American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland knows a thing or two about discipline. During rehearsal season she's up at 8 A.M. and in her pointe shoes by 10:30 a.m. She practices eight hours per day, six days a week, drinks her coffee black, and mostly sticks to a pescaterian diet. Though a wisp of a thing at 5'2", she's chiseled from head to toe, with hamstrings and calves that'd make Michelangelo blush. So it's a relief to discover that she has vices—shopping being one. "Oh my god, it's so bad," she says on a recent Sunday afternoon, opening a hall closet in her Upper West Side apartment to reveal at least a dozen pairs of neatly stored Louboutins and Manolos. "There are too many!"
When she finds the time to wear them is another story. For the last 14 years, Copeland has danced with ABT, one of the world's premiere ballet companies. At 31, she is a trailblazer: She's the third black, female soloist ever to dance on ABT's hallowed floorboards. In 2012, she became the first black dancer to perform the iconic role in Firebird for a major ballet company. Every season, it seems, she rewrites history. Tomorrow, she'll dance the part of Swanilda, the first female lead role in Coppélia at the Metropolitan Opera House. According to Copeland, she'll be the first African-American woman ever to carry a full three-act ballet for an elite American ballet company.
It takes years for a ballerina to achieve what Copeland has, and she's had to contend with more than most—from childhood homelessness to pointed criticism about her body's womanly curves. Plus, changing the face of an art form calcified by tradition isn't an easy task. But Copeland has embraced it. "It's very difficult to be the first to achieve something," says Dance Theatre of Harlem founder Arthur Mitchell, who was the first black dancer in New York City Ballet. "Misty is a wonderful dancer, and a wonderful spokeswoman for the field. She has everything. If she perseveres, anything is possible."
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Sitting cross-legged on the carpet of the airy Manhattan one-bedroom she shares with her boyfriend, lawyer Olu Evans, Copeland seems at ease. Despite her grueling schedule, she's graciously agreed to meet on her one day off. On a perfect Sunday, she'd start the day not with an interview, but with a plate of French toast at the Landmarc restaurant in the Time Warner Center (another vice), followed by an afternoon of shopping. She pulls out a recent purchase, a black jumpsuit from Rag & Bone. "I just wore this the other night," she gushes. "It's totally backless."
But today she's agreed to spend the afternoon reflecting. "For the first time in my life, I can talk about difficult times in my life and not be so emotional," says Copeland, who opens up about her journey in a new memoir, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina.
Born in Kansas City, she was two when her parents split, and her ex-NFL cheerleader mother moved Misty and her three older siblings to the West Coast. They settled in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro, where Copeland's mom wed and divorced two more times, had two more kids, and bounced the family around, following boyfriends from apartment to apartment. "We felt like we were being dragged along," says Copeland. While her mom was usually employed, there were lean times. When Copeland was 13, the family lived in a motel. She and her brothers and sisters slept on blankets on the floor. "That was the hardest time in my childhood," says Copeland, who made up for the chaos at home by working doubly hard at school. And still: "I had so much anxiety."
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Copeland began practicing ballet years after most elite dancers. Impressed by her raw athletic ability, Copeland's middle school drill team coach called a friend, a local ballet teacher named Cynthia Bradley, to take a look. Bradley invited Copeland to a class she was giving at the Boys & Girls Club. The first time the 13-year-old stood at the barre, wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt, "I hated it." But then Copeland tried a class at Bradley's dance academy, San Pedro Ballet School—and fell in love. "She gave me slippers and a leotard, and it was like I finally fit in," she says. "Ballet was so structured. I'd been craving something that could guide me."
Within three months, Copeland was dancing en pointe, something that takes most ballerinas years to master. As many elite athletes do, Copeland moved in with her teacher to make it easier to train, and got a different taste of what life could be like. "I would go home and eat dinner, and then go to sleep in a bed. At first it was like, 'Do I deserve this?' But I got comfortable quickly, because they were great to me."
But the arrangement didn't last. As Copeland began to spend more time away from her family, tensions rose between Bradley and her mom. When Copeland was 15, her mother decided to bring her home. But Copeland didn't want to leave. "It was like my world was ending," she says. "They were like family." In a panic, Bradley tried to arrange for Copeland to emancipate herself, but the plan fell through. Copeland's mom hired famous feminist attorney Gloria Allred, and in the media circus that followed, forced Copeland to appear on Leeza Gibbons' talk show. "The attention was devastating," she says. "I had been so private. It was scarring."
It's clear that Copeland has done the work in therapy—"I've been going on and off since I moved to New York," she admits—because she's remarkably matter-of-fact about how it all went down. "I think both my mom and Cindy wanted the best for me. They were two women from completely separate worlds. Cindy saw a girl who was deprived, and my mother saw a woman taking her child away. Over time, I realized my mom did what she could. But I resented her for years. To this day, it's hard for us to talk about these things."
Despite it all, Copeland thrived, winning invitations from prestigious dance schools all over the country to study in their summer intensive programs. After two summers with ABT, she was asked to join the studio company, and then the corps. But not everyone wanted her there. "Seeing negative things on the Internet was hard," says Copeland. "There's still racism in ballet. People make comments. For some people, I don't look like a ballerina."
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Then came the chorus of criticism over her body. "As a child, I had been told that I was exactly what a ballerina should be," says Copeland, the so-called Balanchine ideal: a girl with long legs, big feet, and a flat chest. So when Copeland hit puberty at 19—and suddenly had breasts, bigger muscles, and a more developed figure—"it was a shock. I had no idea what to do with my body. It wasn't responding like it used to. It was like starting over." Her teachers never told her to lose weight, but Copeland knew they weren't happy. "They basically said, 'Your body has changed. You've added weight. It's creating a different line, and it's not what we want.' I didn't know how to take care of it. I'd always eaten whatever I wanted—Taco Bell, soda, burgers and French fries. I would come home and eat an entire pizza from Domino's and six donuts, cry, and go to sleep. The next day I'd be hiding in class. It was a really dark time. I went through a lot by myself because I didn't have anybody in my life yet who understood."
Enter Olu. She met him at a club in Chelsea in 2004. Tall and fit, with a pair of dimples that made her heart flutter, he was with the actor Taye Diggs, his cousin, when he spotted her on the dance floor. Ten years later, they're still together. "He was my first boyfriend," says Copeland, breaking into a huge smile. "He taught me to communicate in ways I'd never learned before, to not run away from problems, and sit down and think about things critically. And he made me feel like I really did have a bright future as a ballerina."
Prince—yes, that Prince—also helped her see her true potential. She still isn't sure how the singer discovered her, but in 2009, he tracked her down and asked her to star in the music video for "Crimson and Clover." They became friends, and Copeland performed with him on and off for three years. "He was a mentor to me, a huge confidence booster," she says. "When we met, I was a new soloist at ABT. He really helped me understand who I was as an artist at a critical time." He's also a lot of fun, says Copeland. Besides his being, you know, Prince, "He's super normal," she adds. "He loves to watch basketball. I've played with him at the court at his house in Minnesota. He's not bad."
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At ABT, Copeland is now a senior stateswoman, and so it's her turn to play mentor. She's involved in ABT's Project Plié, an initiative to draw more diverse dancers into elite ballet. "I had some really incredible people who mentored me, and gave me things I never got from my parents. I think it's so important for young dancers of color to have someone who looks like them as an example—someone they can touch," she says, grabbing the skin on her forearm to make the point. "I tell them to be true to themselves."
It's worked for her. For the better part of 2013, Copeland was recovering from surgery on six stress fractures in her tibia. This year, she's back, and already dancing strong. After ABT's spring season kicked off May 12, The New York Times' oft-prickly dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote that he "looked forward" to future performances featuring Copeland. The kind words were nice, but Copeland doesn't need to read reviews to push herself hard in the studio. "Every time I dance, I'm trying to prove myself to myself," she says. After taking on Swanilda in Friday's performance of Coppélia, Copeland says she's set her sights on being the first black Odette in Swan Lake. She wants to get married and have a family, too. Someday, she'll get there. But not yet. "I love what I do," she says. "And I want to do it for as long as I can."
