Karis Pendleton

Oh My Gosh! I have some pretty exciting news,

In January I applied to become and ambassador for this organization called Brown Girls DO Ballet (BGDB). BGDBs mission is to “promote diversity in the arts by providing annual scholarships, a mentor network, and community programs to empower young girls”. Well, this past week I found that they chose me to be an ambassador!!!!!! From a very young age my parents would always show me BGDBs posts on IG and I just remember being SO inspired by all the brown and black ballerinas they’d post. Now I’m very grateful that I get the opportunity to be an inspiration to other young dancers of color! 🩰🥹💕

Also, this Friday I had the honor of getting to take a ballet class from Mr. Fabrice Calmels. Mr. Calmels is a French dancer. He studied at the Paris Opera Ballet School (My dream School 🤩), He was a principal dancer for Joffrey Ballet Chicago, he’s a model, and lastly Mr. Calmels holds the Guinness World Record for the tallest dancer as he is 6’7″!!! I ABSOLUTELY loved his class. His class was challenging and very informative. He really liked my dancing! He gave me a lot of compliments and corrections. One of the corrections he gave me was on how to present my neck. He said if I present my neck a certain way it makes my lines look longer and precise. After I applied this correction I was able to see what he was saying, my lines looked much cleaner! Something that I really liked about his class is after every combination he explained the science behind each step and the signals were sending to our brains when we do a step correctly verses when we do a step incorrectly. The way he broke it down was amazing and it gave me a whole new view on basic steps. I’m so so thankful that I had the opportunity to learn from Mr. Calmels! It was such an amazing experience. 🙌🏾💞

Something I did other than dance this week is…

On Sat I got to hang out with a family friend and someone I really look up to named Sydney!!! 💖 I know Sydney because she used to be a voice student at my moms music studio. When I was younger I was always so blown away at her voice. She has such an amazing voice and I remember just always loving to hear her sing! I also remember just being so drawn to her because of her personality. She’s such a really sweet and cool person! When she heard I was moving to NY she reached out to my mom and I and she was saying how excited for me she is that I have this opportunity to move to NY for dance; and was like when you move here we definitely have to hang out! When she said that I was SO excited because I’ve loved hanging out with her in the past. Anyways, yesterday we went to the Brooklyn Museum and saw the Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys exhibit!! The exhibit showcases Artwork that Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz hung in their houses. The artwork was so beautiful!! One of me and Sydney’s favorite pieces of artwork was a painting of Alicia Keys with like flowers all around her. It was stunning. I’m so happy I got to see the exhibit and hang out with Sydney!! We had a such a great time catching up. 😁💞🎉

Go FUND Me Update!

I’m happy to let you all know that I am almost halfway to my goal of $10,000s for summer intensives. Thank you all SO much for donating!! If you can please consider supporting and or share the link with friends and family any amount helps. 🙏🏾☺️

https://gofund.me/32a22c71