Misty Copeland named first black female principal at ABT

NEW YORK (AP) — Misty Copeland, the Missouri-born ballerina who's become a forceful voice for diversity in ballet and achieved a celebrity that far transcends that rarified world, was named principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre on Tuesday — the first African-American woman to reach that status in the company's 75-year history.

Copeland, 32, fought tears as she spoke about her promotion, which she said was a lifetime dream — but such a difficult one to attain that she never really thought it would happen.

 

"This is it," she said. "This has been my dream since I was 13, to be a principal dancer and reach these heights."

"But it hasn't been overnight," she added at a hastily arranged news conference — a rarity for a ballet promotion. "It's been 14 years of extremely hard work ... I'm just so extremely honored to be an African-American and to be in this position."

And, Copeland said, she hoped her ascension to the very top ranks of ballet would inspire other young dancers of color — "all the little girls" — to stick with their own dreams.

 

"So many young dancers of color stop dancing at an early age because they just don't think there will be a career path for them," she said. "I hope that will change." She spoke of her own doubts when she joined the ABT corps at age 19 and saw no one "who looked like me."

"I had moments of doubting myself and wanting to quit, because I didn't know if there would be a future for an African-American woman" at that level," she said. "At the same time, it made me so hungry to push through."

 

The company announced the promotion six days after Copeland made her New York debut as Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake," one of the most important roles in a ballerina's repertoire. The emotional performance ended with Copeland being feted onstage by trailblazing black ballerinas of earlier generations, and with a sea of fans cheering and taking cellphone videos.

Copeland has become increasingly famous over the past several years, achieving a pop culture status exceedingly rare for a ballet dancer.

"We haven't had a ballet dancer who has broken through to popular culture like this since Mikhail Baryshnikov," said Wendy Perron, an author and the former editor of Dance Magazine. "And she's going to bring more attention from that world to ballet."

In the past year, Copeland has appeared on the cover of Time magazine as one of the most influential figures of 2015, and written both a children's book, "Firebird," and a best-selling memoir, "Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina," which has been optioned for a movie. She also was the subject of a documentary at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

In recent years she's also performed in a music video with Prince, and been featured in a hugely popular online ad for Under Armour sportswear that shows her leaping and spinning in a studio, while a narrator recounts some of the negative feedback she received as a youngster, when she was told she had the wrong body for ballet and had started too late — at 13.

The dancer also has appeared as a guest host on the Fox show "So You Think You Can Dance" and was a presenter at this year's Tony awards.

 

Many who attended Copeland's historic "Swan Lake" performance last week noted what a diverse audience Copeland had drawn to the Metropolitan Opera House, where ABT performs its spring season. The crowd was filled with young girls — black and white — in their party dresses.