Staying en pointe: Dancer works for inclusion in ballet
When Alexandra Francois went to parties with lively music playing as a little girl, she couldn’t resist getting out of her chair and doing her thing.
“People would just step aside” when Alexandra took to the dance floor, recalls Alexandra’s mother, Martine Perrin-Francois. “She was about 3 years old just dancing like crazy. Any song that played she would just dance to it. I don’t know where she learned that.”
Alexandra, now 12, says the urge to dance has ruled her for as long as she can remember.
“I always had a thing for dancing — getting in the middle of things and just vibing and having fun,” the Baldwin middle-schooler said. “When there were parties with little kids or my parents would have parties, I would just get up and dance … I’d dance to anything that had a good beat.”
And the beat goes on for Alexandra, though her affinity these days is for one of dancing’s softer sides — ballet — and it has invited her into a national spotlight.
Alexandra, called Allie by family and friends, is one of the newest ambassadors for Brown Girls Do Ballet. The mission of the national nonprofit, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is “to help increase participation of underrepresented populations in ballet programs.” Its efforts include ballet performances, photo exhibitions, community outreach, and providing resources to assist girls in their ballet development. Serving for one year, Alexandra’s ambassadorship ends in December.
But her activism and activities won’t stop there.
Alexandra and her family have participated in Black Lives Matter marches, including events in Mineola and East Rockaway where she participated in group dance performances. Two years ago, she performed an African dance on “Saturday Night Live” for the season’s opener featuring Chance the Rapper. In 2021, Alexandra performed a contemporary dance at New York Fashion Week for Young Gods Clothing Brand.
In a recent ambassador project, Alexandra worked with the owner of the privately owned Capezio Dance Theatre Shop in Rockville Centre to display in its window a Black History Month tri-board she made with her mother. It featured photos and short bios of prominent Blacks in various dance genres.
Included were Sierra Leonian American Michaela DePrince, who dances with Boston Ballet; Misty Copeland, the first African American woman promoted to principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre; tap dancers Gregory Hines and Syncopated Ladies; Dance Theatre of Harlem founder Arthur Mitchell; Alvin Ailey, founder of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; and choreographer, actress, director, producer and singer-songwriter Debbie Allen.
“When young [Black] dancers can see something like that poster, it gives them hope,” Alexandra said. “These are people who opened doors for the rest of us.”
In another ambassador project, she participated in Brown Girls Do Ballet’s Tiny Dancer Book Club, creating a video of herself reading a children’s story about dance. Alexandra is also looking for a space where she can set up her own studio to teach dance to children, and she plans to participate in Brown Girl’s Supply Closet and pointe shoe programs.
“You donate money and shoes for kids who can’t afford to buy equipment, but instead of getting money I would rather ask friends who are no longer dancing to donate [their dance gear],” she explained.
Alexandra Francois of Baldwin places a poster celebrating Black History Month in the window of the Capezio Dance Theatre Shop in Rockville Centre on Feb. 21, 2022. Credit: Brittainy Newman
Community connection
Brown Girls Do Ballet founder and executive director, TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian, says Alexandra is impressive.
“Allie is off to an amazing start as an ambassador,” Wallace-McMillian said. “She’s already found a way to connect to dancers in her community as well as those we have in our virtual community. We are looking forward to hearing more from her this year.”
Capezio store owner Lisa Darcy sees Alexandra as the perfect representative for Brown Girls Do Ballet. “They made a good choice making her an ambassador,” said Darcy. “She’s beautiful, smart and well-spoken.”
Darcy added that Alexandra is a regular customer and that she was “on board” when Alexandra approached her about the poster, which, she said, “was very large, and people noticed it.” Darcy noted she would be willing to put up another one next year.
Andrew DiNapoli, principal of Baldwin Middle School, where Alexandra is in the eighth grade, says she sets an example.
“She’s a student that really sets the model of the school district for being involved, innovative, kind and respectful,” said DiNapoli. “Her course load has been as challenging as you can take as an eighth grader,” he added, involved in the business academy and choir, and taking two high school credit-bearing courses — algebra and earth science. “She’s trying different things on top of everything else she’s doing. What she’s achieving outside of school, she’s achieving inside.”
Alexandra, who got her first pair of pointe shoes at 9, has been a student at Elevation Dance Arts Studio in West Islip for the past three years and is now taking about 15 hours of classes a week in ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, tap, hip-hop and tumbling.
“I’ve trained dancers from all over the world who are in everything from ‘Hamilton’ [the Broadway show] to Dance Theatre of Harlem and American Ballet Theatre,” said Charis Moses, Elevation’s owner. “Allie is extremely naturally gifted. If Allie applies herself, she will go down in history as one of the best dancers ever.”
Alexandra Francois, center, practices ballet at Elevation Dance Arts in West Islip. Credit: Brittainy Newman
One of Alexandra’s goals as an ambassador is to encourage other girls of color, including those with curves, to get involved in ballet and to help promote the availability of ballet and pointe shoes and accessories that blend with the different shades of brown skin. Traditionally, such dancewear has only been widely available in pink tones, reflecting the skin of white ballerinas who have historically dominated ballet.
Having all one color, from shoes to tights, gives a dancer’s leg the seamless line important in ballet, Moses explains. Black dancers have often used makeup and dye to change their shoe colors.
“When I started, everybody always wore the same color tights and the same color shoes,” said Moses, 55, who is Black and lives in West Islip. She began dancing when she was 3. “Think of the Rockettes — the same color kicking in the line made the dancers have a smooth, unified look and it showed how synchronized it was,” but she noted that once the Rockettes adopted darker skin-tone tights and shoes, more companies started selling them.
Among the skin-tone dancewear items at Darcy’s store are ballet and jazz shoes, and undergarments such as shorts, briefs, leotards and tights. Knowing that Alexandra had been dyeing her pointe shoes, Darcy says she recently ordered a skin tone pointe shoe.
“When I would go to get my shoes, I would have to dye them myself,” Alexandra said. “Online they were back-ordered, or there were not enough skin tones ranging from light to dark to be able to get your shoe color and ribbons and elastic.”
Searching for inclusion
Alexandra’s mother, who enrolled Alexandra and her sister, Melissa, 20, in ballet as children, said she saw right away that, aside from tights and shoes, her girls wouldn’t necessarily see people like themselves in their classes.
The Brooklyn-born Perrin-Francois, 52, a psychotherapist, took ballet herself as a child. “I started ballet about 6 — I lived in Haiti for seven years and started dancing in Haiti, and then when I came back [to Brooklyn] I continued to dance.”
Ballet in the United States was different from in Haiti, where she lived from 3 years old until 10.
“I remember watching [white] ballerinas on TV and thought it would be a great thing to do,” Perrin-Francois said. But while her ballet teachers in Haiti were Black, “When I came back and took dance here there were no Black teachers teaching ballet,” she said. And it was the same, initially, for her daughters, whom she would take to see such Black companies as Alvin Ailey and Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Though Melissa Francois, now a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, didn’t pursue dance, Alexandra never stopped.
Alexandra was enrolled at Jam Dance and Fitness Center in Bellmore at 5 for a year, then, Perrin-Francois said, “I really wanted to get her around kids like her,” so she switched Alexandra to Layla’s Dance & Drum in Valley Stream — a more diverse school.
In about four years, she studied ballet, tap, African, Caribbean. And, Perrin-Francois said, “There we met a lot of teachers of color who became mentors to Allie, and they all later branched out and did workshops of their own.” Charis Moses was among them.
Perrin-Francois says Alexandra’s interest in ballet reached new heights in 2019 when the family vacationed in Cuba.
“I reached out to a contemporary Afro-Cuban dance company, Malpaso Dance, that I had seen at Martha’s Vineyard and asked if we could go to one of the practices during our vacation,” Perrin-Francois recalled. “The whole week was ballet, so we went to the rehearsals every day, and that’s when Allie fell in love with ballet.”
“Cuba was a great experience,” Alexandra said. It was her first opportunity to meet and dance with professional dancers. “I was taking classes with them and they danced in intense heat [with no air conditioning]. I feel like the struggle that goes into ballet isn’t really talked about or understood.”
Despite adverse conditions, they moved with beauty and grace, and she added, “they make mistakes and they’re real people.”
Alexandra says she has found ballet also has a calming effect on her. “It’s definitely relaxing for me and clears my mind. If I’m having a bad day, I can go to class and it helps me focus — even the music is calming and relaxing.”
“When I would go to get my shoes, I would have to dye them myself,” Alexandra Francois says of the effort to have point shoes that are the correct skin tone for her. Credit: Brittainy Newman
Looking ahead
What isn’t relaxing is the grueling practice schedule. “It’s hard. It’s difficult,” she said. “My friends will want to hang out and when I say I have dance they say, ‘Just skip it.’ They think you can just put on a pair of dance shoes and get into a professional ballet company.”
She added, “Sometimes I have to stay up until 12:30 [a.m.] to do my homework or read in the car — school is always first in my house.”
Alexandra, who enjoys swimming in her spare time, says that while doing a little bit of everything is challenging, she’s determined to set the stage for a future with a top ballet company.
“I started going online and having favorite dancers about two years ago,” she said. “I started doing an intensive watch of ballet and going to different performances in the city.”
Beyond her Capezio store poster, her role models include Katlyn Addison, the first Black female principal artist with Ballet West, and Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Amanda Smith and Ingrid Silva. Smith has been a mentor to Alexandra, the two having met when Smith taught classes at Moses’ West Islip Studio. The mentorship, sponsored by PointePeople, a shoe-dye company, included private lessons with Smith.
Alexandra’s father, Mathias Francois, who is 60 and works as an elevator inspector, says that while Alexandra’s academic success will always be primary, he supports her dream of becoming a top professional ballet dancer.
“She’s an outgoing person and happy kid who is focused on being a good student,” he said. “She’s a very independent kid. We want to support our kids in everything they do, as long as it’s positive.”
Alexandra says her goals will keep her on her toes.
After college, where she plans to major in performing arts and dance, she wants to audition for top ballet companies — like American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem and New York City Ballet.
“I want to be known not only as a dancer,” she said, “but as a brown dancer who opened pathways — who makes people say, ‘Wow,’ when they look at me.”
TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian, left, and her daughter, Charlie, 12. Wallace-McMillian founded Brown Girls Do Ballet in 2013. Credit: Esther Huynh
A national effort
Brown Girls Do Ballet was born in 2013 as a photography project started by its founder and executive director, Dallas resident TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian, who was searching for a diverse dance studio for her daughter, Charlie, then 3.
“I was a schoolteacher and did freelance photography on weekends and my daughter wanted to do ballet, but there were very few images of little girls of color [doing ballet] on local websites,” Wallace-McMillian recalled. There were pictures everywhere of those with blond hair and blue eyes, she says.
Knowing there were other young ballet dancers of color out there, Wallace-McMillian put out a call for a photo shoot on Facebook in the Dallas and Austin areas that went viral. She photographed girls of African, Asian, East Indian, Hispanic and Native American ancestry.
“I thought maybe I’d use the photos in a postcard set or a calendar or something for my daughter,” Wallace-McMillian said, but she discovered that behind the pictures were stories of shared experiences.
Parents of the girls she photographed brought up to Wallace-McMillian such issues as finding diversity in ballet classes, their daughters wanting to wear pulled-back braids or African American hairstyles other than the traditional bun worn by white ballet dancers, and the prevalence of the super-thin physique.
Others were asking where they could find brown tights or pointe shoes for a wider foot.
“All of these concerns came up, and I didn’t know what I could do about this,” Wallace-McMillian explained.
As she chronicled the photo project on Instagram, people began submitting their own images. It became a “community space,” she said, drawing submissions from Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Wallace-McMillian’s photographs became a traveling exhibition, the Brown Girls Do Ballet Photo Project, parts of which have traveled to Texas, Louisiana, California and Michigan.
“I had no idea this would turn into a movement,” Wallace-McMillian said of the photo project’s evolution into the nonprofit organization. In the works is also a coffee-table book, due out in 2023 from Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.
Beyond the photo exhibitions, Brown Girls Do Ballet’s efforts include performances, funds to assist girls in ballet development and “ambassadors” to help spread the word. A minimum of 12 ambassadors, ages 10 to 17, are typically selected, though 33 were chosen this year, including from New York, Connecticut and Kentucky.
For information about the organization as well as “Brown ballerina-friendly studios,” visit browngirlsdoballet.com.
— Lisa Irizarry
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the date of the family's trip to Cuba; it was in 2019.
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