Robinson is one of eight dancers with Ballet Black, the company started in 2001 by Cassa Pancho with a mission to “provide dancers and students of black and Asian descent with inspiring opportunities in classical ballet”. Of Trinidadian and British parentage, Pancho studied classical ballet at the Royal Academy. “All through ballet school I was really aware of the lack of black people around me,” she says. “So for my dissertation I thought I would interview black women working in ballet and see what they had to say – but I couldn’t find a single black woman working in ballet, and that really stunned me. When I graduated, I decided, very naively, to do something about it myself.”
(via gracefree)
