Black ballet dancers

New York Times: "IN 1933 Lincoln Kirstein wrote a passionate 16-page letter to his friend A. Everett Austin Jr., the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, introducing a man named George Balanchine and a dream: to remake ballet for America. The plan, as Kirstein wrote, was to have “four white girls and four white boys, about 16 years old, and eight of the same, negros.”

What resulted from that letter — the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet, both founded by Kirstein and Balanchine — have endured as major cultural institutions. But Kirstein’s plan for student diversity was never realized, and while other minorities have made inroads in classical ballet, the complicated reality of racial inequality persists, especially for black women."