In all of D.C. there is only one dancewear store, and it just opened on Sept. 5. KNE Dancewear Hub—the satellite location of Kiara Ebron’s popular store in Capitol Heights, Maryland—is now open inside the Dance Institute of Washington’s Columbia Heights studio.
Prior to the store’s September opening, D.C.-based dance students had to travel to Hyattsville, Centreville, Leesburg, or Manassas to find dance clothes, footwear, or in-person fittings. The other option was to order leotards and slippers online.
Ebron deals with people who buy things online often. “They’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I’ve ordered these shoes from Amazon three times. At this point, I need you guys, help,’” Ebron tells City Paper.
Getting the right size dance- and footwear, particularly pointe shoes, often requires an expert’s advice. Even experienced fitters can size students incorrectly, as Riley Thomas Weber, an expert pointe shoe fitter, noted in a TikTok from August. Another fitter had unintentionally sized his now-client’s pointe shoes two sizes too large—a mistake that strained her toes, foot, and ankle and left her vulnerable to injury. “I’m so upset for your bones,” Weber says in the post. His pointe fitting videos regularly get hundreds of thousands of views, with six in the multimillion range—a nod to this elusive science.
Leotards for young dancers are somewhat simpler. Ebron usually recommends starting with the same size as the child’s back-to-school clothes. She then helps them hone in on the best fit, which often differs across brands and materials.
“We’ll ask them, ‘Is it too tight in your thigh area?’ And then, ‘Is it too tight under your arms?’” Ebron says. “If it’s too tight there, you want to get rid of it, because it’s not going to get any looser.”
Fitting a pointe shoe, on the other hand, requires more complex measurements of the student’s foot, arches, flexibility, and toes, as well as an assessment of their training, experience, and strength. When the average pair costs at least $100, it’s a decision many parents don’t want—or can’t afford—to get wrong.
“Unless the parent happens to be an orthopedic podiatrist, they are not going to have any clue how to support that dance,” Kahina Haynes, Dance Institute of Washington’s executive director, tells City Paper. “That, to me, is honestly a big barrier for most parents.”
Hosting KNE Dancewear’s satellite location is part of DIW’s broader strategy to make classical ballet and dance training more accessible to students of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Fabian Barnes, a soloist with Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York, founded DIW in 1987 to improve children’s lives through the arts. He stayed at the school as executive director until he died in 2016. Later that year, Haynes stepped into the executive director role—and continued Barnes’ mission.
Early in her tenure, Haynes noticed that, while her staff took pains to teach students they belonged in an art form that historically excluded dancers of color, they couldn’t control the messages their students received outside the studio.
“When you’re at a school like DIW, your classes and your teachers and your peers, every element of your dance training is reinforcing that no matter what you look like, where you’re from … you belong here. You deserve to be a dancer,” says Haynes. But when students went shopping for supplies, for instance, they wouldn’t always see themselves—their race, size, or socioeconomic background—reflected in the inventory, the ads, or the pricing.
Until recently, dance clothing designers and shoemakers were infamous for exclusionary sizing and color ranges. To make light pink pointe shoes (the longtime standard) match their skin tones, dancers of color would have to “pancake,” or hand-paint their slippers with liquid makeup. Professional ballet dancer Cira Robinson told the New York Times in 2018 she went through five tubes a week. (And dancers fly through shoes quickly too. According to Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, a professional can dance through 100 to 120 pairs of pointe shoes in a single season.)
Only after the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 did major pointe-maker Capezio commit to expanding its shade range beyond light pink. Other major brands Freed and Gaynor Minden had only expanded their own shades in 2017.
The selection of leotards and tights on offer wasn’t much better. “Of all my numerous pairs of tights that I’ve acquired over the years, I can honestly say only one or two match my skin tone, and I got them this year,” 18-year-old dancer Brianna Bell told Good Morning America in 2020.
“Working with KNE was powerful, because it addressed [color range] as well [as the geographic barrier],” says Haynes. “It’s a tag team effort now.”
KNE is named for its founder, Kiara Natay Ebron. A dancer from childhood, Ebron worked at Washington Dancewear in Capitol Heights while completing her undergraduate degree and MBA at Bowie State University. When the store’s owners announced their retirement in 2024, worried parents reached out to Ebron.
“My phone and email were blowing up,” she recalls. “‘What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?’”
Ebron purchased the store using her home’s equity and reopened it as KNE Dancewear in 2024. Since then, one of her goals has been to make shopping for dance classes easier and more inclusive—even the store’s Google Reviews are mostly glowing. One parent wrote, “KNE Dancewear has been an absolute beacon of support in my daughter’s dance journey.”
“This store has become the best support system for me and my academy students,” wrote a teacher.
Even before the D.C. location opened, Ebron and her assistants were working hard to bring down barriers. They routinely visit dance schools, measuring students in person, offering the shoes at a discount, and hand-delivering products to the studio. At DIW, KNE recently sponsored three dancers’ tuition for the 2026-2027 school year, and the company has run financial dancewear relief initiatives, giving leotards and dance shoes to students in need.
According to Haynes, the District needs more efforts and players such as Ebron and KNE to step up as the Trump administration continues to cut away at arts funding while closing places like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which has long been a major hub for dance events and training.
“Those of us who are trying to provide training and education and creative opportunities for all kinds of members of the dance community … those folks need support,” says Haynes. “They need anchors, they need place and permanence, or they’re going to leave.”
The business model of dance, in Haynes’ opinion, needs to undergo a radical transformation in order to survive the current threats. She sees alliances like the one between DIW and KNE Dancewear as an example of how to move forward without waiting on federal funding or appointments to get supplies, and opportunities, in students’ hands.
KNE Dancewear Hub is located in Dance Institute of Washington’s Columbia Heights studio, 3400 14th St. NW.
