Lauren Anderson
Anderson entered the Houston Ballet Ben Stevenson Academy at age 7 and took the stage as Alice in Houston Ballet’s production of Alice in Wonderland at only 13. During the production Anderson was trialed with issues of race,. “Alice was really, really white,” Anderson said, “and I was really, really brown.” For the most part however, Anderson was sheltered from much of the racial prejudice under Stevenson’s guidance. And it was in the year 1990 that Anderson really broke barriers, when she joined the Houston Ballet as the principal dancer, the first black ballerina to be a principal dancer in the company. Her title role in Cleopatra earned her international recognition and she received rave reviews. She has performed many principal roles that commonly feature white dancers, including the Suger Plum fairy in The Nutcracker.” She states that even though she was the only black in a traditionally white company, she “stood out,” and “everybody remembered me.”
