[Ubuntu] , an African philosophy that believes a person’s individual humanity is caught up in the humanity of the community to which he or she belongs—an individual can’t thrive unless the community thrives.
for dancing, providing breakfast and snacks for the children who don’t have enough to eat at home. Safety concerns needed to be addressed as well—transportation could be dan- gerous and hijacking vehicles is com- mon (one student had to jump out a bus window to flee a gunman). Our support expanded to the amaz- ing teachers doing the work year- round: schools needed support for their wages, a teacher needed a house to live in, and we were able to bring South African teachers to America to participate in teacher training pro- grams. This past year, I worked to develop the Gugulethu Ballet Proj- ect Syllabus: a video compilation of ballet class exercises performed by young African-American women that together create a solid foundation of ballet technique. For teachers who don’t have a chance to travel and gain exposure to other styles of teaching and training, the videos can provide a codified lesson plan with progressive teaching methods modeled by women of color. During the pandemic, we arranged Zoom classes so that students could continue to train from home. This was no easy feat, as access to internet in the townships is extremely limited, expensive, and challenging. And when we work with the students directly, whether on our visits or when they come to America, we see even more needs to fulfill: food stability, dental work, medical attention, help arrang- ing travel, getting passports and visas, funds for audition fees, help taking audition photos and filming audi- tion videos, writing resumes, even just digesting the day’s events when immersed in a new culture. It is not enough to nurture just the dancer. We have to nourish the human and the community as well. And I have come to believe that dance (broadly) and ballet (specifi- cally) cannot become important ave- nues of expression independently of their larger cultural context.
I met Misty Copeland, the first Black woman to become a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, while teaching American Bal- let Theatre’s summer courses, and we become friends through our shared desire to increase the racial diversity of ballet dancers. I asked her if she could join us in an event to fundraise, and she gener- ously agreed, traveling to San Francisco to do an event benefiting our organiza- tion—a conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs hosted by City Arts & Lectures. The proceeds from that event were crucial to enabling us to proceed with confidence in the work ahead. Finding people who shared our mission and were willing to contribute their time, tal- ent, energy, and money has been crucial at every stage of our growth. 3. Be prepared to discover needs you didn’t anticipate. One of the biggest lessons these twenty years of experi- ence has taught me is what it means to support young peo- ple from rural townships in South Africa. It’s not as simple as giving them a fishing pole and teaching them to fish; in other words, just teaching
somehow infused it with their own unique energy, culture, and history. With their bodies and movements, they had transformed the ballet into something new and fresh. They were expanding the art form, growing bal- let, before my very own eyes. Awed and a bit overwhelmed, I dis- cussed with the South African teach- ers how this had happened. They smiled and replied simply, “Ubuntu.” They explained that ubuntu is often translated as “ I am because we are. ” It’s an African philosophy that believes a person’s individual human- ity is caught up in the humanity of the community to which he or she belongs—an individual can’t thrive unless the community thrives. The dancers understood that their success with their performance depended on more than their individual efforts, but on making sure that everyone else succeeded as well. As a result, the whole became greater than the sum of its parts, and something new materialized. It’s a philosophy I try to keep within my own life, allowing the communities I join to transform me into something new. Gugulethu Ballet Project’s 20th Anniversary Gala, March 2nd KRISTINE ELLIOTT, born in Oakland, California, and raised in San Mateo, trained with renowned teacher Richard Gibson before joining the Stuttgart Ballet at 18. After five years, she joined American Ballet Theatre as a soloist under Lucia Chase and later Mikhail Baryshnikov. After a decade with ABT, she transitioned to teaching, becoming an ABT Certified Teacher. Her passion for sharing ballet's transformative power led her to South Africa, where she began teach- ing young people in impoverished townships, inspiring the Gugulethu Ballet Project, now cele- brating its 20th anniversary. Today, she imparts her love of dance and high professional stand- ards to students of all ages.
There have been so many beauti- ful outcomes, too many to list here, both in and out of the dance world. But to share a few, former students have danced with Lion King (Ham- burg and London tours), Mat- thew Bourne’s Swan Lake , Ram- bert Dance Company, Cape Town City Ballet, Pina Bausch’s recent Rite of Spring , Robert Moses’ KIN, New Ballet in San Jose, Cape Bal- let Africa, and Ohio Contemporary Ballet. Some have graduated from college, founded their own dance companies and schools, become disc jockeys and choreographers, pur- chased homes and married and had children. And Chuma Mathiso, our most recent student to travel abroad for training, is currently a trainee with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program, completing his second semester. 4. Becoming a part of something larger than yourself will change you. One year, Amy Seiwert, current director of Smuin Ballet, offered a ballet piece entitled The Gift to the young dance students in South Africa. Wanting to honor Amy’s choreography and stay true to her vision, I taught the piece as metic- ulously and accurately as possible, step for step and note for note, with no improvisation. But then an interesting thing hap- pened. When the beautiful South African dancers had completed their rehearsals and performed the piece before an audience, I wit- nessed that despite faithful adher- ence to the original choreography, something new had emerged. The young South African dancers had
Mbulelo Ndabeni
from Africa, Europe, and Asia, and who often speak Afrikaans as well as English—and brought me into his community in Eersterivier. The consequences of apartheid policies still affect a social dis- tance between Black and coloured people in South Africa, but we wanted to serve both communities and also find a way to get them to work together. Nathan’s guidance helped us to bridge the gap, engen- dering artistic collaborations and exchanges between the schools in
each community, such as shared per- formances, partnering classes, and bringing in the Zolani Youth Choir to perform live accompaniment. The next phase of our work required seeking a fundraising part- ner who could bring more expo- sure and donors to our cause. As our offerings grew from annual teach- ing trips to South Africa and schol- arships to study in the US to direct support for partner schools in South Africa, our fundraising needs had grown larger.
them ballet with a level of training that may ultimately result in a job is not sufficient. There are so many disproportionate fields and deficits in these young artist’s lives. Some of these needs you might expect: tights, leotards, shoes. These were the things I thought to bring early on. But the longer I worked with our partner schools, the more needs made themselves known: mirrors in the studios, replacing the splin- tered wood floor with a floor safe
30
in dance WINTER 2025 30
WINTER 2025 in dance 31
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
unify strengthen amplify unify strengthen amplify
44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker