The Charleston-based evangelicals had much in common: guns, God, Trump. What went wrong, only one of them could say.
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SEPTEMBER 2, 2021
On an unseasonably hot day in the fall of 2017, four dozen dancers descended on the small city of Charleston, South Carolina. Seasoned soloists from major companies as well as students fresh out of dance school, they were lucky members of the newly formed
American National Ballet. Their new jobs, they believed, represented not only the fulfillment of their own dreams, but a revolution in the field of ballet.
ANB’s husband-and-wife founders, businessman
Doug Benefield and Ashley, herself a former dancer, appeared to have deep pockets and a noble mission: to highlight racially diverse and physically unconventional dancers. Their first hire was Sara Michelle Murawski, a stunning five-foot-ten dancer who said she had lost her previous job because of her above-average height. “‘I want dancers who aren’t the cookie-cutter dancers,’” Ashley had told Murawski, who started crying and, when they hung up, thought, This is really what I want to do. At five nine, Ashley said that she had dealt with similar obstacles in her own career. Another recruit was then 20-year-old Hanna Manka, who had the opposite problem, and usually fudged her barely five feet on her résumé. The offer from
the Benefields was a lifeline. As Manka recalls, “After working so hard and trying for so long, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, all this work finally has paid off.’”
ANB pledged to redress not only height and size discrimination, but the notorious whiteness of classical ballet. Each new hire—at the behest of their new bosses—posted a photo on Instagram with a hashtag: #WeEmbraceDiversity or #ANBFamily. Christopher Charles McDaniel had spent years as the only Black dancer at Los Angeles Ballet before deciding to join ANB. “There was so much hope for what could happen with this new company,” he said.
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, and I love dance!
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