‘It chips away at you’: Misty Copeland on the whiteness of balletPosted in Articles, Arts, Audio, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2023-01-22 17:28Z by Steven |
‘It chips away at you’: Misty Copeland on the whiteness of ballet
Fresh Air
National Public Radio
2022-11-14
Terry Gross, Host
Drew Gurian/MasterClass
At first, Misty Copeland thought the pain she was experiencing was shin splits. It was 2012, and, after 12 years with the American Ballet Theatre, Copeland, one of the few Black dancers in the company, had finally landed her first leading role in a classical work.
“I knew how critical this moment was for my career,” she says. “If I had gone to the artistic staff or the physical therapists and said, ‘I’m in a lot of pain,’ they would have removed me from the rehearsals. And I would not have been able to perform. And I knew that had that happened, I wouldn’t be given the opportunity again.”
So she pushed on, dancing the principal role in The Firebird, despite the fact that the pain was becoming increasingly severe. Finally, toward the end of the company’s season, Copeland was diagnosed with six stress fractures in her tibia — three of which were classified as “dreaded black line” fractures, meaning that there were almost full breaks through the bone.
When the first surgeon warned her that she might never dance again, Copeland was devastated. “It was just like my whole world came crashing down,” she says. “I felt mostly like I was letting down the Black community.”…
Read the entire story here. Download the story (00:42:00) here.
