Watch Misty Copeland perform With ballet, if we don't evolve with the times, we're not going to be relevant and people won't come “It’s the little things that make you feel like you don’t belong.” “It’s because that’s the colour you’re expected to be.” Ballet shoe maker Freed has just launched the UK’s first pointe shoes for darker skin tones ( Gaynor Minden does a similar range in the US), although Copeland still colours hers with pancake makeup. “What does it mean that we’re wearing pink tights?” she asks. I know those things for a fact.”Īs well as the overt racism, there were subtle signals that this wasn’t her world.Until recently, pointe shoes only came in a “nude” colour that was pale pink. He did what he could to help me grow when other people within the artistic staff didn’t want to see me get those opportunities.” Because you hadn’t paid your dues? “No, because of my skin colour. “He was sensitive enough to see that I was a young girl on my own, had never really had a stable home. But a serious stress fracture, followed by sudden weight gain after the delayed onset of puberty, led to her confidence crashing.Ĭopeland credits her survival to a series of mentors, mainly successful black women outside dance, and to ABT’s director, Kevin McKenzie. At 18, she joined American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, then its corps de ballet. When her mother could no longer take her across town to classes, Copeland moved in with Bradley (which led to a difficult, highly publicised custody battle, a low point in Copeland’s life). Photograph: Lawrence Jackson/Planet Pix via Zuma Wire/Rex/ShutterstockĬopeland was 13, a very late age to start dancing for a professional, but she progressed fast with teacher Cindy Bradley. Top-level talks … Copeland in discussion with President Barack Obama in 2016. Copeland took her first ballet class on a basketball court at the local Boys and Girls Club, but it wasn’t until she stepped inside a studio, donned tights and leotard and looked at herself in the mirror that this homeless teen realised she had finally found home. She hated her skinny, long legs, big hands and “pinhead”. She loved grossing out her brothers with what her hyper flexible joints could do, but she had no idea she might have the perfect physique for a particular type of dance. But, in fact, she was always a ballerina – she just didn’t know it. The family moved a lot as her mother married and divorced several times, there was little money and Copeland kept her head down. When she was a child, Copeland had no dreams of ballet. When millions of viewers see her in an Under Armour commercial, she says, “they will see a brown ballerina and think, ‘Oh, that’s what a ballerina looks like.’ When you can imagine yourself on the stage, especially as a young person, it allows you to dream of doing anything.” I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have this bigger purpose that I never even realised.’”Ĭopeland has actively sought out opportunities to bring ballet to new audiences and to change its image, from speaking engagements to endorsements and book deals. I saw her and it was this unexpected reaction. She was watching a documentary about the Ballets Russes that featured pioneering black ballerina Raven Wilkinson. In ballet, where many things on stage look much as they did a century ago, there are few women of colour in major companies, and Copeland remembers the moment when she knew she had to take on the mantle of role model. This is a woman who’s had a tough life but seems to have come out of it with no hard edges. Like all ballet dancers, Copeland is petite and perfectly put together, beaming with unerring positivity and a ready giggle as she sits in this London hotel room with a camel mac draped over her knees to keep warm. ‘Some people didn’t want me to get opportunities because of my skin colour’ … Copeland in a New York studio.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |