The Misty Effect: Nardia Boodoo, Company Dancer, The Washington Ballet

“I had a unique path to dance,” says Nardia Boodoo, a luminous, elegant dancer with The Washington Ballet. She briefly studied ballet as a child, but didn’t start serious training until she was 14 years old, attending Baltimore School for the Arts. “I didn’t know what a pirouette was,” she says. “I would wake up really early to stretch and remember my corrections.” But, a focused student, she advanced quickly: Soon she was attending prestigious summer intensives, and she earned a spot in The Washington Ballet Studio Company in 2014. Now, Boodoo is working with her childhood idol, TWB artistic director Julie Kent, and dreams of someday dancing the title role in Giselle.

Boodoo is acutely aware of the power of representation. “It has only recently become OK to have a Misty Copeland,” she says. “It’s no longer socially acceptable to only have girls who look exactly the same, in any aspect of entertainment. But at the same time it feels like a trend, and I’m not a trend, I’m a human being.” Boodoo wants to see genuine diversity, from top to bottom. “You need teachers and directors, ballet masters and répétiteurs,” she says. “Diversity on every single level is progress.”