Diversity Be Like...Brown girls doing ballet

Show Transcript

[00:00:15.370] – Host: Sequoia Houston

All right, hello, everyone, and welcome to Diversity Be Like, a podcast that explores the nuanced dynamics of diversity and what true inclusion, equity and respect looks like. Each week we interview industry leaders and subject matter experts in this space and get their take on why all of this is important. I’m your host, Sequoia Houston. And today we will be talking with one of my dear friends and my alumna TaKiyah Wallace. TaKiyah is the founder and executive director of the international nonprofit Brown Girls Do Ballet. So without much further ado, welcome TaKiyah.

[00:00:52.810] – TaKiyah Wallace

Thank you for having me. It’s always funny when people say international nonprofit, like, how did that happen?

[00:00:58.090] – Sequoia

I mean, it is, though. It is. And I think we’re all super proud of you. So we’re definitely going to get better at what we can.

[00:01:05.800] – TaKiyah

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

[00:01:09.350] – Sequoia

So tell us. Tell us a little bit about yourself and tell the people about Brown Girls Do Ballet.

[00:01:15.160] – TaKiyah

Sure. Sure. So my name is TaKiyah Wallace, as Sequoia said. I am based in Fort Worth, Texas, which is the more fabulous cousin to Dallas, Texas, and I have been in Texas for a long  time.

[00:01:32.410]

I must say that I’m not originally from here, but I got here as fast as I could. I am like Sequoia also, said the founder and executive director of a nonprofit called Brown Girls Do Inc. More specifically, we are known for Brown Girls Do Ballet, which started for me as a photography project in 2012. At the time, I had a three year old daughter who told me she wanted to take ballet and I know we’re on a podcast so you can’t see me, but I am not that girl.

[00:01:59.770]

I didn’t know anything about ballet. I’d never taken a ballet class before, but I did know how to use Google. Google is our friend. In searching. We were living in Dallas at the time. In searching for a studio for her to begin her ballet training, I learned very quickly, just because I’m a visual person, that there weren’t very many images of little black girls in ballet classes where we are on our local dance websites. So this was like I said, in 2012. I was moonlighting as a photographer.

[00:02:29.350]

We all moonlight as something and I decided that year photographers have these downtimes after the Christmas holidays when everyone’s all family photoed out and we’re all looking for things to shoot. I decided to take on a personal project in finding dancers of color. So I put the casting call up on Facebook looking for these dancers. The casting call went viral. I learned very quickly that viral means you don’t get to sleep again. So I haven’t slept since 2012, in case you’re wondering.

[00:03:00.010]

And that was kind of the beginning of things. After shooting the project for the very first weekend in Dallas, getting all these stories from the moms telling me how important it was for me to continue shooting the project. And I still didn’t understand why. I knew I wanted to see my daughter in the space and I wanted her to feel empowered seeing herself in this ballet space. But I didn’t realize there were so many girls across the world who had the same exact longing.

[00:03:26.350]

So now fast forward a few years. We just celebrated our eighth birthday. We are a full fledged non-profit that provides resources to dancers of color. I still, as a photographer, go out and shoot the project. But that piece has become more so an outreach piece in a way, for me to kind of interact with communities around the country and learn those those little girl’s faces and that sort of thing. But we are most known for now, aside from providing scholarships and grants to dancers, is our ambassador program, which is our actual mentorship program, where we pair dancers of color with professional dance mentors.

[00:04:04.210]

So that’s the short spheal.

[00:04:07.060] – Sequoia

It broke up just little bit. You said where you paired dancers of color with who?

[00:04:10.000] – TaKiyah

We pair dancers of color with professional dance mentors.

[00:04:13.720] – Sequoia

Nice. So I think what I hear a lot in the diversity space, and I’m sure you probably hear it as well, is what difference does it make? Right. And this is just ballet. Right. But why does it need to be diverse? Why do little girls need to see people that look like them? Why are you making it about race?

[00:04:31.210] – TaKiyah

Yeah, I still get that. We get I was reading the comments section yesterday on Instagram and I was still getting that. Ballet is a European art form. Why are you trying to change it? And I’m like, OK, so are you are there not Europeans of color? Like when do we ever get to see ourselves in these spaces? And not just I’m a black woman, not just black women, women of different cultural backgrounds that don’t see themselves in most spaces would love to be able to do that.

[00:04:59.350]

When I think of it from the lens of just being a parent, in general, I never want my daughter to feel like she doesn’t belong somewhere because she doesn’t see herself in that space or she’s never seen anyone who looks like her in that room. So I think it’s always important to make sure that people feel included and that spaces are for them, doesn’t matter how it started. The world has evolved and is changing. And, eventually, I tell people all the time, even when we’re talking about ballet, eventually these conversations about diversity and inclusion, my hope eventually is that those won’t be there anymore.

[00:05:36.990]

But there will still need to be equity, especially in a classical art form such as ballet, because it is so expensive. And so even if we aren’t necessarily having the conversations about professional ballet companies and seeing girls of color involved in these programs, there will always be a need for us to probably provide these financial resources to introduce girls to ballet for the first time.

[00:06:03.600] – Sequoia

Absolutely. And I guess for those who don’t have daughters and those who don’t have any experience with ballet, why is ballet important? What does that do for young girls?

[00:06:14.610] – TaKiyah

I think I’ve had this conversation. I’ve been a teacher and I didn’t mention that that’s a big part of my background. But I’ve been a teacher for 18 years. I just left the classroom like three weeks ago.

[00:06:23.490]

It was a whole thing. In the middle of a pandemic. So I’ve been a teacher this entire time, even before becoming a parent. And I think what the arts do for young people is astounding. You look at reports about how arts in general help with math and science scores and all sorts of things. I think there’s always going to be a need for little people, young people to be exposed to these classical art forms. When you think about ballet, I never really looked at it beyond just kind of the visual pieces of it. It’s beautiful, right?

[00:06:57.570]

It’s beautiful. It’s something lovely to look at. But I actually took an adult ballet class and realized the physicality of it. Lord, it’s hard. Oh, my God, it’s hard.

[00:07:06.900]

So you’re talking about a bunch of different things, introducing them to math and science and art through about through an art form such as ballet, but then also how dancers can be absolutely seen as athletes and should be because I could not do it. I dropped out. Like, I dropped out of ballet.

[00:07:29.010]

And if you look at these women and men who have been dancing their entire lives and just how strong and powerful their bodies are, I think that it’s absolutely something that is going to be around forever and that we need to be exposing our children to. I think it also introduces you to a different way of living, to be honest with you. I was talking to a friend of mine a few years ago about what ballet can do, not what it has done for me or what it’s done for my daughter, but what it can do for you.

[00:07:57.750]

And she was a former dancer and she said, well, ballet changes lives. If you think about girls who have lived, let’s say, in this particular area. I always use Dallas as an example. For a long time. I taught in this area of Dallas called Oak Cliff. And if you’re not familiar with Dallas, Oak Cliff gets a bad rap. And right now it’s undergoing gentrification. So it’s a completely different situation than it used to be.

[00:08:20.580]

But if you imagine finding little brown girls in Oak Cliff and then taking them to Highland Park in Dallas, which is completely different, putting them in the middle of all of these little girls from Highland Park who’s always been around these classic art forms, and it’s a trip to the mall for them. This is normal for them and it’s not normal for our girls. It just it makes them sit up a little bit straighter. They’re paying a lot more attention to what’s going on in the room.

[00:08:48.930]

I think it just kind of lets you know that or introduces the idea that there’s something else outside of my block. My block is great. I know everybody here. Everyone’s amazing. I love it here. But we we love to have our children be able to maneuver in these spaces. I think I didn’t learn how to do that until I was much older. I love the idea now that my daughter and there’s a whole different conversation. I hate the idea that she is still in a space where she feels like sometimes she has to code switch.

[00:09:17.780]

We’re not doing that anymore, like be you fully. One hundred percent wherever you are. But I love the idea that because she’s been in these different rooms, she knows how to maneuver and she knows how to work that space. And that’s how you get ahead in life. It’s not what you know most of the time is who you know.

[00:09:33.780] – Sequoia

And how old is she now?

[00:09:35.460] – TaKiyah

She is eleven now. I just told somebody she was 13 other day. I don’t know where I got that from.

[00:09:41.160] – Sequoia

and already knows about code switching at eleven.

[00:09:45.030] – TaKiyah

She does. It’s so funny how natural those things come. We don’t. I bet you didn’t even realize the first time you did it that you did it. You know, you’re at home. You speak one way and then you’re out in the the world it’s something completely different.

[00:09:55.620] – Sequoia

I didn’t realize that I do it so often. So I had a conver… I was in. So I have a marketing agency as well. Right. And then I came to visit my parents one time and they picked me up from the airport. I was in the back of the car and got a phone call. So I was talking to them and all that stuff. I got the phone call and then it’s, “hi, this is Sequoia. How can I help you?” and they were like, who was that? Like who is that in the back of our car? Because it was completely different than the person that they had just talked to seconds ago.

[00:10:23.430]

A nd it was funny to me because I didn’t realize how often I slip into that.

[00:10:28.050] – TaKiyah

And you do it so much,

[00:10:30.540] – Sequoia

so many times, like, it’s second nature.

[00:10:33.930] – TaKiyah

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I’m finally kind of coming into this place. And this has been a long evolution. This has been me being a teacher where I felt like I had to present myself in a certain way, where I had a contract with the moral turpitude clause. So even on social media, I had to present myself for like high pieces. That’s when you have that close friends list, right? Because you can’t fully be yourself. Right.

[00:10:59.520]

We still find ways to code switch just out in the world, on social media. And I decided probably in the last three, four months because I knew that this transition that I’m going through now was coming, that I’m just gone full out be myself. Like I’m just I cannot be somebody else. So, like, if you don’t want to work with me, because I speak in slang on social media, we had a conversation and I slipped or whatever the situation may be, then it was never meant for us to work together.

[00:11:29.370]

And I’m also not going to be pretend to be or know things I don’t know to fit in in that space either.

[00:11:34.380] – Sequoia

Exactly. And you know that’s funny, because that’s when you think of the name Diversity Be Like and I’ve said this a couple times in and of itself is Ebonics. Right. And the reason I came up with it was because I was thinking about that’s something else that we have a bias towards is people who don’t speak the Queen’s English, they speak AAAVE or African-American vernacular English, a.k.a. Ebonics, and there are real ramifications of bias in that space. And so I think that’s super important. And we’re going to have an episode about that as well.

[00:12:05.940] – TaKiyah

Absolutely. I think in my space and I’m just thinking for me in general, one thing that is making it easier for me to absolutely and wholly be myself in any space that I’ve been in recently is because I feel like I have so many friends and even personal accolades at this point, that kind of like, are my introduction. These these precede me. So you already know these things about me. So when I show up and I’m like in my hoodie, like I have today, when I’m supposed to be at a real meeting and I’m like, “hey yo, what’s up? It’s so nice to meet you.” All of a sudden they’re like, oh, “she’s like down to earth.” Who did you think you were going to meet? Just because this is who I am.

[00:12:50.040]

But I hate the fact that I’ve had to have all these other things. People ask you for bios now, can I can I add you on LinkedIn ahead of time? LinkedIn is not me. Like it’s cute, but I think people are checking you out ahead of time now because they don’t want to be caught off guard. But in a lot of ways that allows me even more so to be myself just because you knew what you were getting when you scheduled this appointment with me at this point. I’m so you ran down my Instagram. I’m sure you ran down my Facebook. Whatever the situation. This is who I am. Hi, how are you?

[00:13:20.790] – Sequoia

One of the things that I found so weird about running MochaStock is that a lot of times people know about MochaStock before they know about me. And I imagine you have the same thing with Brown Girls that you say the name and people like, “oh, that’s you.” And it it’s so interesting. And yeah, I don’t even know how to feel about that, still.

[00:13:42.300] – TaKiyah

That’s a big deal. You know, when I started Brown Girls and I saw that it was kind of quickly gaining steam, I had this whole, and I remember talking to so many people close to me about this, I’m like, I need a face for it because it can’t be me. Like, it can’t be me, I can’t be myself and be attached to classical ballet. I can’t be myself and not have been a former dancer starting this organization. So I was like, I need a face. I need a face.

[00:14:05.160]

And I’m looking I’m like out in the world looking for this ballerina who’s going to be the face of the organization. And I remember maybe like a year into looking for this face and still having these conversations, the people chose me and I was like, like, this is not…ya’ll this ain’t for me. This is not for me. It can’t be my daughter because she’s so young. Like who? Like, why do I have to get up and do these interviews? Why do I have to talk? And I resisted them for a long time. I wouldn’t do podcast interviews, I wouldn’t do any printed press. I definitely wouldn’t do any video because I felt like people’d be like, “oh, it’s a sham.”

[00:14:42.900]

But in talking to the dancers and meeting the families themselves, they would tell me, like, no, you need to tell your story, let it be personal to you and just lead that way. And I will say in this space, even with the the elitists and the traditionalists who have been here before me that are people and women of color. There’s quite a few of them that it took them like five or six, some of them just last week, to kind of accept me in this space because I wasn’t someone who came to it as a long time dancer who had faced all of these levels of adversity and then decided to start this organization.

[00:15:21.540]

I came to it as a mom and a creative mom who just basically said, hey, I don’t see what I want to see in this space, so I’m going to go out and find it and I can’t, for me, I can’t understand why nobody else thought of this before me. But then also I always try and make it known even when I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be the face of it, but when I’m given the opportunity to speak now, number one, I don’t turn it down. And then number two, I always tell them I try to honor this space by making sure, number one, I do my research and I know what’s coming up and what’s behind me. But then also introducing the world to the dancers who have been in the trenches for a long time. And so that’s been a really big way for me to do that is by kind of pushing them to the front, even though the people chose me. And it is really weird for people to be like, “oh my God, you’re Brown Girls Do Ballet. And I’m like, no, my name is TaKiyah.” But I did happen to somehow start this. I tell people I’m an accidental activist. I did not mean to do this. It just happened. And so now it’s my duty to make sure it keeps going because one of these little girls in our mentorship program, I don’t know which one yet, is going to be the person who takes this over. And will have that authentic story like this is what happened to me. This is how I feel like things can change, but we’ll have already done all of the hard work to kind of get things up and going.

[00:16:49.110] – Sequoia

Interesting. It is. It’s really interesting. I still don’t know how to feel cuz it’s like, “oh.”

[00:16:53.550] – TaKiyah

And then they run down the other questions. “So how did you do this and how and what motivated you?” And I’m like, that’s when the part comes that like I’m like, OK, can you, can I send you some articles and you can read exactly what happened and then we won’t have to have this…what do you want on your burger? Let’s change the subject.

[00:17:11.520] – Sequoia

What’s funny is I always get a lot of people who are like, you know what I had thought about doing that, but I didn’t. And it’s like…

[00:17:17.700] – TaKiyah

That happens a lot. That happens a lot. And I’m like, yeah, OK. I did not mean to do this. And we’re here. And then, you know, you and I’m sure you’ve dealt with this as well. When you start something and people start looking at it and seeing and all of a sudden you got a mirror copy of exactly what you already put together. And you’re like hmmm, but it’s one thing another thing that I’ve learned in this industry and other ones that I’ve worked in, what’s for you and what is your vision, nobody else can come and take away because there’s a certain level of stamina you have to have. And when it’s something that you really want to do, something that is truly your idea, something that you worked really hard for. It’s my baby. This is my third child. Right. But it’s stamina. Sometimes you do need to rest. I took last week off and I rested and I was like, OK, today was Monday after Christmas. It’s time to get back to work again. So my vacation responder is still on. So it looks like I’m away, but I’m actually working.

[00:18:17.820] – Sequoia

Right. Well, I was going to ask you this. So you mentioned that you were an accidental activist. Did you do anything related to diversity or anything? Did you have any thoughts or was that a passion of yours before doing this?

[00:18:32.070] – TaKiyah

No, absolutely not. I’m one hundred percent honest when I say that it was not. I you know, I don’t even know the phrase D&I up until maybe like, it was way after Brown Girls, to be honest with you. Brown girls was up and running and then people kept saying “so working in the D&I space…” And then I’m like, what is…?Let me get on my phone. What is D&I? Oh! I guess I do work in this space? No, absolutely not. I think just what it was with me was the forever thing. When I was growing up, my family didn’t have a lot. We had what we needed. And I think to other people we looked like we had everything, but we didn’t have a lot. I didn’t understand that through the lens of adulthood until I became a parent. But I promised myself when I became a parent, anything my child wants to do, I’m going to make sure that it’s possible if it’s reasonable.

[00:19:24.810]

And so we think about she tells me she wants to go to the moon. Well, let me start figuring out when we’re going to start doing that and start saving up my money so that I can get her up there, you know? And so when she told me she wanted to take ballet it was a natural thing like, oh, let me check it out. But being a visual person and being a creative person, if I’m looking at a website and I don’t see, same thing with Mocha Stock, I don’t see any faces of color on your site. It appears to me that you can only do ballet if you are pale, with light eyes and blonde hair and that doesn’t makes sense to me. This is before Misty Copeland was Misty Copeland. This is before we saw so many dancers of color like out in the forefront. So I’m looking at these websites, I know Dallas is a diverse city. This doesn’t make sense to me, but OK, whatever. Only other option you had at the time in Dallas was Dallas Black.

[00:20:17.190]

And you go to Dallas Black, at the time, all you see on their website, are little black children. Right? So I’m like, are we segregated? What is going on here?

[00:20:25.970] – Sequoia

Something has to be done.

[00:20:27.990] – TaKiyah

So I’m like, how hard is it for you to have both in one space? So eventually, her story is, I did find a diverse studio, but it took some time and I didn’t know that the studio was diverse by looking at their online presence. And so I thought, well, if I’m having a hard time finding dancers of color and even at the time at the Google, if you put in black ballerina, you got black ballet flats, that’s what would pop up.

[00:20:52.590]

So other people must be having the same issue, too. And after figuring out and talking to all these parents, I realized not only was it an issue, but then actually being in the studio, it was an issue to these girls. I’m the only one in my classroom. My teacher said this to me because my skin is darker. My teacher said this to me because my hips are wider. My teacher said this to me because I have larger breasts.

[00:21:12.990]

And as the stories started being shared, I thought, OK, well, something needs to be done, but it’s not for me to do it. I just didn’t know it was for me to do it.

[00:21:22.410]

So accidentally, that kind of became my charge. But because I did not feel like that space was actually for me and it was something I should have been speaking on because I wasn’t a former dancer, I had to be very discreet about how I would handle things. So a dancer would come to me and say, this happened to me in my studio, or a mom would come and say, this happened to my daughter in my studio. I would just reach out to the studio and say, hey, I had a girl reach out to me. She said, this this and this happened. This is the way this could have been handled. And this is how you made her feel. Because if you’re a dancer and you’re in a space and you are you feel uncomfortable, you feel like if you speak up for yourself, you’re going to get roles taken away from you. You’re going to get discriminated against while you’re in the studio space. And no mother wants to feel like she’s paying her money for her child to be disrespected, especially in ballet, because it’s expensive.

[00:22:12.600]

So that’s really how it started. And then I think we got I got my first, like, role in the D&I space that I knew that’s what I was coming in to do. A very large ballet entity reached out to me and said, we want to make sure that we don’t end up on your list. Like people think we have this fictitious list of studios that have made the errors right. We don’t. And so they make sure we don’t end up on your bad list.

[00:22:38.860] – Sequoia

Let’s let them think that you have the list. Let’s let them think that you have the  list so they won’t do the things.

[00:22:44.340]

I’m fine with them thinking I have a list now. Because I will say in light of all of the things that have happened this year, I’ve learned just how powerful it is for people to feel like we might say something wrong bad or negative towards them. But they invited me to a meeting, basically, and they said, well, how how as an instructor, how can we make sure that a girl that is going through your program or that, you know, feels included in this space.

[00:23:07.080]

And so I just started running them down. I actually have a friend who is a diversity & inclusion expert. I pulled her into the meeting as well, and we just started kind of throwing ideas out there. They took those ideas and they started implementing them. And that was kind of the beginning of us really working in that space. So it’s something that we do now. We do it very quietly. It’s not we don’t nobody pays for. It’s not a package that we offer.

[00:23:30.870]

It’s just kind of like the right thing to do because people are, they may have great hearts, but people are still ignorant. And while it’s not our duty to educate everybody, but if we’re in this particular space and you reach out and you want to get better, we’ll help.

[00:23:48.300] – Sequoia

That’s super important and that brings me to my next question. So we talked about the catalyst for you getting started, right, but let’s talk a little bit about the work itself. And so, as you know, my goal in starting Diversity Be Like, the podcast, is to discuss nuance of diversity in different spaces. And so I think for us to have a true respect for diversity, equality and inclusion, we have to go on this journey, right, and that journey starts at bias, which is where a lot of people still are but then it moves on to tolerance it then goes on to understanding. It goes on to acceptance and then finally celebration. And I don’t know if that’s linear. I think it can be in some instances. I think we get to different places on that. But if you had to look at where you see your space right now, as opposed to where it was when you started, where along that journey, would you say the industry is?

[00:24:46.920]

In our case, I don’t think it’s linear. I think we’re bouncing around. I think we have done a really good job of celebrating. We’re celebrating the people who are doing the right things. And because we are celebrating very publicly on a platform that has a lot of eyes on it and a lot of followers, because we’re celebrating so publicly, it is causing a lot of other entities to look at themselves and figure out how they can get on that list. Right. Because if there’s a list of people doing the wrong things, there is a list of people doing the right things. And we publish the list of people doing the right things. Look at this brand. They did a great thing. Look at this dance entity. They did a great thing. And then I think that makes other people scramble to figure out what they did not do and how they can be like that other group of people. So I think we bounce back and forth, but I feel like ballet overall, we’re still at step one. Still at step one.

[00:25:46.490]

There have been some great strides made in the last eight years. I will say that. There are a lot of the larger ballet programs that are trying to be more equitable and thinking about how they handle their dancers of color. They’re providing resources to kind of help offset costs. They’re providing more opportunities for those dancers to be seen and not just because they look a certain way, which I think is important, but they are still so many other brands that are completely tone deaf and blind to every single thing that has happened in the last eight years. And I think this year, 2020, has been the magnifying year because people and Brown Girls is not known as a call-out organization. We don’t call people out. We only celebrate the wins. If you mess up, it may be an internal email

[00:26:38.030] – Sequoia

That’ll be a private conversation.

[00:26:40.140] – TaKiyah

But yeah, we don’t put you on blast. But this year the dancers have felt super empowered. When normally they would kind of behind closed doors it to us, this year they’re getting on social media and they’re using their voices, left and right. And because they are, we haven’t had to. We basically just are trying to help clean things up.

[00:27:00.920]

But I think I realized this year just how powerful our word is in the industry, because, I’ll give you an example. This summer, right after George Floyd was killed, we had all of these dance brands and dancers, brands all over the world, black square. We stand, we stand with the Black community and we are not tolerate racial injustice. And then you’re like, OK, that black square stayed up for a few days and then we’re kind of back to business as usual. Well, the dancers weren’t letting that fly, so they kind of kept it going for a long time.

[00:27:35.810]

And I sat still, I really didn’t say anything because I just wanted to see what was actually going to happen. If you’re new to ballet, one of the big issues in the past couple of years has been ballet pink. Ballet dancers wear pink because it’s supposed to match the skin tone of the dancers. But you are if you are a dancer of color, that ballet does not match, nor has it ever matched your skin tone. And we just kind of sat there and we took class and we did things the way we’re supposed to do because it was tradition and we never really spoke up for ourselves.

[00:28:04.040]

But the girls have really in the last few years started speaking up for themselves. And you have some larger dance brands that have decided to take ownership and say, oh, well, we’re going to start making brown tights and brown shoes so these dancers can feel included. But then you have some dancers or some brands who are just basically like, yeah, we’re going to do it. And then do none of the work at all. None of the work at all, and so when those black squares started being posted