Ten years ago, Misty Copeland was named the first Black female principal dancer at American Ballet Theater. She was 32, which, for a ballet dancer, isn’t exactly young. But she took the flame, and she ran with it. Like it was a sprint.
Soon, she’ll come to a stop. Copeland has announced in an interview with The New York Times Magazine that she is retiring from Ballet Theater after a final performance in the fall.
She waited a long time for her chance to make history. But once she claimed the mantle, she didn’t waste any time — not just as a dancer but also as an ambassador for diversity in dance and the advancement of Black performers in ballet. She was someone who was admired from afar (the fandom went deep) but also listened to.
She had a cause and a platform. And it was immediately apparent that she had a gift for speaking about serious subjects to the general public. She had pull. Devotees attended her performances in droves. Suddenly, the Metropolitan Opera House, where Ballet Theater has a season each year, was full of families, and enthusiastic Black and brown girls.
I only wish the company had promoted Copeland earlier so she could have had more time to grow her artistry. By then, she had been with Ballet Theater a long time — since 2001 — and been a soloist since 2007. Her body, during her principal years, was prone to injury. And then the pandemic happened. All ballet dancers face the inevitable end, but she was really in a race against time. The stakes were higher for her as a Black woman in ballet, a field that has been slow to address its problems of racial inequity, particularly when it comes to women.
Copeland pushed herself to do more, whether giving speeches, with grace, or appearing on shows like “Late Night With Jimmy Kimmel,” where she led the host and his sidekick, Guillermo, through ballet steps. They wore tutus; she did not. Her exasperation with them is funny, down to earth and blunt — and, therefore, so Copeland. “Today,” she says in a deadpan, ballet “died.”
The sketch concludes with a dance set to music from “Swan Lake,” in which Copeland joins Kimmel and Guillermo, all three center stage, surrounded by members of Ballet Theater. What stands out are not the leads, but a Black dancer behind Copeland: Calvin Royal III, who was named a principal in 2020.
Copeland helped to pave the way for dancers of color to rise, not just at Ballet Theater but at companies and schools around the country. She encouraged young dancers to pursue ballet because there she was, proof that a career could happen — and at the highest level. Her presence was a guidepost for parents, too: Ballet could be more than just their child’s adolescent dream.
Her success encouraged ballet companies to set sail on her gossamer wings — not so much because of the growing demand for diversity, equity and inclusion but because opening up ballet to a new audience was a smart move. This was business. And at Ballet Theater, Copeland was a box-office sensation.
Ballet still suffers from a dearth of Black women, though it has been changing incrementally. Some of that change happens behind the scenes. Copeland herself has a foundation through which she has started a curriculum called Be Bold to expose children to ballet. She plans to continue her work there.
Teachers are key, too. Training a ballet dancer generally takes 10 years. At the School of American Ballet, New York City Ballet’s training ground, Aesha Ash — a former City Ballet dancer who left the company to dance in Europe for more opportunities — is a leadership force as the school’s head of artistic health and wellness. She has a stake in training the future.
But the stage is where you see proof, and stages look different now. Just last month, India Bradley, a corps de ballet member at City Ballet, made her debut as the female lead in George Balanchine’s “La Valse.” It wasn’t a random occurrence. Younger City Ballet dancers like Olivia Bell and Mia Williams are on the rise, and had featured roles last season.
City Ballet, though, has never had a Black female principal. Debra Austin, the first Black female dancer to join the company, in 1971, left to become a principal at Pennsylvania Ballet. And others — precious few — outside of New York have followed, including Chyrstyn Mariah Fentroy, who has been principal at Boston Ballet since 2022. Such promotions are still rare, but Black ballet dancers, male and female, are no longer an afterthought or a box to check off. They’re visible and they’re dancing. In part because of Copeland.
The world has always been on a first-name basis with Copeland. I heard this regularly: Is Misty dancing? And at Ballet Theater, she became the marquee name when international guest artists started disappearing from the roster. Nelson George, who made a documentary about Copeland, called her “the first big ballet pop star since Baryshnikov,” and for a time, this was true.
Copeland was tinier than people imagined, which was telling: Her speaking voice was huge, but her dancing body had a fragility to it, a vulnerability that was especially potent in dramatic full-length ballets like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Giselle.” She could act. Her humor and ebullience were charming, like in Frederick Ashton’s “La Fille Mal Gardée” and on Broadway for a run in “On the Town.” She also had a sleek power that lent a freshness to contemporary works, like Twyla Tharp’s.
Something changed when she danced in “Deuce Coupe,” Tharp’s masterful crossover ballet set to songs by the Beach Boys. In the solo “Got to Know the Woman,” Copeland entered another sphere as a dancer: Seductive, grounded, lost in her own world, she was transcendent. She was no longer so diminutive; she was lit by an inner fire.
That solo, performed in 2019, merged Copeland the cultural force with Copeland the dancer. Each was present, and they came together as one voice, a crystalline symbol of female strength. This wasn’t Misty, this was Misty Copeland.
Not just the first Black female principal at American Ballet Theater, but a ballerina. Period.
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic for The Times. She writes reviews, essays and feature articles and works on a range of stories.
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