The adoptive mother of ballerina Michaela Mabinty DePrince, who died suddenly at age 29 last week, died less than 24 hours later of an unrelated illness. Elaine DePrince died on 11 September during “a routine procedure in preparation for a surgery”, according to a statement from family spokesperson Jess Volinski. She was 77.
“The last few days have been even more difficult than most people realize because the family has also been dealing with the death of Michaela’s adoptive mother Elaine DePrince,” Volinski wrote in a statement on Facebook.
Michaela’s death, on 10 September, was announced on 13 September. No cause has been revealed. A day later, the family revealed that Elaine, who adopted Michaela at the age of four from Sierra Leone, had died without knowledge of her daughter’s death.
“As unbelievable as it may seem, the two deaths were completely unrelated,” said Volinski. “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.”
Elaine and her husband Charles, who died in 2020, adopted three boys with hemophilia in the 1980s, according to the New York Times; all three contracted and died of HIV in the 1990s, as did many other people with hemophilia. Inspired by one of their adopted sons, Michael, the DePrinces flew to Sierra Leone in 1999 to adopt a girl orphaned by the civil war. Michaela DePrince, born Mabinty Bangura, lost her parents to the war and shared a bed at an orphanage with another girl, also named Mabinty.
“I got a call from the adoption agency,” Elaine told NBC News in 2017. “They said, ‘Which Mabinty are you adopting? We have two of them.’” When Elaine was told that Michaela had been turned down by several families because of the skin condition vitiligo, she decided to adopt both, renamed Michaela Mabinty DePrince and Mia Mabinty DePrince.
Inspired by a picture of a ballerina at a very young age, Michaela went on to study ballet after moving to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and later Vermont. She studied at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in New York, appeared in the award-winning documentary First Position and performed in Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album Lemonade. At 17, she joined the Dance Theatre of Harlem as the youngest member of the company, and went on to perform with the Dutch National Ballet and the Boston Ballet.
“What the family is going through right now is truly unimaginably painful,” said Volinski in the family statement. “Grieving two family members who died within a 24-hour period is tragic and devastating. We continue to ask for privacy and appreciate you directing anyone sharing incorrect information and speculation to this post.”
Elaine DePrince was a mother to 11 children and worked as a special education teacher. She is survived by her children Mia, Amie, Jaye, Mariel, Bee, Erik and Adam.
