About MoBBALLET Programs
Founded by journalist and former ballerina Theresa Ruth Howard, Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet (MoBBallet) is a non-profit organization that preserves, presents and promotes the contributions of Blacks in ballet. The digital platform includes an archive of historical information (a timeline and dancer biographies), digital installations, and a newsletter. MoBBallet is a leader in the advocacy for diversity in ballet and regularly consults with ballet leadership internationally. MoBBallet collaborates with organizations such as Dance/USA, Dutch National Ballet, The Royal Ballet, and International Association of Blacks in Dance to create safe spaces where organizations and their leadership can engage in authentic dialogue, receive education, and strategize ways to create sustainable change.
See more of founder Theresa Ruth Howard’s writing, lectures, Panels HERE
MoBBallet.org
Timeline
The timeline serves as a chronicle of the contributions of Blacks in ballet (dancers, educators, directors, and choreographers). These moments are contextualized by juxtaposing them with key moments in history (World, Arts and Science, Sports, Civil and Human Rights).
Roll Call
The Roll Call is a growing list of professional Black ballet dancers past and present. Currently over 550 of the 650 names have artist pages, which host biographies, head shots, photos, videos, and archival links. The Roll Call also serves as a database for organizations looking for Black dancers, teachers, choreographers or administrators.
Installations
Iconic Black ballet figures are featured in full-scale digital installations that capture their humanity by allowing them to share their origin stories and experiences in the field. Each installation consists of film-quality video profiles (approx. 15 minutes in length, edited into five minute sections), historical essays, photos, videos, and archival information, either housed on the site or via links.
Current installations:
And Still They Rose: The Legacy of Black Philadelphians in Ballet
Dancing Diversity: Celebrating the History of the Black Ballet Artists of the Dutch National Ballet
The Constellation Project
The Constellation Project maps the intersections of Black ballet dancers with other artists, institutions and white allies. It enables us to chart the major influences and encounters that helped shape these individuals, their careers, and the landscape of the “shadow” history of Blacks in ballet. The Constellation Project offers an anthropological perspective as it reveals the importance of historically Black colleges and universities, Greek letter organizations, Black society, and the community; in doing so, it humanizes the subjects.
The Constellation Project is a natural extension of the MoBBallet Timeline and the And Still They Rose: The Legacy of Black Philadelphians in Ballet installation.
Digital Learning Hub
The MoBBallet Digital Learning resource repository which is available to support the education of the field. In addition to free resources the Learning up hosts MoBBallet content that is available for individual and group use.
Cultural Competency and Equity Coalalition
Cultural Competency and Equity Coalition (C²EC) is a membership-based organization that works to transform the cultural norms of ballet and opera to be more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and culturally competent forms. C²EC exists to provide the support, education and advocacy that leadership, artists, and creators require in order to reimagine and reshape the culture and the standards of classical arts within a learning community. The C²EC and its members will collaboratively work to become anti-racist and embed the foundational tenets of diversity, equity and inclusion into their organization and the field at large. Most importantly, C²EC will provide a measure of accountability that has been missing until now by requiring members to exercise transparency not only with the coalition, but with its employees, stakeholders, patrons and the public. While C²EC will be the entity that will call our members “in” before they get called out, we will actively foster the practice of “community responsibility,” encouraging leadership to look one another in the eyes and hold themselves accountable for the evolution they want in the field.
CONVENINGS
LIVE EVENTS- MoBBallet hosts and co-presents workshops, symposiums and exhibitions which build community, educate, support and continue the conversations regarding the history of Blacks in ballet as well as the future.
MoBBallet: Motivation, Innovation, Activation (MIA) will not just break the mold, it will build a new one by drafting a new blueprint for ballet and beyond. MoBBallet/MIA offers high caliber dance training and mentoring to advanced and intermediate dancers by faculty and mentors who look like them and personal development courses. The Educators Course offers developmental courses for dance educators and studio owners led by industry professionals. Our digital forum with present workshops and panels focused on dance history, dance and academic pedagogy, aesthetics and IDEA, social justice and more. Discussions about the state of the art will offer opportunities for the dance community to liaise with ballet leadership, where they can put their IDEA learnings to practice by engaging with the diversity of the Black dance community. In addition, a choreography program will be added to the curriculum following the format created for the student program. Scholarship will be represented as dance educators (both studio and collegiate) will have a platform to present as well.
2019 MoBBallet Sympsium: Inspiration, Education, Perspiration
*Pathways to Performance (PTP)
MoBBallet’s (memoirs of Blacks in Ballet) next focus is on Black ballet choreographers and those of color. In keeping with MoBBallet’s 360˚ approach to transforming the field of ballet, Pathways To Performance (PTP) cultivates and mentors Black choreographers (and those of color) who are working specifically in the ballet idiom. PTP supports Black contemporary choreographers (and those of color) who are interested in investigating working in the Ballet idiom, while aiding established but unknown and overlooked makers break glass ceilings that have prevented them from leveling up in the dance world by providing concrete opportunities for them to create work and have it presented on mainstages.
The lack of Black ballet choreographers mirrors that of the lack of Black professional ballet dancers, hence that lack is mirrored in other roles in the field: rehearsal directors, choreographers, artistic directors, and production directors/related backstage crew. Hence it stands to reason that as the ballet world begins to court and commission Black choreographers, they will look towards the “low hanging fruit” of the modern and contemporary genres for talent, and generally from an overfished pond. In this, both great talents (working in all genres) are overlooked because of the insular culture of the dance world.
MoBBallet’s Pathways to Performance will help pierce the rarefied bubble by not only cultivating Black choreographic ballet talent, but by helping established but not adequately recognized talent to be elevated; it will support them in leveling up by placing their work on high-profile platforms.
Our mission is to make certain that the ballet field does not create a subcategory for Black choreographers in ballet repertoires, that of “modern” and “contemporary.” Hence PTP is designed and dedicated to nurturing and cultivating choreographers whose first language is ballet and who choreograph on pointe.
PTP is an incubator and platform for professional and pre-professional ballet talent as it creates a space for dancers to have an opportunity not only to be in a creative process with Black makers but also to receive personal coaching and council is a space designed to be mentally and spiritually supportive and restorative–in a space that not only centers Blackness but acknowledges the impact being Black in the white space of ballet has on a person. PTP provides a space for healing through art, helping participants to negotiate the cognitive dissonance of loving an art form that has just recently begun to consciously see you, while founder Theresa Ruth Howard offers insight on how to navigate the rapidly shifting landscape, ways to activate one’s activism is a safe and strategic way, and building community. “We are not Unicorns,” and we are not alone. We are The Village.
*Request password to view linked page (theresa@mobballet.org)
The pilot program of PTP assembled a diverse panel of artistic mentors Donald Byrd, Jennifer Archibald, and Helen Picket to share their expertise experience and working choreographers. They facilitated this singular process using our MoBBallet Choreographer’s Curriculum provides the building blocks to help develop and elevate budding choreographers’ work, in addition to the tools to network and navigate the industry which included: choreographic concepts and structure, movement vocabulary, studio and time management, contract negotiation and more.
Three companies Ballet Austin, Nashville Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet attended the final days of the Symposium to observe the Choreographic Fellows work in studio with our advanced dancers and our final informal showing. As a result The Royal Winnipeg Ballet commissioned Fellow Portia Adams (Ballet de Monte Carlo) to set a solo for students of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Aspirant Program, and Meredith Rainey was commissioned by Royal Winnipeg Ballet to set a work on the company in January. Bound premiered as a part of their Fast Forward Program in March 2022.
CURATION AND COLLABORATIONS
The Kennedy Center
Reframing the Narrative
Eleven black dancers from historically white ballet companies were commissioned by The Kennedy Center to create and perform a brand new ballet in just two weeks. This is their story… —– Guest curator Theresa Ruth Howard facilitated a two-week creative process through Kennedy Center Social Impact’s Office Hours Residency Program with renowned choreographer Donald Byrd, using the music of Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon, to birth this stunning piece that premiered on the Reframing the Narrative program in the Kennedy Center Opera House alongside works presented by Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ballethnic Dance Company, and Collage Dance Collective.
Reframing the Narrative: Blacks in Ballet | A Kennedy Center Digital Stage Original
Donald Byrd’s “From Other Suns” | A World Premiere Ballet from The Kennedy Center
PTP Jacob’s Pillow (LAB)
MARCH 10-19 2022
For this upcoming Pillow Lab, MoBBallet Founder Theresa Ruth Howard tapped 2021 Guggenheim Fellow Christopher Huggins. Huggins will be in process with international Black dancers, some of whom participated in the Kennedy Center’s Reframing the Narrative residency curated by Howard, for which she commissioned Donald Byrd to create From Other Suns.
The dancers in this Pillow Lab residency are: Precious Adams, Corey Bourbonniere, Josh Bodden, Princess Gates, Jonathan Philbert, Miranda Silviera, Raquel Smith, and Tyrone Walker.
The Pathways to Performance Choreographic Program (PTP) Pillow Lab will provide an opportunity for Huggins, who works internationally and does not have a traditional “home base” to work, with a highly selective group of ballet artists outside of a traditional company setting to investigate his aesthetic in a ballet vernacular and specifically working on pointe. In 2015, he set In the Mirror of Her Mind on Dance Theater of Harlem, dipping his toe into the ballet space, but he was not afforded another opportunity to investigate the possibility of commuting his dynamic contemporary work into a balletic context. Pathways to Performance offers him a risk-free environment to explore.
Residencies like the Pillow Lab will help PTP to build an evening of works that will be presented at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater in July 2024.
Inside the Pillow Lab: Theresa Ruth Howard
The Young Talent Festival at the Royal Opera House : celebrating
a wealth of emerging dance talent
Theresa Ruth Howard curated the aspect of the symposium which was designed to debate the cultural barriers to ballet and dance training for young people across the United Kingdom. in addition to delivering the keynote speech in which discuss the difference between exposure, access and opportunity and how these factors affect the talent pipeline she curated and moderated Exploring the Blockages, Stigmas and Hindrances to Ballet, Panelist:David Pickering, Learning and Participation Creative Associate, The Royal Ballet; Shevelle Dynott, a dancer with English National Ballet; Bim Malcomson, Chance to Dance Lead Artist; Ginny Brown, CEO, Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing; Pippa Cobbing, Primary Steps Manager, The Royal Ballet School and Fleur Derbyshire-Fox, Engagement Director, English National Ballet.
Partnerships
In an effort to promote greater inclusion in ballet, The Kennedy Center and Jacob’s Pillowar pleased to announce a multi-year partnership commitment to MoBBallet’s Pathways to Performance, a program designed to provide a support network for Black dancers in premiere ballet companies and also cultivate and mentor Black choreographers working in the ballet aesthetic, by providing concrete opportunities for the creation and presentation of new works. Not only will choreographers receive multiple residencies at both institutions, but will as so be presented at the Kennedy Center with Pathways to Performance: Exercises in Reframing the Narrative (July 2-3) and the Pillow Festival, Summer 2024.
Williams Collage
The Constellation Project: Mapping the Dark Stars
The Constellation Project was created in partnership with Williams College when Howard was invited to co-teach a course with the school’s Artist in Residence, Janine Parker. The project includes research conducted by students of the Williams College Dance Department. The partnership allowed Howard to develop the project and examine the effects that teaching intersectionality had on students’ perceptions of Black artists’ contributions. Howard intends to partner with other colleges and institutions to continue to expand the project’s Universe. The key theme that the project explores is the influence of historical Black colleges and universities, Greek letter organizations, Black society and community on the history of dance. This way, the project serves to humanize their subjects and show that Black artists’ Black lives matter. “This goes beyond just Blacks in ballet; I see this as a truly anthropological study in Black life through the lens of art,” says Howard.
*MoBBallet has been asked to work with Williams again.
Pratt School of Design Interiors: MoBBallet Theoretical Library Project
This past fall, Associate Professor Annie Coggan extended an invitation to MoBBallet to become the first ever hypothetical client of Pratt Institute’s School of Design 3rd year Interiors studio course. Students were asked to re-envision the Arlington branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn as a physical space for our digital organization—a manifestation of the MoBBallet website, mission and programming. Conceptually, the intention was to form a physical archive. The “MoBBallet Foundation” would be a library but a 21st century rendition of a library. Students were challenged with the notion of a text-based library, having to develop space that would house the MoBBallet archives, enabling access to digital-based information, dance films, and interviews; to invent a kinetic library for dancers and dance enthusiasts to absorb the work of MoBBallet; and to create studio space to continue the physical practice of the art itself.
*MoBBallet has been asked to work with Pratt again.