DFW News App

When her daughter wanted to begin ballet, TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian noticed that few dancers of color were represented in local studios. Now, the photo project she began for her daughter will become a children’s book “Brown Girls Do Ballet: Celebrating Diverse Girls Taking Center Stage.” (Courtesy photo | TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian)
” data-medium-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/DSC_7061-Brown-Girls-Do-Ballet-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/DSC_7061-Brown-Girls-Do-Ballet-scaled.jpg?fit=780%2C521&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button”>When TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian was researching ballet classes for her daughter, she noticed a pattern. The majority of students and instructors at the ballet studios she found were white.She didn’t want her daughter to feel like an outsider the first time she walked into a ballet class, so Wallace-McMillian set out to find and photograph dancers of color.As she started taking photos for this project, parents started to share their stories. “All the stories were the same,” Wallace-McMillian said. “It was my first time interacting with other dance parents outside of taking my child to dance. And I didn’t realize the need, that other parents wanted to see the same thing.”She began to document her project on social media and, shortly after, it went viral. But on her way back from a photoshoot in Austin, a friend who helped her style the shots said what Wallace-McMillian had been thinking: Brown Girls Do Ballet was more than just a photo project.

Wallace-McMillian started a nonprofit and, since 2013, Brown Girls Do Ballet has awarded 74 scholarships to dancers totaling more than $99,000.The organization also offers mentorship, community workshops and a supply closet that helps make dance accessible to more kids. A public school educator for nearly 20 years, Wallace-McMillian left her teaching job in 2023. That same year, she published her first book, a hardcover coffee table book called “The Color of Dance: A Celebration of Diversity and Inclusion in the World of Ballet.”“I wanted more diverse options for my classroom, so when I was approached for ‘The Color of Dance,’” she said, “it was always in the back of my head that eventually a children’s book would come out of this.”Presale orders are open for her forthcoming children’s book “Brown Girls Do Ballet: Celebrating Diverse Girls Taking Center Stage,” which will launch Aug. 27.The mother of two is eager to start working on a third book. She wants to focus on adaptive dance, or classes that are available to dancers with autism or who might use a wheelchair or have prosthetics.“If I’m thinking about inclusion, I can’t just think about inclusion the way that I have been thinking about it,” Wallace-McMillian said. “I’ve got to think about full-on inclusion.”Marcheta Fornoff covers arts and culture for the Fort Worth Report. Reach her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.