“I started ballet lessons at five. My grandmother thought I should have a passion. At nine, I joined a nearby studio and stayed with them until sixteen.”
“Then you came to Russia?”
“Yes.”
“Your old school, the Bolshoi Academy has become increasingly open to foreign students. What do you think about the body imaging problems that these ballet schools force on their students?”
“This is something that every ballet dancer faces—male or female, black or white. When you’re not pushed to the limit, you’re inspected. They want to make sure that you’re not too heavy or skinny. One must always have the right look. Right body. Right weight.” I shook my head. “Whatever that is. I just try to eat healthy, work out, and not go too far. I won’t starve myself, and I’m not going to stay up all night worrying about pounds.”
I’d decided at sixteen that if someone kicked me out for being too fat, then I would take my behind back to New York and do something else. I loved food too much to starve myself.
Mrs. Anderson pushed on. “So, then what is your advice to the little girls that want to be a ballerina?”
“Do it because you love it. Do it because it burns in your heart. So when you’re faced with the tough times—the inspections and racial barriers that may come—that fire forces you not to quit.”
“Is that what you told yourself, when you were faced with discrimination from an institution used to dancers of a. . .paler complexion?”
I thought back to the moment before the performance when one of my fellow ballerinas gave me a towel.
“Here.”
“What is this for?” I’d asked.
“Maybe you can rub some of the black off.” Eisenia laughed and walked out of my dressing room. “Good luck tonight.”
“Bitch.”
I stirred in my seat. “Yes. That’s what I tell myself.”
I didn’t have the look like the other ballerinas in this industry. Unlike all my classmates at the school, or the ballerinas in the company, I was black. Most of the years at the academy, I was left out of performances because of my color. My dark skin singled me out and prevented my casting in most of the group pieces.
“Ava, no. You’re too dark for this role.” The old show director had patted my back. “And that is horrible because you are so talented. If I could rub the black off your skin, I would.”
Everyone had laughed.
Many thought of it as a harmless joke. Others probably relished in the cruelty. One teacher left with a disgusted expression on her face. She had begun vouching for me more after that, becoming my personal champion at the academy.
And then there was O and I who stood there horrified, unsure that he had said it at all.
I was never good in situations like that. Growing up in New York, I never really had to deal with it.
That day, the old artistic director had walked out of the class with his racist tongue. O remained and consoled me. That was how we’d become friends from then on.
Luckily, the theater fired the artistic director for another situation. Later, Akiva Petrov had been hired and he let me do small roles, never commenting on my color, but not impressed with my dancing either.
Unfortunately, Rub the black off had been an ongoing joke among my company. One that people whispered, when they thought I didn’t hear them.
Mrs. Anderson finished scribbling in her notebook. “What were some of your low points during this discrimination?”
I fisted my hands in my lap, wondering how truthful I would be in the interview. It was supposed to be a nice fluffy piece—a cute Cinderella-redemption story mixed with some black soul. Something nice to brighten magazine readers’ morning. I wasn’t trying to be the face of some civil rights movement in the ballet industry.
How much do I say?
I blew out a long breath. “There were some pretty dark moments during those years. I really let the discrimination affect me.”
She leaned forward.
You know what? Just be as real as you can be. That’s all I can do. If somebody has a problem with my truth, then whatever.
I released the tension from my hands and decided to confess it all, “After being passed over for several roles in school, I experimented with skin bleaching.”
Mrs. Anderson raised her eyebrows.
“As a teen, I thought that a lighter skin tone was directly connected to my dreams. I didn’t know that it was up to me to jump up and grab it.”
“What did you use?”
“Regular skin bleaching creams from the store. The main ingredient was usually hydroquinone. It brings about permanent skin lightening by preventing a skin enzyme reaction which is what causes dark pigments.”
“It sounds like you did a lot of research on it.”
“I did. I was obsessed with this for so long. I started putting this toxic stuff all over me. It would burn me at night.”