Ballet dancer Michaela DePrince, 29, died on Sept. 10. No cause of death has been revealed. DePrince was born in Sierra Leone; the civil war, her parents’ deaths, and her vitiligo bequeathed her an awful childhood. In 1999, she and another girl, Mia, were adopted by a New Jersey couple, and Michaela soon threw herself into dance. She attended the American Ballet Theater, and was soon dancing in ballet companies worldwide; she also appeared in the documentary First Position, Dancing with the Stars, and Beyonce’s “Lemonade” music video. She wrote her memoirs, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina, in 2015. DePrince’s sister Mia wrote on Instagram, “From the very beginning of our story back in Africa, sleeping on a shared mat in the orphanage, Michaela and I used to make up our own musical theater plays and act them out. We created our own ballets. She would choreograph, and I was the composer and conductor. When we got adopted, our parents quickly poured into our dreams and arose the beautiful, gracefully strong ballerina that so many of you knew her as. She was an inspiration.”
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