"When I was four years old, a magazine with a ballet dancer on the cover came through the orphanage gate. When I saw this beautiful creature, I was inspired. I didn't know what ballet was, but she looked so happy and it was a time when I wasn't happy. It gave me something to hope for, somebody to be."
"Michaela DePrince's ballerina origin story is more striking than most, because her circumstances were so harsh: her childhood was shaped by civil war in Sierra Leone. Yet DePrince, who has died aged 29, would become the ballerina she dreamed of, performing with leading companies."
"There, she said, the children were ranked in order of favour. Staff called DePrince devil child, due to the white patches on her chest from vitiligo, a pigmentation condition. Ranked 27th of 27, she was always last in line for food."
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