Copeland’s unlikely stardom

Misty Copeland is “the most famous ballerina in America,” said Will Pavia in The Times (U.K.). It’s an unlikely achievement for a 36-year-old black woman in a genre that demands a certain conformity. Even more improbable is Copeland’s success after growing up in a poor family in Southern California. Her mother divorced three times, eventually settling in a motel where Copeland and three siblings shared a room. Dancing never crossed her mind. “I just thought I was ugly and too skinny,” she says. “My hands were so big, and my feet were so big. My legs were too long. And then when I went into the ballet world, it was literally everything you should have to be a ballerina.” She took lessons and at 13 was discovered by an instructor. “My body just kind of went into positions. I don’t know where it came from.” She didn’t get her first lead role until 29, and danced despite having six fractures in her shinbone. “When you come on stage and you feel the excitement of the audience,” she says, “it’s so easy to be removed from your body. It was insane just to have half of the Metropolitan Opera House full of brown people. We’d never seen anything like it.”