In a historic move, the American Ballet Theatre promoted Misty Copeland to principal dancer on Tuesday, making her the first African-American woman to rise to the position in the company’s 75-year history.
Copeland, 32, said the promotion came after 14 years of “extremely hard work” at the prestigious New York City-based ballet company.
“I’m just so honored, so extremely honored to be a principal dancer, to be an African-American and to be in this position,” she said before Tuesday night’s American Ballet performance of La Bayadere at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.
Copeland’s elevation to principal dancer was announced by the company’s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, during a morning rehearsal.
“Misty, take a bow,” said McKenzie, breaking the news to Copeland.
A cell phone video of the moment posted on Instagram captured Copeland bursting into a wide smile and then tears as she was smothered in hugs by a fellow dancer.
“I had moments of doubting myself, of wanting to quit, because I didn’t know there would be a future for an African-American woman to make it to this level,” Copeland said. “At the same time it made me so hungry to push through, to carry the next generation.”
Copeland has been with the prestigious group for 14 years, eight as a soloist. She was promoted to principal dancer along with Stella Abrera.
Two other dancers joining the ballet company — Maria Kochetkova from the San Francisco Ballet and Alban Lendorf from the Royal Danish Ballet — were also named Tuesday as principal dancers.
Born in Kansas City, Mo., Copeland and her six siblings grew up in poverty in Los Angeles and were raised by a single mother.
“We were pretty much homeless and were living in a motel, trying to scrape up enough money to go to the corner store to get (a) Cup O’ Noodles soup to eat,” Copeland said in an ABC News interview last year. “It was probably the worst time in my childhood when ballet found me.”
Copeland’s achievement brought to fruition a dream she feared she would never realize.
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“My fears are that it could be another two decades before another black woman is in the position that I hold with an elite ballet company. That if I don’t rise to principal, people will feel I have failed them,” she wrote in her 2014 memoir, “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina.”
By now, New Yorkers are familiar with the phenomenon of Copeland — who eight years ago became the first African-American in two decades to dance as a soloist for the American Ballet Theatre. Since then, she’s been seen in an Under Armour commercial, made the cover of Time magazine and besides penning a best-selling memoir, she’s written a children’s book.
In the Under Armour ad she revealed that at the age of 13 she was rejected from a ballet academy and told, “You have the wrong body for ballet.”
“Dear candidate,” says her rejection letter, read by a young girl in the ad. “Thank you for your application to our ballet academy. Unfortunately, you have not been accepted. You lack the right feet, Achilles tendons, turnout, torso length, and bust.”
Copeland immediately set out to prove her critics wrong, beginning her training at the San Pedro City Ballet in California. She went on to be accepted to the San Francisco Ballet School and joined the American Ballet Theatre at the age of 18.
“So many young dancers of color stop dancing at an early age because they just don’t think there will be a career path for them,” an emotional Copeland said Tuesday.
“All the little girls that can see themselves through me, it’s giving them a brighter future,” she said. “It’s been a long journey but it’s just the beginning.”
She made it abundantly clear that it was her dancing and not the color of her skin that got her to the top of the rarefied world of ballet.
“I just had to remember why I’m getting the attention I’m getting,” Copeland said. “It’s because of my dancing. It’s because I’m a ballerina, and no other reason.”
“Even with everything that’s happening, I go into ballet class every morning, I work my butt off eight hours a day because I know that I have to deliver,” she said. “I have to go out there and perform live every night and prove myself, maybe more so than other dancers.”
The historic announcement comes after Copeland starred in the American Ballet Theatre’s performance last week of “Swan Lake” — achieving another milestone as the first African-American to do so with the company at the Met.
Tuesday’s promotion triggered an avalanche of congratulatory posts on Copeland’s Twitter account, @mistyonpointe.
“Celebrating @mistyonpointe — a muse for so many and a reminder to dance towards our dreams,” the Oprah Winfrey Network tweeted.
Tony Award-winning Broadway superstar Audra McDonald, who is African-American, tweeted, “Congrats @mistyonpointe on making history!!!”
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