Black Girls Dance Trains And Supports Dancers Of Color
Black Girls Dance Trains And Supports Dancers Of Color
By Tia Carol Jones
Erin Barnett became enamored with dance the first time she watched Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in “White Christmas” and saw Rogers dancing in a ball gown with diamonds, looking graceful. She knew she wanted to become a dancer. Her mother found Mayfair Academy on the city’s South Side, and she started taking classes there at 6-years-old.
Once Barnett started dancing, she really gravitated toward classical Ballet and switched school, attending a prestigious Ballet school in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood. Outside of the comfort of her neighborhood and being the only Black girl in the room, Barnett started to experience microaggressions and began feeling overlooked. Having to process that as a 12-year old girl, she said that when she had a chance she would start a dance studio where Black girls were centered and supported, which would also give those girls the same kind of training that she received at that Ballet school. It led her to create Black Girls Dance.
Barnett majored in dance at Howard University, danced professionally for dance companies in New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and even performed in The Lion King on Broadway. When she came back to Chicago to teach, dancers of color who were early on in their careers shared their experience in the dance community in the Chicagoland area. She started Black Girls Dance in 2015 as a way to give back to young dance professionals to help them navigate their careers, while introducing them to directors and mentoring them.
In 2017, Barnett started a conference with masterclasses and workshops, where she would bring in high profile, industry-connected instructors and choreographers and host anywhere between 60 to 80 girls. At the end of the conference, Barnett would award one of the dancers with a $1,000 scholarship. Scholarship is something that was important to Barnett in the development of Black Girls Dance because dance training can be expensive. The scholarship is also a way for Barnett to honor the sacrifice that parents make in order to encourage their children who have a passion for dance.
Black Girls Dance’s vision is to grow its community into a global movement by becoming the no. 1 resource for women and girl dancers of color. Barnett and Black Girls Dance are on a mission to provide performance opportunities, scholarship assistance and career guidance to Black girl dancers so they can have everything they need to pursue their dance dreams.
On Dec. 14th, Black Girls Dance will present, “Mary, A Holiday Dansical,” at the Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts, located at 915 E. 60th St. Barnett said she came up with the idea because as a student at Howard University, Barnett would perform in Langston Hughes’ “Black Nativity” at the Kennedy Center.
She said it was such a top tier production, she wanted to put a modern twist on it, so it would be accessible to the younger generation. She started to create the soundtrack, which included Black Christmas songs like “Mary, Did You Know” and “Joy to the World.” For the story, Barnett envisioned what it would feel like for a teenage girl like Mary to navigate being pregnant with Jesus Christ.
Barnett said that families love the performance. She said it entertains, educates and brings people together in community during the Christmas season. She said she thinks the audience will have their hearts filled to the brim with hope, seeing young Black and brown girls on stage performing at a high level.
Nia Sioux and her mother Dr. Holly Frazier, from Dance Moms, will participate in a fireside chat before the performance about what spaces like Black Girls Dance would’ve meant for Sioux as she was on her dance journey and what Black Girls Dance does for Black girls.
For more information about Black Girls Dance, visit www.blackgirlsdance.org, email blackgirlsdanceorg@gmail.com or call 312-618-7673.
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