DV

Age: 18-29 years

Occupation: College Student; Professional Dancer

As a dancer, DV has faced particular challenges with styling her hair to fit her needs for dance. For example, boxbraids are too heavy for doing turns and straightened natural hair will “poof back up” with sweat. When she was very young, she permed her hair, which was helpful — particularly because a bun was required for dance class. When DV started getting older, she began to take care of her hair on her own (rather than her mother taking care of it). She went natural, and she enjoyed nurturing her hair’s growth: taking care of it, keeping it moisturized, and avoiding excess heat. However, she noticed that her hair could not be styled in all of the same ways as many of the other (white) dancers.

Sometimes, this was an advantage. Since DV’s hair was different from most of the other dancers around her, she could usually style it as she preferred. When she was on dance team, she wore sew-in hair extensions and styled them in high ponytails, half-up half-down styles, or however else she preferred.

“I can’t wear my hair like the other girls, but whew! I can wear my hair however I want to!” DV said with excitement. “My hair grows how my hair grows and they can’t say anything about it.”

Today, DV is a professional dancer on the official dance team of an NBA basketball team. She remarks that her natural hair does not work with all of the choreography; for example, she cannot whip it around in the same way as some of the white dancers with straighter hair. (Due to shrinkage, coily hair in its natural state appears thicker and shorter.)

“I love my natural hair and I would love to wear my natural hair on the court, but also so many pro sports dance teams have a lot of hair-whipping choreography. My natural hair is not long enough to whip in the way I would have wanted to,” DV said. “I might get a silk press and wear that.”

Often, dancers are forced to straighten their hair, but DV clarifies that for her, it is a personal choice. Her dance team does not require straight hair, and DV is thankful that her team is respectful of hair diversity. Even still, she describes a challenge of being Black and a pro sports dancer as “figuring out what you’re going to sacrifice”: working with the choreography or wearing natural curls.