black people in harlem. arthur mitchell was a principal dancer with new york city ballet and he was the first african—american to achieve that level in a major american ballet company. he looked around at this neighbourhood and he said, "these kids don't have a future." education is terrible, the schools are failing, nobody cares about them. they don't have a way of breaking this cycle of poverty but if i teach them ballet, i'm going to give them something else to draw from within themselves. we started with 30 children and two dancers and everybody said i was crazy because i was using a european art form, classical ballet. but i think that is the strongest technical foundation and once you have that technique you can do anything you want. classical ballet is impossibly difficult and it requires focus, it requires self—discipline and it requires perseverance.