Cassa Pancho, MBE, founded Ballet Black in 2001, Britain’s most diverse ballet company celebrating dancers of black and Asian descent. Today it’s one of the most prolific commissioners of new and critically acclaimed ballets here in the UK. The journey in between however, has been huge. Racist barriers in the industry were high and it was only six years ago that the world leading designer, Freed of London, in collaboration with Ballet Black, developed the UK’s first range of point shoes for dancers with darker skin ...
Cassa Pancho, MBE, founded Ballet Black in 2001, Britain’s most diverse ballet company celebrating dancers of black and Asian descent. Today it’s one of the most prolific commissioners of new and critically acclaimed ballets here in the UK. The journey in between however, has been huge. Racist barriers in the industry were high and it was only six years ago that the world leading designer, Freed of London, in collaboration with Ballet Black, developed the UK’s first range of point shoes for dancers with darker skin tones. The exclusively pink or pale ballet shoe had long reigned as the symbol of a white-centric ballet world. It was trying to write her dissertation for a degree in The Art and Teaching of Classical Ballet, that Cassa realised she couldn’t interview black women in British ballet, because there weren’t any. As a young graduate, Cassa started Ballet Black, it was a brave under taking. Starting a new company is normally built around a star dancer and no-one was likely to take her seriously. But, Ballet Black offered a space where black and Asian dancers could come without feeling othered or marginalised and even a basic dance class was hugely popular. This is the work of a pioneer leading positive change. Black ballerinas being told they could only be cast in male roles or to break their feet because they didn’t fit a preferred, white, body type, are racist traumas to be left in the dust of this trailblazing work. Ballet Black is making a fundamental change in the diversity of classical ballet and to audiences in Britain. We talk about the freedom to be an artist, the stories that are told and who by, creative collaborations, the Ballet Black junior school and Ballet Black on Film.
Photo Credits:
Image of Cassa Pancho, solo, credited to Holly McGlynn
Images of the Ballet Black Company on stage and with Cassa in a Studio, are both credited to Photography by ASH
Series Audio Editor - Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview, news, reviews and your host are here: www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Ballet Black: www.balletblack.co.uk
Ballet Black on Film: www.bbonfilm.balletblack.co.uk
Performances and Dates: wwww.balletblack.co.uk/performances/
Reference also made to Justice 4 Windrush: www.justice4windrush.org
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