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A Connecticut dance coach is facing backlash after she appeared to snub a biracial girl while hugging other white dancers on her team.
Video of the incident shows Nadia Boucher, a coach at Dance Xpressions in Plainville, Connecticut, rushing to the stage after her team of four young dancers appeared to win an award at the Headliners dance competition. In the video, Boucher stooped down to hug three of her students, who were white, while leaving the fourth dancer, a biracial girl, out of the embrace. The biracial dancer even reached out to hug Boucher, but the teacher appeared to give her the cold shoulder and backed away.
“That was rude,” someone in the audience could be heard saying following the incident.
The snubbed dancer's mom, Melissa Breglia, shared footage from the dance competition on Facebook.
“It absolutely breaks my heart to watch this... Shaniah came off stage devastated! Why would a “teacher” treat a child so poorly!” she wrote. “My daughter deserves an apology and I will continue to share this until THEY FEEL AS BADLY AS SHANIAH DID!! And the studio feels justified and released a statement to the team parents as if it was MY FAULT!! I STAND WITH MY DAUGHTER!” Breglia wrote.
Video of the snub went viral on social media, with users sympathizing with the young dancer and her mom.
"Awwww this makes me so sad for her…. 🥺 I am so sorry," one Facebook user said.
"Wow,😳 what a disgusting display of character, you should be ashamed of yourself. Blatant disregard for a child’s heart 😞," a second user wrote.
Breglia said she has pulled her daughters from the dance studio after the director ignored her requests to talk about the incident.
“Im glad everyone gets to see the truth... unfortunately I get to wipe the tears from my kids faces because they worked so hard all year to have their passion ripped from them... They refused to even have a conversation today when I called the director, she hung up in my face. As if she didn’t make THOUSANDS off of my family...” the mom wrote.
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