After being adopted, DePrince's parents encouraged her to pursue her dreams of joining the ballet, but she soon found that her talent as a dancer was treated as second to her appearance. "It's hard to be a Black ballerina," DePrince says. "I was worried that my vitiligo would be a problem, but my skin turned out to be an issue in a different way." Instructors and companies turned her away, and she had to hand dye her undergarments and ballet shoes because there were no nude colors available in her skin tone