History has been made at the ballet as India Bradley becomes the first Black soloist for the New York City Ballet company. 

Bradley was promoted amongst five other soloists, including Victor Abreu, Dominika Afanasenkov, Naomi Corti, Mary Thomas MacKinnon and Andres Zuniga, The New York Times reports. 

The ballerina was mentored by ballet legend, Andrea Long, who was in the New York City Ballet for 8 years before leaving to become a principal dancer at the Dance Theater Of Harlem. 

Bradley has been with the company since 2017 and continues to shine on the stage, becoming the first Black Dewdrop in George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker.”

Speaking to Essence Girls United, Bradley reflected on how powerful visibility can be when it comes to representation in the arts. 

“If you’ve never seen someone like me in that position, it would never cross your mind that this could be possible for you,” she told the publication.

Her history-making moment as the first Black woman to perform as Dewdrop in the production’s 75-year run was, as she put it, “very important.” 

Bradley emphasized that her milestone is not just personal but deeply symbolic of how much further ballet still has to go in terms of inclusivity.

 “Many African-American women went through this company at different times and were not given the opportunity. I can tell you it had 50 percent to do with the fact that they were Black,” she said.

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Still, she recognizes the deeper systemic barriers that keep ballet from feeling accessible to everyone. 

“Exposure has a lot to do with it,” she says. 

“Ballet was originally an outing for the wealthy; that’s still the case in some ways. It’s maintained by having an element of exclusivity where you can only go if you can afford a $100 ticket. If you never know that ballet exists then you’ll never want to be a ballet dancer. It’s that simple.”

For Bradley, exposure came early. Her mother, a former member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and an accomplished choreographer and educator, introduced her to the world of movement. 

“She would be teaching master workshops, and I would always be with her,” Bradley recalled. 

“I think once I’d gotten to an age where I was old enough to be distracting, she put me in the classes. I don’t think she planned for me to do it professionally, but I just never stopped.”