Michaela DePrince, Ballerina HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk.

I'm Stephen Sackur.

To make it to the top in the world of ballet requires not just

extraordinary talent, but immense reserves of physical

and mental determination.

So imagine how much more it takes if your childhood

is torn apart by civil war, hunger and homelessness.

Today's guest, Michaela DePrince, has made a remarkable journey

from horrific suffering in Sierra Leone to accolades

in the world of international dance.

How on Earth did she make it happen?

Michaela DePrince, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you, thank you.

It's almost a cliche to talk about people who have made

remarkable journeys, but you really have.

And I want to know today, as you sit here with me

as an internationally acclaimed ballerina, how connected do you feel

to that little girl who was born and brought up in the first few

years of her life in Sierra Leone?

I don't feel as connected as I used to be to her.

I do have those days where I still have those horrible

nightmares about my past in Sierra Leone, but, really,

I'm just Michaela DePrince now.

I'm not Mabinty Bangura any more.

What about your memories of Mabinty?

I mean of the girl you were born as, and raised by a family

who were caught up in the most terrible way in Sierra

Leone's civil war.

For me, it's just - it's mostly just little tiny images

and the only parts

I really remember now...

I don't remember the faces of my biological mom and father.

I can see their figures but I don't even remember what they looked like.

And if I'm thinking or dreaming or having a nightmare,

it's mostly about running from the rebels, all the things that

people were yelling at me about, or it's mostly those things and just

the emotions I was feeling, and that's what I wake up yelling

and screaming about and having to recover from.

And going to be able to recover from that and still being able

to go to work that day.

It's interesting you say you feel less connected

than you used to and, of course, as you grow up,

the memories become more distant, but it is interesting to me that

you've chosen to write about it for a young

audience around the world.

This book, Ballerina Dreams, has recently come out in Europe.

And it's billed as a true story, and you do go

into some detail of what it was like to be

a girl at a time of war.

So you don't want to completely forget about it.

No, I don't want to completely forget about it.

It's made me who I am today.

It doesn't have as many details as it could,

but I think it is very important for people not to forget

about the struggles they have been through because it

creates who you are.

And if I didn't go through those things, I wouldn't be

as strong as I am today, because I go through horrible things

every single day in my dance career and people say things to me that

maybe I would cry about, but I don't - it doesn't necessarily

faze me any more, because of the things I've

been said to before.

You talk about how strong you are today.

Let's give people,

at an early point in this conversation, a real sense

of what you do, and how you dance.

Let's look, I think, at a performance from last year,

of you in the Nutcracker in the Dutch National Ballet.

Yes.

MUSIC: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

It's gorgeous to look at and, of course, so many people

know the Nutcracker, but, then, to think back to some

of the very specific experiences that you went through as a young

girl, it is almost unbelievable that you've come from there to here.

So I do want you to just go into a little bit

of detail about the degree to which Sierra Leone's

war had a very direct and personal impact upon you.

I mean just catalogue a few of the terrible things.

Well, because of the war, my father was shot by the rebels.

And my biological parents were the only people who believed

in me, because of my vitiligo.

In Sierra Leone, they did not understand that vitiligo

was just a skin condition.

And let me just stop you there,

because there will be people around the world

who do not know who vitiligo.

It's a pigmentation issue in your skin.

Yes.

A loss of pigment in your skin.

But, unfortunately, in Sierra Leone at the time,

they just didn't have books or equipment to look up what this

was, and so they discriminated me, they ridiculed me, they harassed me.

I mean, to look at you, you look absolutely fine.

Thanks.

But you do have this pigmentation issue.

Yet, from all the way from here and all the way along, my torso.

On my hands and my arms and my back.

It gets more and more also when I'm older and also

some of them fade away, but it was a lot brighter also,

when I was younger.

But they didn't understand it, so they called me the devil's child.

And when my father was shot by the rebels, that meant

that we didn't really have any source of income for food.

So then my mum and I - my biological mum and I -

had to move in with my uncle.

But my uncle wanted nothing to do with me,

and so when she passed away, because she ended up starving

to death, or had a disease, he didn't see any point

in wasting his money or his food on a child

who doesn't deserve it, in his mind, so he sent me

to the orphanage and never came to see if I was OK, or anything.

And then also, in the orphanage, thinking, OK, I'm surrounded

by people who might care about me, they ranked us by favourites.

Number one was the favourite child, number 27 was

the least-favourite child.

And because of my vitiligo, I was number 27, the

least-favourite child.

And so that meant I got the smallest portion of food

and the last choice of clothes.

And you would have thought,

you know, these kids have been through so much -

they've lost their parents or their parents weren't able

to take care of them - that maybe we will show them

that they are loved and that people care about them.

And unfortunately, that wasn't the case for me at all.

But I did have somebody in the orphanage who did care about me.

Actually, two people.

Number 26, my best friend, and my sister.

She was number 26 because she was left-handed,

and she used to wet the bed, and they didn't understand

that, you know.

Well, they didn't understand a lot of things.

And it's not their fault that they didn't understand that,

I understand as an older person now, but, before, I just made it seem

like it didn't faze me, I didn't care if they didn't like me.

Were you, in this orphanage, at least detected from the really

brutal violence of the civil war?

Well, you'll see in a few minutes.

So we had a teacher who came to the orphanage

and she was pregnant at the time.

And this story is in the children's book.

She cared about me.

She taught us English.

I used to always walk her to the gate and she was the one

who told me about the Ballerina that I found, like, the magazine.

That she was a ballerina.

And she was also telling me, maybe you'll become this

ballerina one day.

She was, it away, the one who planted the vision

in your mind off this beautiful, beautiful sort of mythical figure

of the ballerina who could be happy and who could dance.

Yes.

And so I walked her to the orphanage gate and these two rebels come,

intoxicated with either drugs or alcohol in their system,

with this little rebel, and they pull out their machete.

And they cut her open to see if there was a baby girl or baby boy.

And they were betting.

So one of them was like, "No, it's going to be a boy,

it's going to be a girl."

And it ended up being a girl.

And they didn't like that, because usually they turned

the little baby boys into young soldier rebels.

And so they are upset and so they end up cutting her arms

and legs off in front of me.

I tried to go save her and they did the same to me

and cut my stomach open.

And so, because of that...

I'm sorry, how old are you?

I was about three years old.

And because of that...

I am sorry to interrupt.

You said to be earlier that you try to distance yourself.

Do you actually remember this?

Yes.

But it easier for me to tell it so I don't did emotional, faster,

than to be able to...

It is easier for me now to say it with a wall,

instead of thinking about it, because it's too painful to think

about and to feel those emotions.

It's hard for me to be able to continue my day,

or to continue what I want to do in my life, because then it's just

going to hold me back.

It's just...

Even as we talk about it, it is so shocking to hear it,

I'm wondering whether, as an artist, and you are,

an extraordinarily expressive artist, using your body to speak

to audiences around the world.

How you can find the way to be so expressive when there's so much

that's locked up inside you.

That's what has made my career a bit more difficult.

I think I could have been more artistic sooner if I wasn't having

to have that wall of emotions locked up for such a long time.

And that's why I'm incredibly lucky to have the director I have now,

because he understands that.

But now, I've - I had to do this performance once and I lost

a brother,

when I got adopted.

Because I always assumed I am going to lose people I love,

so I ended up having to also having to tell myself not to love people,

for quite a long time.

And then I finally let somebody in again, to -

you know, that I cared about, and he ended up passing away.

I had to do a piece about death and I ended up crying on stage,

because I have to think about the fact...

I have to think about my brother, Teddy.

But you know, that's what makes us so beautiful,

though, that you can use the things that

you've been through to

connect with the audience, and that is what art is and that's

what makes us so passionate.

And it means sometimes it's hard, but, at the same time,

you have to have the right support system, the right people

who can help you, bring you back into reality.

Do you think, in a sense, finding your path, through dance,

sort of saved you?

Oh, it definitely saved me.

Definitely.

I don't think I would be the person I am today.

I don't think I would be...

I don't think I would be happy at all, if I hadn't danced.

I would be still that angry little girl that I was.

And yet, if we fast forward, you were adopted, in the end,

by an American family, and you were taken to the

United States into a comfortable, relatively prosperous home.

Wonderful home, yeah.

And that's when you got the opportunity to go to ballet

school, to learn how to dance.

Yeah.

But - and here's what's interesting to me -

even then, in that new, comfortable environment,

you still had an enormous struggle, because, let's face it,

you were trying to make it in a world which is extraordinarily

white and where black dancers have an awful lot of, sort of,

conventional wisdom which says black dancers simply can't do ballet.

Yeah.

I thought it was going to be completely easy,

but then the older I got, the more I noticed there aren't any

dancers who look like me.

Why is that?

But I had the opportunity...

There was a dancer from the Pennsylvania Ballet,

Heidi Cruz.

She was the only one who looked like me.

And she was also one of the people who was one of my role models,

who told me to never give up on my dream.

There is another beautiful dancer, Lauren Anderson, who was also

a role model for me.

But, out of how many dancers, how many black dancers,

I'm sure there have been, why were there only two?

Here's a quote from something you said a while ago:

"When I was young, as a dancer," you said, "I overheard one

of the directors working with us saying, 'We don't put a lot

of effort into the black girls, because they end up getting fat.'"

Yeah. That's a pretty horrible...

And yet, you said to yourself, "Never mind all this,

this is still the world I want to be in."

Yeah.

And maybe I'm a bit crazy, but, the thing is, for me,

I love proving people wrong.

It's my thing that I love to do, and that's what got me

through the whole thing in Sierra Leone, and that's

what is going to continue to get me through life.

You can't just think that somebody's going to be a certain way,

just because somebody else was like that.

It's not fair that you are going to give up on somebody just

because you want to see them in a certain light.

When you were 17, and we should remind people,

you are only 22 now.

But when you were 17, and wanted to join a professional

company, you looked to Europe and you found,

or the Dutch National Ballet found you, and they offered you this

position and you said it felt like your Rosa Parks moment.

Yes.

And every single time this company

continues to surprise me

by promoting me and believing in me and I'm just incredibly grateful

for this opportunity.

And I'm incredibly grateful by the fact that in Europe

in general, what I've experienced, also in London, when I danced

with English National Ballet, is the fact that they're not looking

at my skin colour.

They're looking at the fact that I'm just an artist who wants to move

people and he wants to change people's lives by having them

come see me perform.

In that spirit, let's look at our second clip of you recently

in a performance of Swan Lake with the Dutch National Ballet.

Now, Michaela, you say, you know, your ambition is to be an artist

who is never judged on the colour of her skin, but one cannot help

noticing, as we look at you moving so beautifully there,

that pretty much everybody else in the ensemble is white.

I just wonder whether even today you feel there is an extra scrutiny

on you because you still, it has to be said, unusual

in the world you've chosen to live in.

Yeah.

I think it's time for that not to be a discussion any more.

That there is only one black arena at the Dutch National Ballet.

I even thought, in the Nutcracker, in the beginning there is a small

Marie, a small Clara, and it was an Asian girl.

And all of a sudden she turns black.

For me, I think that's...

Why?

Why couldn't we have a little black Clara or Marie?

So I think it's time for a change and I'm hoping it's happening.

It's a slow process but it needs to happen faster,

it really does.

I suppose, in a way, ballet is one of those artforms

that is so steeped in tradition, born out of performances that began

in Europe's while houses and among the elites of Europe.

There is perhaps a snobbishness in ballet that isn't

there in some other artforms.

Yeah, I think some people are scared of change,

or the fact how people will respond to change.

Now, you just saw in the video, I am wearing pink tights,

and that was, I think, that most of the people,

most dancers wore white and they wore pink tights

to complete the line.

But I'm brown, so, for me to wear pink tights,

it destroys my line completely.

So now, in all my performances, I'm going to wear brown tights.

But you never think to yourself, you know what, this world is just

beyond the pale for me?

There are so many other creative forms of dance,

all sorts of wonderful contemporary dance.

And I know you do some of that, too.

I love it, yeah, it's fun.

You won't give up on the ballet?

No, no.

I love wearing tutus and I love the romantic stories.

It's like as if I'm a little girl playing dress-up.

I love the way it makes me feel.

But I also love doing contemporary stuff, which is being myself

and being feisty, but being romantic at the same time.

It's an amazing opportunity.

Let me now bring you back to personal stuff and in particular

your take on going back to Sierra Leone.

Because you've become an ambassador for War Child,

an organisation which is devoted to helping children caught up

in wars around the world.

Yet it strikes me that you've never been back to what is your native

land, your home.

I would love to go back.

I became the ambassador with War Child Holland just last

year and I would love to go back to Sierra Leone,

but it has to do with the fact that if I'm ready mentally.

I went to South Africa four years ago, for the first time,

and I was terrified.

Because I was so scared that I would get the memories,

or exactly the full memories of people'sfaces, the emotions

rushing back, and what happens if I would freeze completely?

I didn't have any family member with me.

How would I be able to function and perform and do what I came to do

in South Africa?

It suggests to me there is still an awful lot of trauma

in your mind.

Exactly.

And it's not like I was just...

A lot of the kids in the orphanage did not go through the amount

of things that I went through.

My sister went through a lot, also.

My other sister.

It's just the thing is I need to be able to have the amount of support

when I go there.

I'm going to go back.

I want to start a school there.

I want to start an art school there.

It's going to happen.

It strikes me, we talk about inspirational figures,

but what you could offer the kids, the young people of Sierra Leone,

is something extraordinary.

A story like no other.

No, I would definitely love to go back, but I don't know

if you know my schedule.

I work from ten to six every day.

I barely even get a week off during the summer.

But it's going to happen.

I'm actually hoping maybe I can go this summer with another ambassador,

an ambassador here, actually, in War Child UK.

I know this is a very intrusive question and maybe raises

lots of painful issues, but do you know, for example,

what has happened to your uncle?

The man who, in many ways, gave your way to the orphanage,

who refused to acknowledge or as part of his family.

Well, I've gotten a Facebook message from him asking for money.

Also from the person who ran the orphanage,

because of my story and stuff.

You know, the thing is, first I was really angry,

but I forgiven him and I forgiven the person who ran the orphanage.

Thing is, they don't deserve high forgiveness,

but I'm a bigger person and I think there is no reason for me to hold

a grudge any more because it's not going to help me move

on with my life and I deserve a lot more than to focus on what they did

to me before.

And they don't deserve me even to talk about them.

There's another aspect of this that raises important moral and ethical

issues and batteries you are by no means the only child who was plucked

out of difficult, sometimes awful circumstances in Africa,

and adopted by families desperate to get a child for their family

in the rich west - in the United States,

but it happens in other western countries, too.

Are you a great believer in the idea that that is the right and proper

thing to do?

To adopt?

To adopt, to allow international adoption so the kids are plucked far

away from their home countries and cultures.

I think it's...

For me, I believe it was the best thing.

One, it saved my life.

I would not be alive today.

You really believe that?

No, I was very sick.

I had 106 fever Fahrenheit.

I don't know what it is in Celsius.

Yeah, well that's dangerous, yeah.

Yet.

And I would not be alive today.

I also had a hernia, where my organs were coming

out, so no.

But I also think the thing is it's very important to also

educate your children about the culture they came from,

so they understand what they've been through so they don't forget.

Because some kids, they do forget where they've come from and then

they feel like they're missing something.

I think adoption is an amazing thing and I am just so grateful.

My other...

Well, 11 kids in my family, but the other nine who are adopted

are so grateful for their life.

The flip side of it, and I know this doesn't apply

to you, but the flip side of it - and it came out in a major report

in 2012 from the African Child Policy Forum, and I'm just quoting

a tiny bit of it, aying "the majority of so-called orphans

adopted from Africa have, actually, at least one living parent

and many of these children have been trafficked or sold by their parents.

Yeah.

And if you allow international adoption, then the message

from a variety of different sources, including that major report,

is that it leads to these terrible situation is,

abuse of the system.

That's the thing.

I saw this documentary a few years ago about that and that's

what really upsets me, because people believe and then

they see these negative things about adoption and they don't see

how many positive outcomes can actually happen through adoption,

and that makes me really, really sad, because these children

deserve an amazing life.

Let's end by talking about identity.

OK.

You've gone into a world which is, in some ways, so alien

to you and your background, and yet you are determined to thrive

in it and become a major star in it and it seems to be working.

Also, you switched Countries from Sierra Leone and now

you are fully American in the way you've been brought up.

Characterise your identity for me as you see it today.

I think my identity is very European, not very American.

Really?

Yeah, very.

I think...

Yes, very.

Very, especially with...

Yeah.

I think you're saying especially with the way America is today.

I think it is just the way things are going and I'm just a bit sad

with how things are going in America right now.

But, at the same time, I am looking forward to going back

to Africa one day and starting up my school and learning more

about my culture and bringing all so people I've worked

with to help me start this school up and having them learn

about my culture.

Giving kids an opportunity to just have the chance,

to have that taste of opportunity that I have been growing up with.

I think everybody deserves a chance - "maybe I don't like to dance,

maybe I do like dancing, maybe I love to move this way."

Just to express themselves in a way where they don't have to talk.

And when you go back, because you say you will,

will you go back as an African?

Um, in what way?

Just in the way that you present yourself.

For example, the kids that you will talk about this amazing

story of yours to in Sierra Leone.

Will it be an African story?

I'm not quite sure, I haven't thought about it.

I'm going to pretty much explains to them how I got...

Where I came from, how I got to where I am today and see

if they accepted for what it is I guess that's it.

Well, it is an amazing, extraordinary story.

Thank you.

Michaela DePrince, thank you for being on HARDtalk.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much indeed.

Hello there, good morning.