Brown Girls Do Ballet®, a philanthropic organization often featured for its noteworthy Instagram movement, began in 2013 as a personal photography project by TaKiyah Wallace in an effort to highlight girls of Hispanic, African, Asian, East Indian, and Native American ancestry in Ballet programs. Wallace was taken by surprise upon discovering the lack of cultural diversity in local ballet schools while searching for a program for her then 3 year old. Like any mom, she grew concerned of how her daughter would feel in a class where no one resembled her.
Through her engagement with dancers, their families and the ballet community, TaKiyah developed a passion for re-defining a classically Euro-centric art form to reflect what America is today: beautifully diverse. Striving to touch the lives of little ballerinas, she set out to simply provide a media outlet highlighting the diversity. Little did she know, a movement would be born and this photo project would become so much more.
Each year Brown Girls Do gathers some of it's best and brightest dancers from across the world to create it's yearly calendar. This project is sold in limited quantities, but is used as a means to showcase brown dancers and assist them in their dance careers. Each sale means another dancer can afford ballet necessities like pointe shoes, tights, leotards and much more.