As a dance school celebrates its anniversary, a dream is realized

Black people can't dance -- at least not ballet.

That's what the world told Debbie White-Hunt as an aspiring dancer growing up in Detroit in the 1950s.

"We were always told that we couldn't dance ballet because of the way our bodies were built," said White-Hunt, who took her first formal ballet class in college at Michigan State University in the 1960s. "But I knew I could pursue what was in my heart."

She eventually became a ballerina. And in the process, she made a decision that would inspire other children to believe that they could dance, too.

She set up a dance studio in Detroit.

This week, her Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy celebrates its 25th anniversary. "I had to follow a dream that there were few models for," said White-Hunt. "Now we're teaching a third generation of Detroit children to dance."

'It felt like serenity'

Nestled in the New Center area, the Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy has served thousands of aspiring dancers in the past quarter century. It has become such a community institution that there are grandmothers, their daughters and their granddaughters who learned everything from modern dance to tap to ballet and liturgical dance for religious celebrations there.

Building an institution was not what White-Hunt had in mind when she took her first dance lesson at the west side Kronk community center at age 10. But looking back, she said she can see that it was part of a divine plan.

"I still remember what that first lesson felt like," said White-Hunt. "It felt like serenity. It was like I was suddenly tuned in to myself."

"She was always looking in the mirror and dancing," said White-Hunt's mother, Jean White, a retired assistant principal for Detroit Public Schools.

"As a high-schooler, Debbie even had the neighborhood kids in the basement taking dance lessons."

But dancing in those days was not seen as a real career, especially for an African-American girl from Detroit. So when she went to MSU, White-Hunt majored in medical technology, hoping to find cures for diseases in places like the rainforest.

It was when she took a dance elective that her priorities changed. "I was walking across campus and something came over me," she said. "I knew that I wanted to dance."

That vision became real when the Dance Theatre of Harlem came to campus. She had never seen a black troupe perform ballet. Enthralled, she talked to the cofounder, Arthur Mitchell, and garnered a scholarship to study with him the summer after her junior year. When she graduated from MSU in 1972 with a degree in theater education and a minor in dance, "wild horses couldn't keep me out of New York," she said.