Just to see her Dance....

AMSTERDAM — Michaela DePrince was appearing here in the third act of Balanchine’s “Jewels” with the Dutch National Ballet on a recent evening. There were about a dozen ballerinas in bejeweled white tutus arrayed across the stage, and there she was all the way stage right in the front line.
This 20-year-old American ballerina, who joined the Dutch National Ballet’s main company in August, is in some respects the equivalent of a chorus girl in a Broadway musical. But night after night, people show up just to see her dance.

Ms. DePrince, who was an orphan in war-torn Sierra Leone and became a professional ballerina against staggering odds, has become a celebrity here since the publication late last year of her best-selling young-adult memoir, published in the United States as “Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina” and internationally as “Hope in a Ballet Shoe. Read more on the talented and gifted Ballerina - Michaela De Prince HERE.