Ballet Summer Intensive

Starting ballet at the age of 2 years old, DianaStarr has always shown great promise. Her love for ballet as a young girl grew into an obsession and would only want to be in “serious ballet”. At the age of 6 years old, I enrolled her in Tacoma City Ballet for 1.5 years. She loved it there but wanted to dance more than just once or twice a week. She loved being on stage and showing her skills. She wanted to dance more, so we enrolled her into Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center. She took ballet, West African, liturgical, modern and Pilates. She thrived at Tupac but realized her love was ballet and ballet only. 

So, we took a summer off and she said, “ I want to go to Pacific Northwest Ballet”. I was like, “okay, you have to audition, because you will be 8 soon”. So later that summer she auditioned and got in. DianaStarr has been at PNB since 2018 and has thrived and grown so much as a dancer. She has performed in George Balanchine’s, The Nutcracker in 2019 (Angel), 2021 (Clara) and 2022 (Candy Cane). The year Diana was cast as Clara in 2021, she along with another black ballerina, made history, being double cast as the first two black ballerinas in a major ballet company to hold the role at the same time. In 2022, she was cast as a Big Bug, in Midsummer Nights Dream. 

DianaStarr was an ambassador for Brown Girls Do Ballet, Blendz Apparel and Bittyrina. She loves to talk about representation in the ballet world. DianaStarr has trained with The School of American Ballet Junior 2022, Cirque Du Soleil 2019, Anthony Burrell Breaking Barriers 2019 and was accepted into American Ballet Theatre in 2023 Junior. 

DianaStarr has been accepted into two amazing programs, Alonzo King Lines Ballet in San Francisco and MoBBallet Symposium in Boston. Lines Ballet is a celebrated Contemporary ballet company with world-renowned artists. The junior program is focused on dancers ages 11-14 and teaches them Lines repertoire, philosophy, and supports technical and artistic dancers. The cost for the program for two weeks is $1,100 for tuition, the program does not have housing or food accommodations. The hotel cost for two weeks is $3,986.32 which includes breakfast. Totaling $5,086 for the San Francisco intensive. MoBBallet Symposium is a black-centered ballet intensive by leading black ballet artists at Walnut Hill School located at Boston Ballet. The cost for tuition plus room and board is $1,800. The hotel cost for the week is $1,773.15 which totals around $4,000. For all costs including airfare, transportation, and other miscellaneous costs, we are hoping to raise at least $11,000. Please share this fundraiser with friends, family, co-workers, church members, neighbors, and even on social media. There are only 3 ways to donate this year: T-shirt fundraiser, and cashapp $Porshinahe.