My five year old niece, a very enthusiastic and musical child, has begun pre-ballet classes. She is the child of a white mother (my sister) and a black father and is herself a black child.
Upon hearing that she was beginning ballet classes, my aunt, who was a professional dancer and is not by nature prejudiced, said "well - you won't see any chocolate drops in the corps of the Australian Ballet Company". She was not making a racist comment, but was simply making a statement of fact. There has never, to my knowledge, been a black dancer with the company and I don't expect to see one in the near future.
Do you place one black dancer in an all white corps, or as an AD, would you consider that this would be 'jarring' from a purely aesthetic viewpoint - just as you would not put one member of the corps in a red tutu when the rest are wearing blue? Is it more acceptable to place an Asian dancer in the corps as the lighter skin tone 'blends in more'? I don't have any answers here, but these were the types of questions that this personal situation raised in my own mind. I believe it is naive to claim that the colour of the skin doesn't matter when it comes to traditional classical companies. Companies have numerous rules when employing dancers regarding appearance - body shape, height etc - so why would the issue of colour be any different? Personally, I love to watch talented dancers of any colour, height, sex, race - but perhaps not everyone feels this way.
While the argument of economics and accessability may have some basis in fact, the same could be said for the cost of educating a lawyer or doctor.