Michaela Mabinty Deprince, a renowned dancer and public figure, was a trailblazer for women of color in the highly homogenous white-dominated realm of ballet. On September 10th, 2024, Deprince passed away at the age of 29, and set the news abuzz. Her cause of death has yet to be disclosed.
She has proven herself time and time again, from living through war, to pushing her way through discrimination for both her skin color and skin condition in her childhood. She was awarded the Youth America Grand Prix Scholarship, and became an esteemed soloist at the Dutch National Ballet, and did it all while managing to heal her mental health and improve herself by the end of it.
So far, the media has focused on her origins as an orphan of the Sierra Leone civil war, with headlines focusing on her unique and tragic upbringing and the narrative that she beat the odds to make it to where she was. While Deprince deserves recognition for what she has overcome to become an accomplished dancer and a powerful figure, even for those uninvolved in dance, to focus solely on her background is a waste of a rich, fulfilling career.
Over the years she has worked with numerous accredited ballet companies and has performed in many full productions. Her experiences made her who she was. However, the significance of her repertoire deserves to be highlighted alongside her unique life experiences.
Some of her notable works within dance include: Beyonce’s Lemonade Music Video, Dancing with the Stars, and the 2021 Coppelia Motion Film. Outside of dance, she has been a part of many modeling and advertising campaigns, such as for Nike, Band-Aid, Tommy Hilfiger, Chase Bank, Harper’s Bazaar, among others. In addition to that, she was an ambassador for War Child, and spoke alongside former president Barack Obama at the Forward Thinking Leadership 2018 seminar.
After her adoption into the Deprince family and subsequent move to the United States, she took her attraction to dance with her. At the age of 5, she began dancing when her parents enrolled her in Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia. She was such a dedicated dancer, so much so that once her family moved to Vermont, she did not move with them and continued attending as a boarding student at the age of 13.
Every year, young dancers look forward to their chance to compete for a scholarship and attend a prestigious ballet institution. One of the main ways in which they do so is through the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP).
The Youth America Grand Prix, an organization as well as a competition, describes themselves in their mission statement as “a New York-based 501(C)(3) non-profit dance education organization with a MISSION to support and develop world-class dancers, ages 9-19, of all economic, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds by providing scholarship auditions, performance and education opportunities, and by serving as a global network of dance, connecting students, teachers, schools, dance companies, dancers, and audiences.”
In 2009, that was Michaela Deprince. At the age of 13 she was awarded the title of Junior Youth Grand Prix in the Philadelphia Semi Final. For her outstanding performance, she was awarded a full scholarship to attend the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT).
Even past that, the YAGP determined the large scale of her major ballet career, and time in the public eye, starting in 2011. Deprince was one of the six up-and-coming subjects of the documentary First Position, which chronicled her journey amongst other young ballet dancers in their preparation for the YAGP.
After First Position, in 2012, she made her professional debut with the Joburg Ballet in South Africa as a guest principal dancer. She also performed with the Dance Theater of Harlem as their youngest ever principal dancer. On top of that, she appeared on Dancing with the Stars, further proliferating her name to the public.
Although these partnerships were only for 2012 and 2013, Deprince was only 17, with an established career and an upward trajectory.
At that point in time, she truly began to shine through. In the first year of her professional career, the New York Times covered a showcase she had been in, took note of her performance by stating that her duet had emphasized “the sheer power of Michaela Deprince.”
However, what cut her time at the Dance Theater of Harlem short was not misfortune, but rather, she continued her ascent through the ballet world, and joined the Dutch National Ballet.
In 2014, she joined as a member of the Dutch National Junior Company, and served as an apprentice to the main company, before swiftly being promoted. Her ascent was unprecedented. She reached the rank of soloist in just 3 years and had lead roles in “The Nutcracker,” and “Coppelia,” as well as solo features in “Cinderella,” “Swan Lake,” and “Tarantella.” Her talent and passion for dance propelled her as she gained more and more recognition, staying with the Dutch National Ballet (DNB) until the age of 26.
During this time, she was also making a number of other titles for herself. Besides “soloist,” “dancer,” and even “trailblazer,” she expanded her horizons past the central idea of dance. She expanded into writing books, public speaking, advocacy, and leading advertising campaigns among other things.
However, during her time at the DNB, she had suffered an injury which forced her to take a break from ballet. In 2017, Deprince ruptured her Achilles tendon, and thus could not dance for an extended period of time.
In 2021, she joined the Boston Ballet as a second soloist, and concluded there shortly before her passing.
One of those events, however, was unlike the others. Throughout her entire career, she had only ever taken two weeks away from dancing. Her ruptured Achilles forced her away from dancing for at least 5 months.
Her journey of physical recovery was also a journey of self-discovery. In an interview with Pointe Magazine, Deprince said “If I hadn’t ruptured my Achilles, I don’t think I would have had the time and space to be able to know how important my mental health was.” In that same article, she discusses her post-traumatic stress disorder regarding her tumultuous childhood and issues with mental health, largely stemming from the constant reflection of her trauma that she had been subject to while writing and discussing her books and partnerships.
Deprince and her adoptive mother, Elaine Deprince are credited with co-writing three books over a span of three years, from 2014 to 2017. The first was Taking Flight, the autobiography of Michaela Deprince, and her journey navigating not only through the world of ballet, but through her past as a child of war and a victim of early tragedy. The book was even set for a film adaptation directed by Madonna in 2018.
Although the autobiography was meant to be a celebration of life and perseverance, it fed into the collapse of her mental health following her inability to regularly dance.
For years, Deprince was reliant on dancing consistently for a sense of identity as well as a sense of stability for her mental health. This sudden change elicited new emotions and changes that would eventually lead to her hiatus, then departure from the Dutch National Ballet. After many setbacks in the two years on a path to full recovery, shortly after concluding that period of time, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In addition, her adoptive father passed away in September of 2020, when travel restrictions were still in full force.
The aforementioned hiatus from the DNB came then, and originally, she didn’t believe she could recover. But on the other side of it, she commented to Pointe Magazine that it was a “crisis of confidence, and a loss of identity” as a result of her temporary separation from dance and her hectic schedule regarding all of her advertisements and press events.
The expectations people had of her from what she was before leaked into her mindset of her new state, and thus she felt that she needed time to reevaluate.
Her consensus was to depart entirely from the DNB and stay briefly unaffiliated, moving back to the United States and retraining all the way from the basics. She trained with her longtime friend and mentor Charla Genn, who restored her confidence and set her forth for new beginnings. Hence resulting in her joining the Boston Ballet.
Setting aside the deepest hurt she has faced from her childhood, Michaela Deprince was a paradigm for perseverance and healing. The strides she made as an ‘atypical’ dancer will go on to aid the future generations. Although she may no longer be with us, her legacy remains as an inspiration for aspiring dancers and people in their daily lives alike.
Michaela Mabinty Deprince, a renowned dancer and public figure, was a trailblazer for women of color in the highly homogenous white-dominated realm of ballet.