HeadLINES: Valuing Diversity in Art

Originally published in HeadLINES, the official blog of Alonzo King LINES Ballet.

From the LINES website: "The Discovery Project addresses ways to use dance to bridge gaps created by diversity of experience, perspective, culture, and socioeconomic background."

I love that as a faculty we are able to bridge some of those gaps in large part because we ourselves are a diverse alliance of personhood and experience. Most of the Education Program teachers are either of color and/or female and/or LGBT, and beautifully heterogeneous in terms of dance background, body shape, and artistic interest.

But one of my favorite parts of Discovery Project is being part of a literal coalition of color coming in to catalyze a dance community.

I have done several DPs where the entire teaching faculty is of color — that is so incredibly powerful. One cannot underestimate the power of young people seeing themselves modeled at the front of the room, perhaps for the first time, perhaps taking their first ballet class from a black or Chinese instructor.

You can read the full story on the HeadLINES blog.