Birthday Reflections: Our Greatest Achievement

It is officially our birthday month, and this May we celebrate FOUR years at Pointe Black!

I am often asked what Pointe Black’s biggest achievement is, and honestly – the answer isn’t what you may think!

I could say it’s that we have sold out every single show we have produced, including our first ever production….

It could be when some of our ballerinas were accepted a place in the English National Ballet programme. The achievement that comes close to first place is being Wicked’s charity partner this year. The decision came as a complete shock to me, and their support has been absolutely amazing ever since. Not to mention raising over £5k for our young ballerinas!

So, what is our biggest achievement?

In all honesty, Pointe Black’s biggest achievement is the growth of our family. We started off with one child in May 2021, and me running the company AND teaching all the classes single handedly - whilst working one full time and one part time job. I look back at that time and laugh at just how crazy I was… but I was determined to make a difference in ballet. One child, turned into two, which turned into 5 and before I knew it, we had 17 ballerinas in our first stage show in October 2021. That’s over 300% growth within the first 6 months. Now, we have over 70 ballerinas in our Battersea and Hackney locations and we welcome almost 200 adults a year.

The support from the community, the dancers, the families has been nothing short of a miracle – I thank God for every single one of you each day. The past four years has seen us deliver six classes every Saturday across every age group, two in Hackney, and two in Central London. We have done four stage productions, three holiday intensive programmes, countless theatre trips, activities, dress up days and much more.

Seeing more and more of our community walk through studio doors I could never enter. To see Black people in spaces that I was once excluded from. Afros, braids and beads on stages I was once disallowed from being myself on. Hearing the walls filled with laughter, affirmations about how Black and beautiful we are, and of course – afrobeats!

Our biggest achievement is doing EXACTLY what we set out to do when we started. Letting our community know that we CAN do ballet too – and we can do it well.

With your help, we can do more!

Every May, we run a Birthday Fundraiser allowing you the chance to support the work of Pointe Black. Every donation helps us to transform ballet for good, no matter how small (or how big!). Consider giving today to help us give back to a community that still so desperately needs a school like ours.