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This week's guest:

In 2018, brown and bronze pointe shoes, tailored for dancers of colour, made their commercial debut in the UK — nearly two centuries after the introduction of pink ones. The delay begs the questions: Why? Who paved the way? What were dancers of colour doing before then? And how has the landscape changed since? Join us as we dive into these questions with Cassa Pancho, the trailblazing founder of Ballet Black, a company committed to carving out space for dancers of colour in classical ballet.

In today’s episode, we discuss:  

• The question that sparked the idea for Ballet Black 
• Ballet Black’s role in changing what ballet repertoire looks like
• Cassa’s feedback on early prototypes of the brown pointe shoes
• The reaction to the launch of the shoes

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About Cassa Pancho: 

Born to Trinidadian and British parents, Cassa Pancho launched Ballet Black in 2001 after graduating from professional dance training. Her initial goal was to provide role models to young, aspiring Black and Asian dancers. Ballet Black won the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Company in 2009 and Best Mid-Scale Company in 2022. Cassa was awarded an MBE in the 2013 New Years’ Honours List for Services to classical ballet. To date, she has commissioned over 40 choreographers to create over 60 new ballets for Ballet Black.

Learn more about Ballet Black

Website: https://balletblack.co.uk

Follow Ballet Black on Instagram: @originalballetblack

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CP 0:00

What I've learned over the twenty two years is there's a societal issue, and that ballet is just working within that. You can't fix ballet and society is the same.

TS 0:12

CP 1:15

I'm Cassa Pancho. And I'm the founder and artistic director of Ballet Black, and I'm from London. My father is from Trinidad, and my mom is British. And I founded Ballet Black twenty two years ago to create space for dancers of Black and Asian descent in classical ballet.

TS 1:32

Okay, thank you. And congratulations on almost turning Twenty Two!

CP 1:36

Thank you.

TS 1:37

So I'd like to talk about life before Ballet Black, was ballet something that you've done from an early age?

CP 1:42

I was enrolled into ballet by my parents at age two and a half. So I think I can say I've been doing ballet, pretty much my entire life. Yeah.

TS 1:54

Wow. So what do you remember about your experience starting ballet, training to be a dancer, and what were your ambitions?

CP 2:02

I really didn't like ballet, when I started it. I was the kid that would cry in every class, because my parents would leave me and I'd be upset by that. And then somewhere along the way, I guess I started to like it. I don't remember that switch. But I remember it becoming a big part of my life. And just assuming that I would work in ballet in some form or another when I was a grown up.

TS 2:30

Okay, and how Tell me about that journey? How did you go from studying ballet as a child to thinking that it could potentially be a career?

CP 2:39

Well, by the time I was about eleven or twelve, I was going to ballet classes five or six times a week. So it really took up all of my time. And really the logical progression for me was to go to a professional ballet school when when time came. And so I auditioned and I got in, and that really set me on the path towards Ballet Black. I did one year, and then I injured my back quite badly, and I had to stop for two years. And in that time, I got really interested in behind the scenes stuff. So from wanting to be a ballet dancer, I really changed my mind because my back was, you know, very painful for two years. And I really lost I think the enthusiasm and the confidence to be a dancer. And I remember I would go back to my dance, to professional school to help them stage manage their productions. And I got really involved in things like the lighting design, and what happened backstage and everything you needed to know to put a production on. And I found that much more interesting, actually, than being the performer. So when I went back, I focused on choreography. And along the way, I suppose I became more and more aware, being a mixed race person that looks pretty white to most people, that there was a lot of stuff being said in the ballet world about what black people could and could not do in ballet and what they would and would not be interested in. And the prevalent ideas back then, and this was, you know, twenty five years ago, was that the black community is not interested in ballet or any classical art. And that, black bodies aren't built to do that kind of work. And I realized that because of the way I look, I would hear people speaking quite openly and for me in a very racist way without realizing that there was, you know, Caribbean presence in the room. And that got me thinking about what I would write my final year dissertation on in my third year, my fifth year because of my two years out but the third year of the training, and I decided to look at black women in British ballet and interview them to see what their journey had been to get to where they were in ballet.

TS 5:12

And what did you find?

CP 5:14

That they were no black women working professionally in ballet in Britain at that time.

TS 5:19

Oh, really?

CP 5:20

Yeah! So there wasn't anyone to interview. And I had to rethink the question, instead of what has happened to these women. Why aren't there any black women in British ballet? And I looked at things like marketing for schools, training, talked to a lot of American dancers, because there's a much longer history of black people in ballet in the US. And also contemporary dancers from the UK and, I also spoke to some black male dancers as well who were working in ballet. And the overwhelming feedback was, when I was training, I was the only black person in the room, I was always advised by my teacher not to do ballet because there wouldn't be a job for me. I was told that my body wasn't right for ballet. And my family didn't want me to sort of put myself through that. So although there were lots of people that really were passionate about ballet, they hadn't pursued it, because there wasn't really a pathway for them to do so successfully.

TS 6:22

And how did you feel when you discovered that, what what went through your mind?

CP 6:27

Back then, I was much younger, I was, I didn't really understand a black person's place in the UK because all the history lessons I had did not talk about Windrush, did not talk about slavery, and Britain's links to it. I grew up thinking that Britain eliminated slavery, because that is the the prevailing story until more recently, when we start to really learn about our own history. And even when I was researching my dissertation, I was looking at when the majority of black people came to the UK, and I thought it was after the Second World War. And there was nothing about all the people that had been here for hundred years before. So I think, although it made me very angry, I didn't quite understand how racism is built into our society, and how that affects black and mixed people from every walk of life, including my own dad. And he didn't know that history really. And I didn't know that history. And nowadays, what I'm seeing like with our students is they know a lot more about where we came from, than I did at that at that age, because we're talking about it, or even though people don't want us to talk about it, we are talking about it now. We're acknowledging things. So because I didn't fully understand the context, I didn't see how difficult it would be to make that change in ballet. Because what I've learned over the twenty two years is there's a societal issue, and that ballet is just working within that. You can't fix ballet, and the society is the same. So that big picture has to change, to have a knock on effect to things like tiny things like ballet.

TS 8:03

So how, how soon after completing your dissertation, did you come up with the idea for Ballet Black? And why specifically a company for black and brown dancers? Why did you think that was the solution?

CP 8:16

I did it straight out of school. So I started it as I graduated. And what I felt was clear was from the feedback from the people I'd interviewed, that if a space could be made where black people were not the minority, so the person in power, the teacher or the coach, or the choreographer, was black, not white, that immediately changes the dynamic in the room. And just through having a black teacher, loads of black artists came to Ballet Black's first few classes. It started out as a class, not really a company because we haven't got that far yet. And I didn't really have to say much more to people other than it was called Ballet Black, and the teacher, I hired a teacher who had just retired from English National Ballet company, just as he was retiring and looking for his next career step. I was graduating and asked him if he would like to come and be the teacher for this thing that I was trying to start. And he said yes, and just by changing that in the room, we didn't go on and on about race or anything like that. We just just existed as we were. It just drew people to us. And just by saying it's called Ballet Black, and having a black teacher in charge of the room meant that we eliminated all those barriers that black people had been facing about what they could and couldn't do, and what they should and shouldn't do in a classical ballet space.

TS 9:48

So what would you say were your original goals for Ballet Black?

CP 9:52

My original goals were to have role models on stage to encourage kids from age two and a half up to see themselves reflected on stage and know that they could go into ballet. And there could be a pathway for them. And as we went along with each year and each year of experience, because I was just a student, when I started it. I realized that in a way, only having loads of black dancers isn't, wouldn't be enough. Who are the decision makers in ballet? who is funding ballet? who's producing it? who's choreographing it? All of that was still completely Caucasian. You know, not a single element of color in there at all. And about halfway through, so about ten years into ballet, I mean, it was a real effort to find black dancers and to train people to be of that classical ballet standard, to prove that there is no difference. So that took all of my first decades to maintain that. But partway through, we realized, I realized we need black producers, we need black choreographers, we need to change what the rest of it looks like, more black teachers. The thing with ballet is that most people working in ballet on the creative side, have been a dancer. So they've had their professional career and then they go out and teach or then they go out and choreograph or become artistic directors. So it still kept coming back to the performance, we still needed to have them. But we had to wait for them to have a career which could last twenty years before they were ready to go out and take a leadership role. And in this year, twenty two, a dancer has left the company at the young age of 36, which is old in ballet years but not old in like human years. And she has gone on to take over a very prestigious dance school. So that is a black woman in charge of a ballet school that had never had a black person in charge before. But she had done fifteen years with us before she was ready to retire as a dancer and move on into that role. We now have a couple of other dancers who were with me fifteen, twenty years ago who are retiring out. But if you think about the time, it takes us not, in administrative roles, you can train someone to do it. And maybe it's a year, two years, five years. But for ballet, it's a whole career before people are ready to go out and be choreographers, directors, teachers.

Right, and you're referring to Cira Robinson, right?

I am, yes, one of them.

So what was the hardest thing about launching the company?

About launching it, I think there are two sides of it. So in the ballet community, I was nobody. So I didn't have name recognition. I wasn't a famous dancer or choreographer. I was just a student that had graduated very recently. So I had no track record or experience. No business really being in ballet. So that was very, very difficult. It was difficult to be taken seriously. On the black community side. Lots of people look at me and think I'm Spanish. So in lots of ways I was not accepted by the black community of being, you know, the right person to do this. So those were two warring sides that I had to contend with. And I personally found a challenge. Yeah, I think and also, with every startup, money was also an issue for us.

So how did you eventually raise the funds to be able to keep the company going?

In the beginning, I took a second day job. So I had two jobs, one, that the money was to look after myself, and one that I where I would use the money to fund the first version of Ballet Black, I would pay for shoes and travel cards and lunch and things like that. We didn't have money to pay wages, but everyone involved was kind of down for the cause. So they agreed to give up their weekends. And so that's how we funded that. And I would also pay for some studio hire and stuff like that with it. And then slowly, we managed to get a show on in a theater and took that box office money and shared it out with everyone and things kept moving along like that for a while. So we were really only a weekend operation for a few, a few years at the beginning.

So since that point, you've commissioned over sixty new ballets, you've worked with dozens of choreographers. Can you explain why it's important to you to develop new repertoire?

Well, I think in the beginning of Ballet Black, there were only eight dancers, including myself and Denzil Bailey, the teacher who'd taught that very first class. And so all that traditional ballet like Swan Lake and Giselle, that is for casts of thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty, dancers. We could not replicate that in any way with eight people. So I needed people to come in and make work on us. So for us, for this number of people. And as time went on, we were really the only place making new ballet, everyone else is doing the big classics. So, it became the, we became one of the only places you could see new ballet. And that started to interest the critics. And and that started to draw more choreographers, people would ask constantly, can I come and make a work for you? Whether they cared about the cause of value Ballet Black or not, there was just people that wanted to make ballet. And we were the only place saying, yeah, okay, come and make something for us.

And looking back, what would you say had been your proudest moments?

Over twenty two years, I think for me, one is Cira retiring, which was sort of devastating, but, but great for her. And seeing her take on this job, because she's kind of the embodiment of what I said Ballet Black was for. It was to have the amazing dancer on stage to inspire young people, which she has done for her whole fifteen years, when she was dancing with us. Then it was to help create tomorrow's leader and that she has become a leader in her own right, without, without us. And, and she's a woman. So you know, if you now wanted to write a dissertation about ballet in the UK, you'd have quite a lot of women to talk to a lot of them will have come from Ballet Black. So that's a real highlight for me. And I think also creating again, with Cira, the brown and bronze pointe shoes with Freed is something you can really physically hold and show someone and say, this is something that we've done, because although I know that we inspire a lot of young people and choreographers and artists, it's hard to quantify that for somebody, it's hard to put that into a funding application or to prove that you've done that. But the shoes and the tights you can like pick them up and show them to someone. And so it's a it's a tangible achievement.

Yeah, and I'd love to talk a little bit more about that. So this actually happened more than 10 years after Ballet Black was founded. So can you explain how your dancers were finding the right type of shoes before that point?

Well, all dancers have a preferred brands like like Nike and Adidas there. There are different brands of pointe shoe. And what all dancers who aren't white have done through the history of time is buy pink pointe shoes, and then paint them with foundation or spray paint or car paint, all different things, to make them match their skin tone. And the reason that this is done is to elongate your line so that if you've got a brown leg, it continues into a brown toe and doesn't stop suddenly with a funny pink foot. And that is to make ballet dancers look long and gorgeous, which is what all ballet dancers want. And we have been pancaking our shoes for forever. And Cira had gone to the Freed shop to buy her usual lot of shoes. And I think she went in and she was just really fed up with the whole pancaking thing because it is quite laborious. You have to do it two to three times so you have to paint a coat, let it dry, do another one, let it dry. It gets all over your hands, it's just messy. And it also softens the shoe slightly because the shoes are made of pretty much paper mache and satin and every time you wet it, it gets a bit softer, so it's not ideal. And she's noticed on the counter that there were loads of different satin swatches. And that you could have a pointe she made it in almost any color under the sun but the only colors she couldn't see was brown. So she said do you have a brown shoe that you could make? And they said oh no sorry we we don't do that color, but if you want brown shoes, why don't you go and find some brown satin and we will make you some custom order. And so unbeknownst to me Cira started traipsing around Shepherds Bush market and different fabric shops looking for brown satin and one day I noticed that she was about to go out and do that and I said why What are you looking for? And she explained what had happened at the shop and I said well why don't you leave that with me? I will talk to Freed and I asked them why don't you find the brown and we'll work together with Cira to, you know, road test the the right kind of material, because they are the expert shoe makers. Cira is not an expert shoe maker. So they, we did, we went back and forth quite a lot with different colors and we finally found a really gorgeous brown that perfectly matched Cira's skin. And that was the start of the creation of soft shoes in that color and tights. And then a ballet bronze, which is a sort of mid Brown for mixed race dancers and Asian dancers. And yeah, it started there with Cira being fed up having to pancake her shoes.

And before then, did any of the dancers complain about pancaking?

We all complained about it, but it was just the way things have always been done. And there were so many other things to overcome that pancaking shoes just didn't seem like a thing. But America did it first. You know, there were other brands that had done it in the US. But those shoes were not available over here. And Freed is a British brand, so it was quite a big deal, that they were willing to get involved in this and go through all the testing and everything to get us to this point.

And you mentioned that Ballet Black covers the cost of shoes, is that a big expense for the company?

It is. I mean, it depends on the kind of repertoire we're doing. But yes, it's a significant cost to us. It's a fraction of what big ballet companies would be spending because they've got forty women and we've got five women, but relative to us, it's very, very expensive. Yeah.

Right. And because one thing should Cira mentioned, and you also alluded to is that, you know, I guess pancaking the shoe softens, and sort of the quality is impaired. And so presumably, your dancers have to go through even more shoes than they would normally.

Exactly. So the brilliant thing about this new shoe was that, that stopped for us. So until that point, I'm sure we were, we had been buying, especially for Cira because because she was in that Freed shoe. I think we were we had been going through a lot more when we were buying them in pink and having to paint them.

So I want to talk about the cost in terms of time. When I spoke to Cira, we did a sort of back of the napkin calculation, and estimated that over the course of her career, she would have spent over a thousand hours pancaking her shoe. And she said it was just part of the job. But just curious to get your thoughts on that.

And the point of making these new brown and bronze shoes was to make buying ballet shoes, the same for a black dancer, as it would be for a white dancer. So one of the first challenges was the first prototype we've got. There's a, there's a string inside the shoe that you pull up like a drawstring. So the whole shoe was brown, but that string was pink, which meant that although Cira wouldn't have to do a fraction of her thousand hours, she would still have to paint something and paint the ribbon. So that was the first round of feedback, the entire shoe needs to be brown and all the accessories need to be brown. So that minute for minute is exactly the same as someone who needs pink shoes, as someone that needs brown shoes. So that that was always one of our goals with the brown shoes is to make sure you just go into a shop, whether you're a twelve year old girl starting ballet, or a professional like Cira, you go in and you can buy them off the shelf ready to go. Same as anyone else.

And I'm curious about your conversations with Freed and why you think they decided to work on this with you.

At that time, I think it was in twenty sixteen, a dance journalist called Luke Jennings wrote a piece in a magazine called The Dancing Times, which sadly doesn't exist anymore, about the lack of brown shoes and tights available to the black artists that work in the UK, because it's sort of common knowledge that you can buy all this stuff in America. But at that point in twenty sixteen, didn't exist in the UK. Unless you like got a special order or a friend was going to the U.S. and they could bring you back some stuff. And he wrote something about how it's really high time that all the brands started to pay attention to the increase in black dancers, professional level as well as students. As I remember it, I believe Freed to get in touch with Luke and said, we want to do this, we just where do we start? And he said, talk to Balet Black. And I don't know where that sits in terms of CIra going in and being fed up. But it all kind of happened, I guess within the same year. And I think that was how it all kicked off.

That's really interesting. So I guess there was competition from other companies in the U.S. that were already doing this, but also a prominent journalist talking about this.

I think the American brands had shown that it can be done and it doesn't put anyone out of business. So it you know, it's not as daunting as maybe it seemed twenty years ago.

And can you talk about the reaction to the launch of the shoes?

Yes, I think it took us Ballet Black and Freed by surprise the, first of all, the global attention that it got we had articles everywhere from Greece to Japan, people really excited about it. But anytime we have Balet Black do something that just puts our head above the ballet wall. We get a lot of negative backlash as well. So we we encountered a lot of I mean, I don't know if these people were just trolling us or if they were truly ballet purists saying the ballet is meant to be pink. We're destroying traditions. The shoe is going to look like they've got excrement on them. We had all these comments, why are you messing with something that's been perfectly good all these years and tradition is important, we must uphold it. People don't need or want brown shoes, we're just putting this idea that it's racist. There's nothing wrong with black dancers wearing pink shoes and tights. And to me those comments mean, you don't know anything about ballet. If you think that ballet is all meant to be pink. That's not, That's not true. If you knew anything about ballet, you'd understand what I was saying earlier about the line that is very important, not just to the dancer, but for the audience watching the choreographer making the work. So having something that matches your top half. So you'd have pink legs and feet and brown upper body, that's very important, just from a aesthetic viewpoint, regardless of what you think about race or anything like that. It's just about looking your best. So it was really annoying. But it's something that as we've gone through time, and as social media has gotten bigger and bigger, we predate Facebook, when I started the company, there was no Facebook. So we've slowly seen the rise of what social media allows people to say and do. And unfortunately, we every time we do something big, like we performed with Stormzy at Glastonbury, that got loads of great comments, loads of unpleasant comments. We performed in a theater, we get loads of the black community saying amazing, I'l' come and see your show, and we get racist people saying, I'm going to come and burn the theater down because you're racist. So we get, whatever we do, we get both sides of it.

Wow, that's a lot to have to deal with.

It's, most of the time, it's anonymous people who are never even gonna follow through. But yeah, we're always, there's always concern that there's a one time that someone actually means something like that.

And what impact do you think the new shoes have had and could have in the future?

I think what it has done, I hope what it has done is say to any young black girl who wants to do ballet, that there is a place for you in ballet, because we make stuff for people that look like you. So even if you've never had the money to go to a theater and see someone like Cira, or Precious Adams from English National Ballet, or Rishan Benjamin at Scottish Ballet. Just going into a dance shop and seeing that there is a choice there for you, I hope will change the perception of ballet as being something that's for rich white people. Because you know, ballet is done in church halls every Saturday up and down the country. It's like the least fancy place you can be the weekend. And I know that our girls, a lot of our girls are just so excited to have the brown shoes and tights and whether that's because they want to be like Cira, or they just like something that's made for them. It just really excites them. And it makes them feel, I know it makes them feel really proud to put their ballet uniform on.

And looking more broadly at the world of classical ballet. What are the changes, you've noticed over the past twenty or so years that you think ballet Black can take credit for?

Oh, well, ballet moves slowly. But I think there has been an increase in young black people sticking with ballet, and going through to that vocational professional training level. So twenty years ago, you could kind of count on one hand, how many black students there might be in the vocational schools across the UK. And now that is starting to grow. So I think whether that student directly attributes it to us or not, I think that we have just opened a conversation and we've opened up, we've opened something up in the minds of people, whether it's the people that run the school, or the kids that go to it. The shoes and tights are a great indicator for that. I think we have been part of changing what ballet repertoire looks like today. So twenty years ago, it was all the big classics Nutcracker, Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty. For a long time, we were the only ones making new stuff. And then other companies started to commission new stuff. And now it's really normal that, although a lot of the big companies have those big classic works, and they still have their place, they're making other works now about things that might be more relevant to today's audience. And that's where I believe we've always led the way in that sense. And we are, I think we're a big part of producing the next leaders of British ballet, like Cira. We have a dancer who's also an award winning choreographer, Mthuthuzeli November, he's won and Olivier. He's, you know, about to go out and make ballets for all the big companies here and overseas. And I think we've just given that support where we can and we're going to start to see the effects as our dancers age out of being a dancer, we'll start to see them take up all these leadership roles. So that's really exciting.

So what else do you think needs to change?

I think we need in the UK to not be afraid to confront what our history actually is. I think people today feel that they will somehow be accountable for what happened in the past, and I'm not sure that is what Some of us are really asking for, I think what we're asking for is acknowledgement and recognition of things that have happened and then we can all move forward from it. If we can say, okay, this is what happened. This was wrong. This is how we're going to try and move forward. I think the ballet companies can do that. Historically, we've blocked black people from being in our companies, but we recognize that was not us, but we're looking after the legacy of what that has given us. So, We have to be responsible for the change, even though we didn't necessarily cause the problem. And I think that's, for me, what I would like to see other dance organizations acknowledge. Not just slap on a outreach program for 15 year olds when it's not really going to make a difference to the dance world. It's a bit too late by then if you want to make ballet dancers. So those are the things I think will help us move forward and that if we are careful with things like, for example, someone said to me, we have a really progressive teacher, so she would be very open to having black participants. I don't think it's progressive to have black participants. I think it's just. Normal. So even though the, the conversation's going the right way, there's still some things we think, hang on, you're not being radical or amazingly open minded here, you're just talking about normal people doing ballet, that's all. So instead of saying we are allowing people to wear brown shoes and tights, you just say, it's your choice to wear either skin color or the pink, whatever, because I think a lot of black dancers still choose pink and that's totally fine, careful that we're not always in the. Sort of colonial. We're going to allow you now to have a good existence. That's what I think sometimes happens.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. How can people learn more about Ballet Black?

You can go to our website Which is balletblack.co.uk and it has all of our tour dates The best way to get to know us is to come and see us But if you can't we also have a digital page with films and classes so you can take part at home Free of charge, or you can watch a film.

That was Cassapancho at Ballet Black. You'll find more details in the show notes, and you can also catch Ballet Black on tour in the UK from March. If you liked what you heard, why not share this with a friend or colleague? And be sure to check out episode fifteen, where you'll find my interview with Cira Robinson. I'm Tosin Sulaiman, thanks for joining me on Made For Us.

The song would definitely be Sinner Man by Nina Simone because it's featured in our current tour and It's something that you can feel the whole audience are in love with.

Transcribed with the help of otter.ai