Coppélia
Eleven-year-old Mya Kinnard has been dancing with Rejoice School of Ballet for a while. When her mother told her that one of her teachers, Kayla Rowser, was dancing in Swan Lake at TPAC, she wasn’t going to miss it.
“I said, ‘Mya, we’re going to go see Swan Lake, I heard Kayla is in that,’ and she got so excited,” says Mya’s mother, Eboney Kinnard. “ ‘Ms. Kayla? The one who teaches?’ We got there, and when the lights dimmed, we saw Kayla come out in her costume. She glided across the stage, and when the Mya saw her, you could just hear her gasp.”
Rowser is one of three black dancers with Nashville Ballet and is a teacher at Rejoice in East Nashville. For Mya, who is also black, seeing someone who looked like her onstage at TPAC was meaningful.
Coppélia
“Mya said, ‘Every time I look at her now, I’m going to know I’ll be a superstar,’ ” says Eboney. “ ‘That’s someone famous I’m learning from!’ Mya said when Kayla teaches at Rejoice, she tries to mimic her exactly. She said, ‘One day, I’m going to be dancing at TPAC like her.’ ”
Patricia Cross, founder and executive director of Rejoice, says ballet has not always been welcoming to black dancers. And though the world has changed a bit, the ballet world has lagged.
Cecilia Olusola Tribble, community and organizational development coordinator for Metro Arts, is with Racial Equity in Arts Leadership (REAL), which works with organizations on how to make their programs more racially inclusive. Tribble says the arts and culture communities have to address those lags.
“I think because Nashville has a reputation for being a creative city, we have a responsibility to understand what that narrative means,” says Tribble, “and to make sure all Nashvillians have equitable access to and through the arts, because those things tell us what our values are.”
Cross says 20 years ago, that’s what she set out to do.
“I started a little summer program in 1998 and had 10 kids come,” says Cross. “And after working with them and seeing how much they loved it, I decided I had keep it going.”
Cross has since participated in the REAL program. Rejoice now serves more than 120 dancers in the Nashville area. Seventy-eight percent are classified as low-income, and 52 percent are black. Rejoice is currently preparing for upcoming performances of Coppélia, a comedy about a doctor who makes a life-size dancing doll. A local boy falls in love with the doll, Coppélia, despite being engaged to his real-life sweetheart, Swanhilda. With the performances, the team at Rejoice hopes to dive even further into what it means to be inclusive to diverse populations.
“At the center of everything, the struggle is for equity,” says Gerald Watson, a company member with Nashville Ballet and a choreographer with Rejoice, who says he’s experienced a lot as a black ballet dancer. “It’s hard to make someone feel equal, especially when you’re pulling them out of the line and letting them know first that they’re different.”
Eboney Kinnard says she doesn’t want Mya to grow up in a space where she feels different.
“I can remember when Mya was young, I put her in gymnastics, and it was $140 a week,” says Kinnard. “My mama was paying for it at the time. They really only paid attention to the ones who had the money. … When Mya started going to Rejoice, there was no choosing. Everyone was taught the same. Your money didn’t matter, and your skin didn’t either.”
Tribble says despite the good work any organization is doing, there is always room to improve.
“Any organization that is not growing is dead,” says Tribble. “And not necessarily growing by numbers or budget, but growing and deepening in their community practice. Every nonprofit should be thinking about the community — that is a growth point for all of us.”
Kinnard says the organization’s commitment to diversity touches everyone involved.
“When I was young, I had no one like the teachers at Rejoice to look up to,” she says. “But [Mya has people to tell her] that the sky isn’t even the limit — that she can succeed because they’re going to give her everything she needs to do it. Knowing that Mya already has it in her heart to try hard and want to go that extra mile, it’s overwhelming to think about, and I owe that to Rejoice.”
