Ballerina Michaela DePrince’s Mom Elaine Died 24 Hours After Her

Ballerina Michaela Mabinty DePrince’s Mom Elaine DePrince Died 24 Hours After Her Daughter

The DePrince family has shared more heartbreaking news. 

After confirming the death of Boston Ballet principal soloist Michaela Mabinty DePrince at the age of 29, her family shared that Michaela mother’s Elaine DePrince died within 24 hours of her adopted daughter.

“The last few days have been even more difficult than most people realize,” they posted to Facebook Sept. 14, “because the family has also been dealing with the death of Michaela’s adoptive mother Elaine DePrince.”

They shared that Michaela passed on Sept. 10, while Elaine, who was 77, died on Sept. 11 “during a routine procedure in preparation for a surgery.”

“Michaela died before Elaine and Elaine did not know of Michaela’s passing at the time of her procedure,” the family added. “As unbelievable as it may seem, the two deaths were completely unrelated. The only way we can make sense of the senseless is that Elaine, who had already lost three children many years ago, was by the grace of God spared the pain of experiencing the loss of a fourth child.”

In another Facebook update from Sept. 14, posted alongside black and white photos of Elaine reading to her children when they were younger, the family added that she had experienced “many years of battling a hereditary disease and heart failure.” She is survived by her children Mia, Beelee, Jaye, Mariel, Amie and her sons, Erik and Adam.

Facebook/DePrince Family

Michaela’s family first shared the news of her death on Sept. 13, writing on her official Instagram page, “Michaela touched so many lives across the world, including ours. She was an unforgettable inspiration to everyone who knew her or heard her story.” 

Her cause of death has not been made public.

The dancer was born in Sierra Leone in 1995, but was soon sent to an orphanage after both her parents died during the country’s 11-year civil war. At the age of 4, she and fellow orphan Mia were adopted by an American family in New Jersey, who encouraged her love of dance.

Ian Gavan/Getty Images

As Michaela—who cowrote her 2014 memoir Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina with Elaine—explained early in her career, her interest in dance was sparked while she was in the orphanage and discovered an image from a discarded magazine.

“There was a lady on it,” she told the BBC in 2012 of the magazine, “she was on her tippy-toes, in this pink, beautiful tutu. I had never seen anything like this—a costume that stuck out with glitter on it, with just so much beauty. I could just see the beauty in that person and the hope and the love and just everything that I didn’t have.”

As she explained, she thought to herself, “‘Wow! This is what I want to be.'”

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