BALLET DANCER UNITED STATESMy body is very different from most of those I dance with. But I didn’t let that stop me.
—MISTY COPELAND
Misty pulled on her gym shorts. They were huge—almost to her knees. She stood in the empty locker room gathering her courage.
I can do this, right? she thought. It’s going to be fine. But she wasn’t so sure.
She walked out of the locker room and onto the Boys & Girls Club basketball court. Across the room, the other students were lined up along the wall, holding on to some kind of rail as they bent their knees, kicked up their legs, raised their arms. They were all dressed in pretty matching leotards and tights. On their feet were delicate slippers.
Misty looked down at what she was wearing: too-baggy shorts, a grubby gym shirt, and ratty socks.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea . . . she thought, nearly turning back to the locker room.
“I’ve seen you sitting here every day,” called a voice. It was the teacher, and she was looking right at Misty. “Are you going to join us?”
Misty thought about the kind of dancing she was good at—drill-squad dancing to hip-hop and pop music. Ballet seemed like another world entirely. Not her world.
This was her coach’s idea. She’d told Misty that she should check out the class—that she had the perfect physique and natural ability for ballet. Misty checked out the other students again; she didn’t look like any of them. What if her coach was wrong?
“I don’t have a leotard or tights,” she mumbled.
“Don’t worry about that,” the coach said, pulling Misty into the group.
What if I make a fool of myself? she worried as she began imitating the warm-up movements. What will these kids think of me? What will my coach think?
Then she had an even scarier thought: What if my brothers find out I’m doing ballet? They’d never let her live it down. Ballet was for rich white kids.1
But as Misty laid her hand on the barre for the very first time, her body took over. She bent her legs into pliés, stretched her arms into ports de bras, kicked up her foot for grand battements . . . Every movement felt right. Made sense. Misty felt like she was finally home.
It took Misty Copeland much longer than most ballet dancers to find her calling. While most professional ballerinas begin training at six or seven, Misty was thirteen when she took this first class at the Boys & Girls Club. But with her natural gift and a great deal of hard work, Misty quickly became one of the top ballet dancers in the United States. And one of the only black ballerinas in the world.
Certainly, no one expected Misty to become a prima ballerina when she was born in Missouri in 1982. When she was two years old, her mother left her father, loading Misty and her three siblings onto a Greyhound bus bound for somewhere new. She didn’t see her father again until she was twenty-two. Her mother married and divorced several more times, and as a result, Misty’s childhood was chaotic, with the family moving all the time. Mostly, she lived in San Pedro, a beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.
Misty was a big worrier as a child. In one instance, she begged her mom to take her to school on the last day of summer so she could walk her class route—so she knew where to go and wouldn’t be late. And Misty never was late, not once, all the way through high school.
Misty was five years old when she made her stage debut in a school talent show. She and her siblings sang and danced to “Please Mr. Postman.” They were a hit, especially with their mom. “I felt so special that night,” Misty remembered. “I felt for once that I’d stood out from the crowd of little Copelands, that Mommy’s attention was focused solely on me.”2 When she was seven, Misty watched a TV special about Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comanici, the first gymnast to score a perfect ten. She watched the recording over and over and began teaching herself gymnastics. In no time—and with no lessons—Misty could do difficult gymnastics moves, like backbend walkovers, handstands, and the splits. Misty could instantly do things with her body that it took others months to learn: “I didn’t question why . . . my arms and legs had the elasticity of a rubber band. They just did, and I just knew.”3
As her gymnastics obsession evolved into a dance obsession, Misty figured out something about herself: when she was dancing, she wasn’t worrying about her mom’s new boyfriend, or where they would be living in a month, or whether they had enough money for groceries that week. When she was dancing, she felt free. Misty spent hours choreographing routines to her favorite singers, like Mariah Carey, New Edition, and Tupac. She practiced all the time. In sixth grade, when she tried out for her school’s award-winning dance team, not only did she make it, but they made her the team captain.
In spite of her physical gifts, however, Misty was nervous and insecure. She never felt like she fit in, and she worried about everything. But she had plenty to worry about in middle school. In seventh grade, Misty’s mom divorced again, and then lost her job. The family hit rock bottom. Misty and her five siblings moved into the Sunset Inn Motel—all six kids sleeping on one couch and on the floor. They often had no money for food and had to go on food stamps. Misty remembers this hard time: “We were pretty much homeless and we were living in a motel, trying to scrape up enough money just to go to the corner store and get ‘cup of noodle’ soup to eat. It was probably just the worst time in my childhood when ballet found me.”4
Misty didn’t know anything about ballet—she’d never even seen one—but when her dance coach encouraged her to try it out, she started going to the free weekly classes at the Boys & Girls Club. And she loved it from the very start. Ballet was an escape from her chaotic, scary life. She loved its structure, its rules, its beauty and dignity—all elements that were missing from Misty’s home life.
The ballet teacher, Cynthia Bradley, also recognized Misty’s amazing gift and invited her to take more challenging classes at her ballet school. At first, Misty said no because her mother didn’t have a car to drive her there and was working twelve to fourteen hours a day. Only when Cynthia offered to pick up Misty after school and drive her to the classes did she accept. After just three months of lessons, Misty was dancing en pointe (up on her toes), a milestone that takes a typical ballet dancer years of training to achieve.
Misty’s mother was never very enthusiastic about ballet—the class was too far away and it took up too much of Misty’s time. She told Misty she had to quit. But when her teacher Cynthia heard, she offered to let Misty live with her to make it easier to continue her training. Misty’s mother let her go. Misty left the motel and moved in with the Bradley family. On weekends, she visited her own family.
Once Misty committed to her path, the ballet world began calling her a prodigy. After only eight months of lessons, fourteen-year-old Misty won a national ballet contest and drew two thousand people to San Pedro High School to watch her dance the lead in The Nutcracker.5 At fifteen, she won first place in the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards, for which she won scholarship money. That summer, she got a full ride to attend a summer program at the San Francisco Ballet School, one of the top ballet schools in the country. Misty was a rising star.
The rise wasn’t easy, however. After the summer in San Francisco, Misty returned to the motel, where she and her mother battled. The Bradleys had given her a lot when she lived with them, including more attention than her mother could with five other children. For her mother’s part, she felt like the Bradleys were taking over Misty’s life; she wanted Misty to quit training with them. Misty was terrified her mother wanted her to stop dancing altogether, so she filed for “emancipation,” which meant she could legally live on her own and make her own decisions. She ran away from home while the papers were delivered to her mother. Once Misty’s mom reassured her that she would always let her dance, Misty dropped the suit and moved back in with her family.
Misty was the first ballet dancer to star in an Under Armour ad campaign. The ad, which has a young girl reciting the ballet academy rejection letter as Misty dances up a storm, went viral. It has racked up 9 million views to date.7 Check it out on Misty’s website: mistycopeland.com/misty-under-armour-ad-goes-viral/.
Misty’s other struggle was with the prejudices of the ballet world. Not only did Misty begin her training late but most elite ballerinas are much taller, skinnier, and more flat chested than Misty. They are also nearly all white. After finishing high school, Misty applied to the top ballet companies and received some harsh rejections. She summarized the nature of their complaints in an Under Armour ad she starred in: “Dear Candidate, thank you for your application to our ballet academy. Unfortunately, you have not been accepted. You lack the right feet, Achilles tendons, turnout, torso length, and bust. You have the wrong body for ballet.”6
Misty didn’t let other people’s image of what the perfect ballerina looks like stop her; she just kept dancing. In 2000, after only four years of ballet classes and one summer program, Misty was selected to join the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in New York City. It’s considered one of the top three ballet companies in America. For more than ten years, she was their only black ballerina, and in 2007, she made history by becoming their first African American soloist.
To those who thought audiences only wanted to see tall, skinny, white ballerinas, Misty’s ever-growing success and popularity was a complete surprise. Her unique look and incredible talent brought packed houses and tons of media attention. In June 2015, after fourteen years with ABT, Misty was promoted to principal dancer. She is the first African American to earn this position in ABT’s seventy-five-year history.
While at ABT, Misty has danced many famous ballet roles, including the leads in Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, and The Firebird. She is one of the top ballerinas in the world—a dream she’s had since she was thirteen and living in a motel—yet Misty keeps stretching herself and stretching how people view ballet: she danced with pop god Prince on his 2009 concert tour of Europe, she debuted on Broadway dancing and singing in the musical On the Town, and she was on the cover of Time magazine as one of “The 100 Most Influential People” of 2015.
While ballet’s audiences have been shrinking over the years, Misty gets more popular every day. She’s fighting to expand ballet’s audience, to make it more inclusive, and to change who dances in it. She’s launched a program with ABT called Project Plié, whose goal is to recruit diverse students. Misty is also attracting diverse audiences to her shows: “To see all the little brown girls out there in the audience supporting me . . . is the start of change and the direction of where ballet should be going.”8
Misty speaks out about healthy and positive body image too (not always a strong suit of ballet). She believes that anyone who wants to be a part of ballet and is willing to put in the work should be able to, no matter what kind of body they have. “The ballet world has been a certain way for forever,” she says, “which has been very exclusive and not completely open to people that look different. Not just for your skin type but for the body types that are allowed in. My belief is that if you understand how to train your body . . . how to nurture it and feed it, it can become anything you want it to be.”9
Misty Copeland, who knew nothing about ballet, not only rose to the top of the field but is changing it dramatically. Because of Misty, people who have never been interested in ballet—in watching it or dancing it—are now fascinated. Her struggle and triumph, and her mesmerizing stage presence, have changed everything. Who knows where ballet will go now that Misty is their star . . .
I never dreamed at thirteen years old, living in a motel, that I’d be in this position and be able to bring in so many people that never felt like they belonged in the Metropolitan Opera House.
—MISTY COPELAND
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
I will rock the world by being the first person in my family to play professional sports. I will be in the WNBA and become the next Candace Parker. I will achieve this by continuing to attend training camps and working hard on and off the court. My plans include Texas Tech University, where I will be part of the basketball program. I believe I can make it with determination and hard work.
KIYAN WILLIAMS 
AGE 16