Donyelle Denise Wilson, beloved by dance fans around the world as Donyelle Jones, has died at age 46.
A post shared on her official Instagram account announced that Donyelle “transitioned” on Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 8:34 a.m.
Her death comes nearly a decade after she was first diagnosed with stage 3C breast cancer in 2016, a disease that later advanced to Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.
In the Instagram statement, Donyelle was remembered as “A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend. And a warrior who kicked cancer’s ass every single day she was here.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(545x673:547x675):format(webp)/Donyelle-Jones-Wilson-4-120225-ba0c7440cf8c44968c91eb03ba55ace3.jpg)
“Her spirit never dimmed. Her heart never hardened. And even in the storm, she never lost her smile,” the message continued.
Donyelle first rose to fame on season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance, which aired in the summer of 2006. Her dynamic hip-hop and jazz performances made her a standout, ultimately earning her a third-place finish behind winner Benji Schwimmer and runner-up Travis Wall.
After her breast cancer diagnosis, Donyelle openly shared her health journey on social media. She marked July 6, 2025, as an especially meaningful milestone — the day she taught her first dance class in four years — calling it a “bday gift to myself.”
The “theme for this evening was Love, Peace, Reassurance,” she wrote at the time. “Cancer has robbed me of so much and I Iet the grief of losing what I had in dance or how it connected to my life take over the possibility of how it can show up in my life right now.”
“I’m learning at every twist and turn of this journey called life how to navigate each season as they come,” she added.
In one of her final videos, posted just six days before her death, Donyelle shared that she had begun getting her affairs in order and had done “everything possible to extend my time in this dimension and at this point I have surrended to whatever God’s will is.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(711x330:713x332):format(webp)/Donyelle-Jones-Wilson-2-120225-abf9e3e55c3e426fbb89ae51f6ab57cb.jpg)
Her passing sparked an outpouring of love from friends and fans, including actor Yvette Nicole Brown, who honored her on Instagram and called the dancer a “dear friend.”
“@donyelledenise8 was… no IS the best of us,” Brown wrote. “One of one. We love you, Donnie! Thank you for showing us how to live and fight and love and DANCE! We will see you on the other side. I will be the one dancing towards you. Me and my two left feet! 😘❤️🕊️”
Los Angeles dance company LA Dance Magic also shared a tribute on Instagram, saying it was “heartbroken” by her death and noting that her “passion for dance, her kindness, and her love for the people around her touched countless lives and left an impact we will always carry with us.”
