Misty Copeland permanently changed ballet and the arts. Now she’s ready for her next challenge

By Leah Asmelash, CNN

(CNN) — After a storied, decades-long career, ballerina Misty Copeland — known just as much for her advocacy offstage as her accomplishments on — is retiring from American Ballet Theatre.

Copeland, who last performed for the company five years ago, will be honored in a final star-studded Fall Gala on Wednesday, featuring tributes from Oprah Winfrey and Debbie Allen. In her final appearance, Copeland will perform excerpts from “Romeo and Juliet” and “Sinatra Suite,” as well as the world premiere of a pièce d’occasion choreographed by Kyle Abraham.

“Although I’ll be saying farewell to the stage, I’ll always be committed to opening doors, creating space, and making ballet a place where everyone belongs,” she wrote in a public Instagram post ahead of her performance.

For those unable to afford the $5,000 gala tickets, the ABT is offering hundreds of free tickets to a live simulcast at Alice Tully Hall, just a block away from the event.

It’s a fitting sendoff for a ballerina who brought renewed attention and change to the art form. Copeland began her dance career in California as a 13-year-old (considered late, by ballet standards), eventually becoming a member in the ABT’s corps de ballet in 2001 at the age of 18. Throughout her career, Copeland continued to make history: becoming the company’s second African American female soloist in 2007, and in 2015, becoming its first Black woman principal dancer, the highest company ranking. The New York-based ABT, founded in 1939, is considered one of the premier classical ballet companies in the US.

“Misty Copeland’s influence reaches far beyond her extraordinary performances,” said Susan Jaffe, artistic director for the American Ballet Theatre, in a statement. “On stage, she broke barriers and redefined what it means to be a ballerina, inspiring generations with her artistry, strength, and grace. Off stage, she has used her voice to open doors and expand access to ballet and the arts. Her impact is still being defined, but there is no question it will be felt for decades to come.”

On stage, she was “magnetic,” said Sarah L. Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic and author of “Verb Your Enthusiasm.” Not only did Copeland have the classic ballerina dimensions — the hyper-extended legs, the flexibly arched feet, the long neck — she also had a “liveliness” to her movements. Audiences could see the passion and the warmth on her face, Kaufman said.

That expressiveness became a distinct characteristic of Copeland’s, but as the ballet world has shifted to prize the more extreme technical qualities of the dance form, such human personal expression has become a lost art.

“She’s very small, she’s petite, but onstage she just unfolds into this large scale presence,” Kaufman said. “She was the kind of dancer you could not take your eyes off of, long before she became a principal.”

Breaking barriers in her art

In an genre where uniformity is prized, Copeland — once called the “Jackie Robinson of ballet” — has spoken about the difficulties she faced as a Black woman in ballet. There were times she wasn’t cast in roles out of concerns she would ruin the piece’s aesthetic, or was told she should lighten her skin. For the first decade of her career, Copeland told CNN last year, she was the only Black dancer out of about 100 in the company.

“I’ve experienced difficulties being a Black woman when you stand out, especially in the corps de ballet when it’s supposed to look uniform, and everyone kind of in the same tones wearing pink tights, which represent the color of your skin,” Copeland said. “And that wasn’t always the case.”

But Copeland’s rise through the ranks came at a critical time for Black ballerinas. The Dance Theatre of Harlem — one of the only ballet companies in the world whose mission is to specifically train and highlight ballerinas of color — went on hiatus due to financial difficulties from 2004 to 2012. Its closure left a gap in the ballet world, said Theresa Ruth Howard, founder of MobBallet, an organization dedicated to preserving Black ballet history. There weren’t many Black dancers at other companies; with the DTH’s hiatus, the number across the board dwindled.

Simultaneously, Copeland was generating buzz as a soloist at ABT. She appeared in a music video with Prince in 2009, and joined the singer on tour in 2011. Later, in 2014, she went on to publish a best-selling memoir and guest judge on the competition show, “So You Think You Can Dance?” Once she was promoted to principal, her fame drove a surge of interest and ticket sales. Kaufman recalls, ahead of a performance of “Romeo and Juliet” at the Wolf Trap performing arts center in Virginia, traffic was “backed up to the exit ramp of the Beltway” of Washington DC.

Her ascension, particularly at a time when Black ballerinas were so sparse, Howard said, emphasized the larger conversation around the lack of diversity in the ballet world.

“When we see this young, mixed-race woman climbing the ranks as a possibility, that is almost like a lightning rod,” Howard said. “She’s talented; people are excited about her. And so therefore it becomes the thing that draws the attention. She becomes this catalyst for her ascension, but also for a larger conversation.”

For example, in a 2023 viral TikTok video, Copeland showed how, despite her fame, she had to color her pair of baby pink pointe shoes with a sponge and foundation so the shoes matched her skin tone. She later started a petition called, “Let’s Make a Pointe!” to push Apple to offer different skin shades for its pointe shoe emoji. The lack of diversity both in the emoji and in real life was a “constant reminder of the subtle ways dancers of color have not been included,” she wrote.

Beyond racial diversity, Copeland also aims to make ballet more affordable and accessible through efforts like the Misty Copeland Foundation.

The impact Copeland’s presence has had on the ballet world is seen, now, in the swelling number of Black ballerinas across the country. India Bradley, who was just promoted to a soloist at the New York City Ballet this month, is the first Black woman to earn that distinction in the company’s history.

“(Copeland) has completely left a snail trail for us to glide down a lot easier than the women before her,” Bradley said.

By becoming such a household name and making such a storm, Copeland opened the eyes of those leading big companies, Bradley said — forcing them to actually consider Black ballerinas in their companies.

“People don’t think of Black women in a way where we are an option to be soloists and principals and higher ranks in these companies,” Bradley said. “I genuinely just — before Misty — don’t think that they thought of us in that way. And I think that she forced it to happen.”

And yet there is still more work to be done. There has never been a Black woman principal dancer at Bradley’s New York City Ballet. At the ABT, Copeland remains the only Black woman among both principals and soloists. At the Paris Opera, there is only one Black ballerina in their highest rank.

The hope is that eventually there are no more “firsts,” Bradley said; that young girls can dance without feeling that type of pressure, just like every other ballerina.

Copeland’s farewell is as much a goodbye as it is a thank you.

“All of us just love her,” Bradley said. “And she deserves every single flower that she’s getting.”

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