{"id":41519,"date":"2015-06-22T01:01:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T01:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41519"},"modified":"2015-06-22T01:01:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T01:01:42","slug":"misty-copeland-meet-the-ballerina-who-rewrote-the-rules-of-colour-class-and-curves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41519","title":{"rendered":"Misty Copeland: meet the ballerina who rewrote the rules of colour, class and curves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/theatre\/dance\/11675707\/Misty-Copeland-ballerina-interview.html\" target=\"_blank\">Misty Copeland: meet the ballerina who rewrote the rules of colour, class and curves<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">The Telegraph<\/a><br \/>\n2015-06-21<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jane Mulkerrins<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Facing opposition about her race, shape, even her hair, the ballet dancer Misty Copeland battled the establishment \u2013 and her own mother \u2013 to make it to the top<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Misty_Copeland\" target=\"_blank\">Misty Copeland<\/a> can pinpoint the precise moment when she realised her success in ballet held a broader significance. \u201cIt was the night I danced <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Firebird\" target=\"_blank\">The Firebird<\/a><\/em> at the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Metropolitan_Opera_House_(Lincoln_Center)\" target=\"_blank\">Metropolitan Opera House<\/a> in June 2012. I had never seen an audience that was 50 per cent African-American. It was overwhelming to know that so many of them were there to support what I stood for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZY0cdXr_1MA?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As only the third black <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Soloist_(ballet)\" target=\"_blank\">soloist<\/a> (one rung down from a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Principal_dancer\" target=\"_blank\">principal dancer<\/a>, or <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ballet_dancer#Women\" target=\"_blank\">prima ballerina<\/a><\/em>) in the history of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_City\" target=\"_blank\">New York\u2019s<\/a> prestigious <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Ballet_Theatre\" target=\"_blank\">American Ballet Theatre<\/a> (ABT) \u2013 and the first in two decades \u2013 Copeland, 32, is elegantly dismantling the barriers of race and class that have long surrounded the art form. \u201cWhen I talk to [black] families, they tell me, &#8216;We never went to the ballet before. Why would we bring our children when they can\u2019t see themselves reflected on the stage?\u2019 \u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Her profile reaches beyond the rarefied realms of ballet: she has performed with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Prince_(musician)\" target=\"_blank\">Prince<\/a> on stage, her recent advert for the sportswear brand <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Under_Armour\" target=\"_blank\">Under Armour<\/a> has had eight million views, and she has been <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/namecheck\" target=\"_blank\">namechecked<\/a> as an inspiration by both <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Beyonc%C3%A9\" target=\"_blank\">Beyonc\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/theatre\/dance\/11675707\/Misty-Copeland-ballerina-interview.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.telegraph.co.uk\/multimedia\/archive\/03342\/time-magazine_3342239b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In April, she was named as one of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=40897\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Time<\/em> magazine\u2019s 100 most influential people in the world<\/a> and was one of the five cover stars for the issue, along with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bradley_Cooper\" target=\"_blank\">Bradley Cooper<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kanye_West\" target=\"_blank\">Kanye West<\/a>, the US news anchor <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jorge_Ramos_(news_anchor)\" target=\"_blank\">Jorge Ramos<\/a> and the supreme court justice <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg\" target=\"_blank\">Ruth Bader Ginsberg<\/a>. That month, she sparked huge media coverage \u2013 and a frenzied rush on the box office \u2013 when she and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brooklyn_Mack\" target=\"_blank\">Brooklyn Mack<\/a> became the first black duo to dance the leading roles of Odil\/Odette and Prince Siegfried in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Swan_Lake\" target=\"_blank\">Swan Lake<\/a><\/em> for a major ballet company.<\/p>\n<p>But Copeland\u2019s prominence and influence is all the more incredible given her wholly untraditional path to the top. As she recounts in her bestselling autobiography, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/books.simonandschuster.com\/Life-in-Motion\/Misty-Copeland\/9781476737997\" target=\"_blank\">Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina<\/a><\/em>, which is now being developed into a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cinema_of_the_United_States\" target=\"_blank\">Hollywood<\/a> film, she did not begin lessons until the age of 13 \u2013 positively geriatric in the dance world&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/theatre\/dance\/11675707\/Misty-Copeland-ballerina-interview.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Misty Copeland: meet the ballerina who rewrote the rules of colour, class and curves The Telegraph 2015-06-21 Jane Mulkerrins Facing opposition about her race, shape, even her hair, the ballet dancer Misty Copeland battled the establishment \u2013 and her own mother \u2013 to make it to the top Misty Copeland can pinpoint the precise moment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,8,20,25],"tags":[19921,6725,20297,19922,7738],"class_list":["post-41519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-ballet","tag-dance","tag-jane-mulkerrins","tag-misty-copeland","tag-the-telegraph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}