There aren’t many prima ballerinas out there who started dancing at the ripe age of thirteen. There are even fewer who spent portions of their childhood homeless, learning how to dance on a basketball court at the Boys and Girls Club. Misty Copeland, the first Black principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater in New York City, has experienced all this and more, and shared details from her life and career with a sold-out group of LMU community members in Murphy Recital Hall this past February.
In a two-hour long engagement, which included a discussion with dance chair Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo and lecturer Jill Nunes Jenson as well as a more intimate Q&A with LMU Dance majors, Copeland discussed her life and career as a dancer and activist. Over the course of her nearly 30 years as a dancer, Copeland has achieved what she describes as “only” status many times. “Only” refers to being the only artist of color and a trailblazer in many of her dance spaces, which is a category Copeland celebrates and leverages to make meaningful change in her field.
In the dance world, Copeland found peace from a chaotic and unstable childhood. “I grew up houseless for much of my childhood, and I felt like I was being silenced. You don’t talk about what’s going on at home, you don’t talk about where you are living or what you are going through. I literally stopped speaking because I didn’t want people to know about all of the struggles we were having at home,” Copeland said.
“For me what drew me to dance and allowed me to flourish coming from the background I did was this sense of sacredness or safety I felt when I was on stage,” Copeland said. “Coming from a very unstable environment, I found so much peace in the dance space, which is so serene. There’s an etiquette you have and ways you should respond. It gives you a sense of spirituality.”
That said, this experience did not come without its challenges. Copeland describes comments by well-meaning colleagues that stung and motivated her to celebrate and uplift the importance of diversity in dance. Copeland recalled one director resisting her performing in a group of dancers because it would “ruin the uniformity” to have a dancer who was a different color from the other dancers.
As is her style, Copeland found strength in these experiences and has used it to empower her activism. She has led campaigns for more color tone representation with pointe shoes, which previously could only be found in “European Pink.” Copeland described how she used to color over her pointe shoes with markers so hers would match her skin tone. Her pointe shoe campaign has now entered the tech space, where Copeland is currently lobbying for similar color representation with the pointe shoe emoji.
“Coming from a very unstable environment, I found so much peace in the dance space, which is so serene. There’s an etiquette you have and ways you should respond. It gives you a sense of spirituality.”
Misty Copeland
Because Copeland started dancing relatively late in life, she brought a diverse perspective to her art and believes that experiencing new things is crucial to growing as an artist. Whereas some ballet dancers have had limited exposure to different types of dance, or music, Copeland started dancing to pop, rap, and R&B music.
A pop-culture-focused collaboration with Prince was received by some in the ballet community with incredulity – not considered serious enough to be “art.” Copeland cautioned the LMU dancers that this type of thinking can be limiting, saying, “Open your eyes and have an experience that allows you to grow as an artist. All my work with artists outside the traditional realm has given me a fresh outlook and a new way of looking at things. I encourage young people to hone their craft and put in the work but also to live and experience new things so you can grow as an artist.”
Copeland left the attendees with so many powerful messages about finding power and opportunity when challenges are thrown their way alongside the vital importance of art and movement education in life. “Getting everything right and not getting into the way was how I survived as a child. I was really good at memorizing things, and I would do really well on tests, but nothing was really getting in. Once I started to understand the physical way of learning through dance and holding onto the material in that way, it expanded my mind, and I started doing better in school and feeling comfortable in my own skin. If I didn’t have exposure to the arts, I don’t know where I would be now.”
