Chocolate Ballerina Company wins CBS Philadelphia's Hometown Heartbeat Award
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Chocolate Ballerina Company, a local dance organization, won a $75,000 grant as the winner of CBS Philadelphia's Hometown Heartbeat Award for making a lasting impact on the community. The grant is awarded to a local small business that's owned by or serves women and minorities.
Their grace and grit are motivated by this gift of opportunity.
"I was a ballerina myself and I always felt like when I would go into the Met ballet or when I would go into the New York City ballet, just to even audition or see the ballets, I never saw the women of my color," Chanel Holland said. "I soon discovered the reason why there weren't many African American young women because we didn't have the accessibility to the information to get to the place of being seen."
That's why Holland started the Chocolate Ballerina Company in 2017. It's a contemporary community-based dance organization, supporting artists of color and of all ages in the Philadelphia region.
"We not only pour into these amazing dancers, I'm genuinely giving them all of me," Holland said. "And I'm also genuinely pulling all of them out into the world to be seen, respected and to feel that not only are they touching lives and changing lives and changing hearts, that they are also themselves growing to become their own individual moguls and their own individual community."
Holland and her dance organization received the Hometown Heartbeat Award. The award is worth $75,000 in grant money and advertising.
"I can't explain how I feel," Holland said. "We have struggled so long financially to try to provide a platform and I am so grateful."
Holland said she plans to use the funds toward getting the dancers a permanent home to train.
"What would really bring all of this together is that if we had a place that we could call home," she said, "a place that the community could call home."
She plans to call it the Center of Excellence, where they will continue carrying out their mantra: "inspire, influence and improve."
Inspire the community, influence lives through the performing arts and improve ballet training opportunities as they make an impact.
"They've grown to just not only inspire me, but I see the faces of the young girls that they touch and it's heartfelt," Holland said. "These programs, art education programs, are saving so many lives and keeping so many of our young people alive today. They have an escape where they can be themselves, be seen and know that they have a choice and chance in their life."
All of the classes are free or subsidized for students.
Holland said this is not only about choreography but about mentorship and preparing them for life as adults outside of dance.
