Cassa Pancho MBE
Founder of Ballet Black and BB Junior School
The Voice of Her Gremlin
“This isn’t as good as you thought it was”
My irrational fear is that one day someone will say ‘Why are you leading Ballet Black?’ and I’ll have to explain that I’m mixed race.
This wasn’t something I was aware of until the day I started Ballet Black and it’s affected nearly every day of my life since.
I fear people are thinking ‘shut up, is she even black!’ I don’t actually know what they’re thinking, but I can project it onto people. I assume they don’t know that I’m dual heritage and that they’re judging me for running Ballet Black and talking about diversity, inclusion, blackness and brown ballet shoes.
Being with black or mixed people who know me starves this Gremlin. Being with the company and with my family allow me to stop thinking about race for a few hours.
It makes me very defensive
Part of it is fed by people actually having said ‘but you’re white’. I also feed it because I come into spaces assuming that whether you’re black or white, you’ll assume I’m white and that it’s a problem for you because of what Ballet Black is.
There are all these layers that no one else knows about but you, and then you look up and realise:
It is you putting this pressure on yourself because how can you know what they’re thinking?
If someone else thinks your choreography is bad it doesn’t matter. As long as it came from your gut and you really think this is what you want to say to the world; even if people think this is the worst ballet in the world, if it’s from you someone out there will like it.