Reclaiming Ours: Honoring Legacies, Shaping Futures

Nena Gilreath

Ballerina, Entrepreneur, Artistic Director

Nena Gilreath is a ballerina, an entrepreneur, and an artistic director; she has spent her career immersed in dance. After graduating with a B.F.A. from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Gilreath danced with the Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and the Atlanta Ballet. She toured internationally with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Seeing the need for greater racial diversity in ballet, Gilreath and her husband, choreographer Waverly T. Lucas II, co-founded Ballethnic Dance Company and Academy of Dance in 1990 to provide superior instruction and performance opportunities to underrepresented communities. Gilreath and Lucas have become award-winning artists and entrepreneurs for their work with Ballethnic. They traveled to Senegal to study dance and drum, which they include in the Ballethnic training. Ballethnic has grown into a company and school that produces unique dance experiences for its audiences and students by fusing classical ballet, African dance and other artistic influences.

Gilreath created the Beyond the Barre program for leadership and empowerment for young women. She is known for her mentorship and creating access to elite training and providing that service for young women to accomplish their dreams of dancing sur la pointe. She is one of the few women in dance that has created and led a ballet company for three decades. Her leadership has inspired a generation of dance leaders that have studied under her tutelage. Expanding her horizons, Gilreath is the Facilities and Program Supervisor at East Athens Educational Dance Center and is a guest Ballet Instructor at UGA. She has created partnerships and teaching institutes that utilize dance as a tool to build communities. Her mentorship has created an artistic regional dance, arts and leadership pipeline. She is proud of Ballethnic’s recent accomplishments including producing their signature Ballet The Leopard Tale with The Alliance Theatre on the Coca-Cola stage(2022) and being selected as one of three Black professional Ballet companies to perform in the Reframing the Narrative Ballet Performances at the Kennedy Center.(2022) She is anticipating traveling to Toronto Canada in April to accompany four Ballethnic pre-professional ballerinas in their opportunity to study and perform at Assemblee’ Internationale 2023(A123). Supported by Canada’s National Ballet School it is an Olympic calibre gathering of dancers and artistic directors from training schools around the world.