Debbie Allen on Legacy, Mentorship, and the Rat Pack That Started It All
When the curtains rise on Debbie Allen’s “Hot Chocolate Nutcracker,” the first sound Allen wants to hear is not the overture, it’s the audience.
“What gives me…not chills, but enthusiasm and inspiration is those children out there in the audience,” she told BET Current exclusively, describing the moment she sees kids holler and recognize themselves in her production.
After the showstopping legend wrapped a matinee performance of her “Hot Chocolate Nutcracker,” Allen shared the importance of visibility. “They see themselves on stage because most nutcrackers don't have as many young people in it as mine does because we have toy land,” Allen mused about the children she consistently inspires, while fully dressed in character as Bucky, one of the rats in the Rat Pack from the show.
That recognition is the founding idea behind a Nutcracker that refuses to be merely traditional. Now in its 15th year, Allen’s reimagined holiday spectacle mixes ballet with jazz, tap, hip hop, Bollywood, and global movement. Allen said this creative choice came from necessity as much as it did imagination.
“I just had to break the form,” Allen said. “When my son, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the middle of the traditional Nutcracker, screamed out loud, ‘Mom, when is the rat coming?’ I said, These boys want to see a rat. They don't see no prince in no tights! They want to see a rat! So I made the rats give the people what they want,” Allen said of going full rat, while in full rat regalia.
The result is community theatre on a cinematic scale. Allen’s “Hot Chocolate Nutcracker” now fields more than 200 performers each season and serves as the marquee program for the Debbie Allen Dance Academy (DADA), the non-profit Allen founded to expand access to the arts. DADA’s outreach footprint is significant, with more than 15,000 community members benefitting from their subsidized programs every year, and over 70% of the academy’s students train on scholarships.
That philanthropic foundation is permanently ingrained into Allen’s sense of purpose. “It feels really great, and it makes me feel like I have a real purpose in my life,” she said.
“My career is not just about me… but it’s about who I’m inspiring, who I bring along with me. And that has always been kind of how I’ve worked.”
Those words echo through the names she drops when asked what creatives she’s got her eyes on. Allen’s legacy is vast. Her stellar work spans dance, directing, producing, acting, and singing, and honestly more, which is why she’s always got her eyes on blossoming talent across genres.
Allen singled out writers, actors, and alumni she’s mentored by memory, “Felicia Pride, who I love… I met her on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and loved her then,” she said, calling out the writer’s search for creative freedom as understandable and admirable. “We were so devastated when she left, but she was looking for freedom then. That's why she left. She needed more freedom to find her space, [to] do what she wanted to do.”
Allen also praised Joshua Boone and called him "an incredible actor and such a deep-rooted human being.” Allen loves musing over undeniable talent. She recalled a single audition moment from years ago, “Maya Boyd, who was one of my students at 9-years-old. I threatened her, made her sing, and then I looked up, and she was the star of ‘& Juliet’ on Broadway!”
Mentorship for Allen is both deliberate and delightfully hands-on. She points to “Fame” and “A Different World” as cultural touchstones that opened aspirational doors for young Black artists, from dance careers to college enrollment; both were bigger than entertainment.
“When I was doing ‘A Different World,’ Kadeem [Hardison] became a director, Jasmine [Guy] became a writer. And, you know, just pushing people to let them find new roles of creativity is part of what I love to do,” she said.
When it comes to creativity, Allen’s family is another battery in her back. She credits her mother, the renowned late Vivian Ayers, a poet and cultural activist, with creating an environment where creativity and scholarship coexisted. Vivian was a towering influence in Allen and her sister, Phylicia Rashad’s, upbringing.
“My mother was the quintessential Renaissance woman in the 50s who was a Black woman writing about space before the first Sputnik even went out. She was a Black woman reinventing and reimagining the existence of the human spirit. I remember when she arranged for thousands of Black kids to go to see the ‘Nutcracker’ because when I had grown up, we couldn't go. Everything was segregated,” Allen said of her mother inspiring her to give back to Black children in similar ways.
She continued, “She was part of an organization, and she plowed the field and got young people to come to the concerts under the stars in Houston, and she created something called Gerontology in the Arts, which was elders in the arts and open fields, and it was my inspiration when I did Journey of Yourself. It was mom. I was with her when she did it, and she had elders in the field drawing and making music, and it was incredible.”
It’s clear that Allen’s sister Rashad is another constant source of steadiness. “My sister has always been my biggest inspiration, looking at her,” Allen said. The sense of inheritance — of duties handed down and then handed forward — is central to Allen’s lived definition of legacy.
When wildfires forced community displacement, Allen organized “Dancing in the Light: Healing with Arts,” bringing choreographers and teachers together to run free classes for traumatized residents. We did classes for months, and it was so wonderful and healing,” she said. The program is an example of how DADA’s mission extends beyond auditions and recitals into crisis response and community care.
Allen being honored throughout her life and career is never a surprise. She’s fully aware of the work she’s put in and continues to put in, or as she calls it, “plowing the field.”
“John Hope Franklin, who was America's great historian, was one of my advisors on [the movie] ‘Amistad.’He had actually taught my dad in college, and when I met him, he came and was on set with Stephen [Spielberg], but he would tell me all the time, ‘young Debbie, keep your hands on the plow. Keep your hands on the plow.’ I've had that phrase embedded into my soul and my spirit, and I know you have to keep working.”
Allen hasn’t slowed down. She recently accepted an Honorary Oscar and brought it to her school, telling her students the trophy belongs to them as much as it does to her. Allen wants young people to see someone they know celebrated on a global stage so they understand that that kind of recognition is also possible for them. She believes they deserve this type of hands-on hope and pours it into all who cross her path because she knows that nurtured courage is necessary in showbiz.
“It takes a lot of courage to be who I am, because I have to fight battles all the time, even still. With all the accolades, you'd be shocked, the battles that I still have, but the battles I'm willing to wage and win in some measure.”
