His identification with this mission made it difficult for Fentroy to consider leaving the group, he said, even as he began to feel that staying would not “grow fast enough for my hunger.” He wanted a bigger company with more people to learn from. She wanted to dance in more works by European choreographers and feature-length classical ballets that the new Dance Theater couldn’t afford.
The Boston Ballet offered all this. I thought I could take these values and carry them with me.” When she moved to Boston she didn’t realize she would be the only Black woman or that it had been so long since the last one. “It can be hard to be different when you feel like you have no one to express or understand your concerns to,” she said.
For example: hair. In George Balanchine’s “Chaconne,” women let their hair down and said, “My hair was different from everyone else’s.” “I didn’t know what was true or how to ask the question.” She chose to wear wigs for several shows. And then she decided to come out with her natural hair. It was one of the freest moments of my life,” he said. “It was my acceptance on stage.”
Its rapid rise seemed to have slowed with the closure of the pandemic. “I felt like I was losing a piece of my identity when I wasn’t dancing,” she said. “I wanted to put that passionate energy into something that matters.”
He had ankle surgery during the downtime, but when he saw the protests following the murder of George Floyd, he felt compelled to join them, even on crutches. He wrote an article for Pointe magazine in June entitled “My Experience as a Black Ballerina in a World of Implicit Prejudices”, educating readers on what Black dancers go through and how they can help.
At a Boston Ballet town hall, she encouraged people to talk about race, and her frankness (which she owed the Dance Theater) led to her being asked to join the company’s diversity, equality and inclusion committee. “I learned that the staff respected my concerns,” he said. “I felt empowered to have that voice and help others.” He started Color Our Future, a mentoring program.