Nena Gilreath and Waverly T. Lucas don’t think of themselves as heroes but thousands of Atlantans do.
For 33 years, the married couple has led the professional ensemble Ballethnic Dance Company, trained dancers in their school, and connected with Atlanta’s African American community in multiple ways. In so doing, they have proved that ballet is a relatable art form for and by people of all ethnicities.
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Credit: Bita Honarvar
Each week, more than 100 students, from toddlers to adults, attend classes at the couple’s school in East Point. Ballet, tap, modern dance, hip-hop and African drumming are all offered. But Gilreath says they do more than teach dance. For instance, they give nutrition workshops for both students and parents, engage with local schools, and create a fall festival for the community each October.
“We also do lots of mentoring, helping students to realize their creativity and also keep up with their schoolwork,” she says. “It’s a balance.”
She recently had a young man write and sign a contract in which he committed “to keep up his grades and be respectful.”
This time of year, more than 70 performers commit to attending rehearsals of Ballethnic’s annual Urban Nutcracker at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College. Among the dancers will be a group of men and women from the HJC Bowden Senior Multipurpose facility, another community connection.
The couple, now in their fifties, met in New York in the 1980s while dancing with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a Black ballet company founded by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook.
Moving South, they danced briefly with Atlanta Ballet, but soon decided that their mission, inspired by Mitchell, was to start their own professional ballet company. They launched Ballethnic Dance Company in 1990.
Credit: Keiko Guest Photography
Credit: Keiko Guest Photography
Years of hard work followed and there have been many setbacks, but the couple has consistently done innovative work, creating ballets that champion and mirror the Black community. In 2011, Lucas adapted Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage’s play Flyin’ West into a ballet, one of several rich collaborations with other artists.
In 2020, the company was among a group of Black arts organizations that protested the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta’s COVID-19 emergency funding – no Black arts companies received grants. The protest got results. Later that year, Ballethnic was one of the ensembles to benefit from $1.15 million in grants, of which more than 90 percent went to organizations of color.
Lucas and Gilreath have never wanted to tour, preferring to embed themselves in the community and show Atlantans that ballet’s centuries-old technique can just as easily tell stories about Africa’s sweeping grasslands and Black folks in America, as it can about European village maidens and white swans.
But when they were invited last year to go to Washington, D.C. to participate in Reframing the Narrative, a week-long event celebrating Blacks in ballet at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, they signed up immediately. Ballethnic was one of only three professional companies to perform there.
Earlier this year, Gilreath and Lucas were honored by the national organization Dance/USA for their contributions to the field. They basked in the limelight at the awards event, then got back to business: Teaching, creating, mentoring, rehearsing, performing and inspiring new generations of dancers.
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