FAMED BALLERINA WAS SAVED FROM WAR
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. • Ballet dancer Michaela Mabinty Deprince, who came to the United States from an orphanage in wartorn Sierra Leone and performed on some of the world's biggest stages, has died, her family said. She was 29.
“Michaela touched so many lives across the world, including ours. She was an unforgettable inspiration to everyone who knew her or heard her story,” her family said in a statement posted Friday on Deprince's social media accounts. “From her early life in wartorn Africa, to stages and screens across the world, she achieved her dreams and so much more.”
A cause of death was not provided. Deprince was adopted by an American couple and by age 17 she had been featured in a documentary film and had performed on the TV show “Dancing With the Stars.”
After graduating from high school and the American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, she became a principal dancer at Dance Theatre of Harlem. She then went to the Netherlands, where she danced with the Dutch National Ballet. She returned to the U.S. and joined the Boston Ballet in 2021.
“We're sending our love and support to the family of Michaela Mabinty Deprince at this time of loss,” the Boston Ballet said in a statement.
“We were so fortunate to know her; she was a beautiful person, a wonderful dancer, and she will be greatly missed by us all.”
In her memoir, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina, she shared her journey from the orphanage to the stage. She also wrote a children's book, Ballerina Dreams.
Deprince suffered from a skin pigmentation disorder that had her labelled “the devil's child” at the orphanage.
“I lost both my parents, so I was there (the orphanage) for about a year and I wasn't treated very well because I had vitiligo,” Deprince told the AP in a 2012 interview.
“We were ranked as numbers and number 27 was the least favourite and that was my number, so I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and whatnot.”
She remembered seeing a photo of an American ballet dancer on a magazine page that had blown against the gate of the orphanage during Sierra Leone's civil war.
“All I remember is she looked really, really happy,” Deprince told the AP, adding that she wished “to become this exact person.”
She said she saw hope in that photo, “and I ripped the page out and I stuck it in my underwear because I didn't have any place to put it,” she said.
She is survived by five sisters and two brothers.