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 Sept. 11 during a “routine procedure in preparation for surgery,” according to a statement from family spokeswoman Jess Volinski. She was 77.
“The last few days have been even more difficult than most people realize, as the family has also had to deal with the death of Michaela’s adoptive mother, Elaine DePrince,” Volinski wrote in a statement on Facebook.
Michaela’s death, which occurred on September 10, was announced on September 13. No cause was released. A day later, the family revealed that Elaine, who had adopted Michaela when she was four years old from Sierra Leone, had died without being informed of her daughter’s death the day before.
“As incredible as it may seem, the two deaths are completely unrelated,” Volinski said. “The only way to 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 HIV and died from the virus in the 1990s, as did many others 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 in 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 going to adopt? We have two.’” When Elaine learned that Michaela had been turned down by several families because of a skin condition called vitiligo, she decided to adopt the two, who were renamed Michaela Mabinty DePrince and Mia Mabinty DePrince.
Inspired by the image of a ballerina at a young age, Michaela continued to study ballet after moving to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and then Vermont. She studied at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in New York City, appeared in the award-winning documentary First Position, and starred in Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album, Lemonade. At 17, she joined Dance Theatre of Harlem as the company’s youngest member, and went on to perform with the Dutch National Ballet and Boston Ballet.
“What the family is going through right now is truly incredibly painful,” Volinski said in the family’s statement. “Grieving the loss of two family members in the span of 24 hours is tragic and devastating. We continue to ask for privacy and thank you for directing anyone sharing incorrect information and speculation to this post.”
Elaine DePrince was a mother of 11 children and worked as a special education teacher. She is survived by her children Mia, Amie, Jaye, Mariel, Bee, Erik and Adam.
