{"id":64108,"date":"2023-01-23T15:56:03","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T15:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=64108"},"modified":"2023-01-23T15:56:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T15:56:04","slug":"whats-interesting-is-when-i-started-ballet-at-13-years-old-i-was-told-i-had-everything-that-it-took-to-be-a-ballet-dancer-physically-artistically-so-thats-why-theres-kind-of-this-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64108","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s interesting is when I started ballet at 13 years old, I was told I had everything that it took to be a ballet dancer, physically, artistically. So that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s kind of this interesting dichotomy when I think about Black women specifically in ballet and the language that&#8217;s being used in telling us that we are wrong for ballet."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cWhat&#8217;s interesting is when I started ballet at 13 years old, I was told I had everything that it took to be a ballet dancer, physically, artistically. So that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s kind of this interesting dichotomy when I think about Black women specifically in ballet and the language that&#8217;s being used in telling us that we are wrong for ballet. Again, I had the ideal body when I joined <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Ballet_Theatre\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Ballet Theater<\/a>. Of course, I went through puberty \u2014 and like a lot of dancers who become professionals between the ages of 16 and 18 &#8230; my body did change. But once I became a professional, that&#8217;s when people started to really see me as a Black woman in a company where there weren&#8217;t any. And that&#8217;s when the language started to change around me fitting in.\u201d \u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Misty_Copeland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Misty Copeland<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=64084\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8216;It chips away at you&#8217;: Misty Copeland on the whiteness of ballet<\/a>,\u201d <em>Fresh Air<\/em> (National Public Radio), November 14, 2022. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/11\/14\/1136026492\/misty-copeland-ballet-raven-wilkinson-wind-at-my-back\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/11\/14\/1136026492\/misty-copeland-ballet-raven-wilkinson-wind-at-my-back<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhat&#8217;s interesting is when I started ballet at 13 years old, I was told I had everything that it took to be a ballet dancer, physically, artistically. So that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s kind of this interesting dichotomy when I think about Black women specifically in ballet and the language that&#8217;s being used in telling us that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20334,12552,19922,2309,2833],"class_list":["post-64108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-american-ballet-theater","tag-fresh-air","tag-misty-copeland","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64108","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=64108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64109,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64108\/revisions\/64109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}