by Mildred Europa Taylor, Face2FaceAfrica.com
Britain’s first Black professional ballerina, Julie Felix, has had her pointe shoes restored on the popular BBC program, The Repair Shop.
The 67-year-old London-born dancer, whose mother is a white British woman and father is Black from St. Lucia, brought the ballet shoes she wore for her first professional solo performance four decades ago to the television program to fulfil her late mother’s wish to have them restored.
“It just turned out that life is busy as we all know it, and I never got the opportunity to get them fixed,” Felix said, adding that the shoe restoration took her breath away. “…It was something that I really never expected to happen,” the dancer and author said.
Her pioneering career was not without challenges, but her mother always gave her the much-needed support. When she started ballet, a London ballet company rejected her in the 1970s due to her race, saying, “we can’t have a brown ballet dancer in the line-up of the swans”.
“For about a week or so I was upset and then I thought I’ll just keep going with this,” she said to the BBC.
She decided to seek opportunities abroad, and that move turned things around for her as a ballet dancer. Felix earned a contract with the all-black Dance Theatre Of Harlem in New York and found success as she traveled the world, performing for prominent people, including singer Prince and Ronald Reagan. Felix had become a star in the U.S. after being rejected back home.
She was finally given her first solo role in London when her ballet company was invited to perform at the Royal Opera House in London. Felix mounted the stage in her “tan-coloured” pointed shoes, which were dyed to match the tone of her skin.
Having those shoes restored now is something she will never forget.
“These were the shoes that I wore when mom and dad came to see me perform on the stage of the Royal Opera House,” said Felix. “And I said, ‘mom, you were right. I’ve made it, and I’m here’. Right here on this table, these symbolise all the work, effort, love and devotion from my mother.”
“It was genuine tears, it really was,” she said of her reaction to the restoration of the shoes, as reported by the Independent. “Even now when I’m talking about it, I’m getting a lump in my throat, any time I talk about my mom. I knew that these would be absolutely what she had wanted.
“She asked me, ‘Julie, when you’re finished with these shoes, please can you get them fixed in such a way that I can put them on a display somewhere in the house as memory of my coming to see you perform at the Royal Opera House’.
“That really choked me up because I just put my heart on my chest the way I did when I stood on the stage when she was alive. I looked up at the seats in the Gods, and I just said, ‘mom, I’m here, I’ve done it’ and it took me back.”
The shoes are now on display in her home. “I see them every day, when I’m home all the time, and it doesn’t take much for my eye to catch them. And I just think, ‘mom, look at these’.
“That’s what she wanted, and she wanted them in her house so she could see them every day. So, thank you The Repair Shop,” Felix said.
The Repair Shop sees expert craftspeople repairing cherished pieces for people on the program.
Felix taught at the Birmingham Royal Ballet when she returned to the UK. The history-maker also worked as Head of Dance at St Martin’s Girls School in Solihull until her retirement. In 2024, she was awarded an MBE for services to dance education.
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