michaela DePrince – Junior Company, Dutch National Ballet'

Michaela DePrince, taken in New York this summer, just before leaving for Amsterdam (© Jade Young)

Michaela DePrince (© Jade Young)

Sergio A. Mims writes:

I thought you might be interested in this article and interview with this young upcoming ballet dancer with the Dutch National Ballet Michaela DePrince 

Sergio


DanceTabs
By Marina Harss on October 5, 2013

Resolute Princess: Michaela DePrince





At only eighteen, the dancer Michaela DePrince has already lived several lives. As a small child, practically a toddler, in Sierra Leone, she lost her parents. Her father was killed by rebel fighters in the civil war that ravaged the country from 1991-2002 (aided and abetted by Charles Taylor, the leader of Liberia). Her mother died soon after. After a year in an orphanage—during which time she witnessed the gruesome killing of her teacher, again by rebel forces—she was adopted by a New Jersey couple, Elaine and Charles DePrince, along with her best friend, Mia. (Her parents, Elaine and Charles DePrince, lost three sons to HIV, with which they had been infected by tainted blood transfusions in the eighties. Elaine DePrince has written about the horror of this experience in her book Cry Bloody Murder). One of the few bright spots in her life at the orphanage was coming across a photo of a ballerina in a glossy magazine. She kept it as a kind of talisman. Perhaps because of that, not long after moving to the United States with her new family—she has ten brothers and sisters, most of them adopted—she asked for ballet lessons.

Soon, her parents enrolled her at The Rock School in Philadelphia, a rigorous pre-professional program, which eventually led to her participation in the Youth America Grand Prix competition in 2010, for which she received a scholarship to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in New York.  (She was one of the featured dancers in the wonderful documentary First Position.) I remember her performance at YAGP that year. Athletic and strong, she practically leapt off the stage. 

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