Misty Copeland was fast becoming the most famous ballerina in the United States — making the cover of Time magazine, being profiled by “60 Minutes,”
growing into a social media sensation and dancing ballet’s biggest
roles on some of its grandest stages. But another role eluded her: She
was still not a principal dancer.
Until
Tuesday, when Ms. Copeland became the first African-American woman to
be named a principal in the 75-year history of American Ballet Theater.
“I
had moments of doubting myself, and wanting to quit, because I didn’t
know that there would be a future for an African-American woman to make
it to this level,” Ms. Copeland said at a news conference at the
Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday afternoon. “At the same time, it
made me so hungry to push through, to carry the next generation. So it’s
not me up here — and I’m constantly saying that — it’s everyone that
came before me that got me to this position.”
Fittingly, the moment of her promotion was captured on video and shared on Instagram.
“Misty, take a bow,” Kevin McKenzie, Ballet Theater’s artistic
director, could be seen saying, before colleagues congratulated Ms.
Copeland, who seemed to be fighting back tears. Her promotion was lauded
on social media by, among others, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Prince, who had featured her in a video.
Over
the past year, whenever Ms. Copeland, 32, danced leading roles with
Ballet Theater, her performances became events, drawing large, diverse,
enthusiastic crowds to cheer her on at the Metropolitan Opera House, the
Brooklyn Academy of Music and the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln
Center. After she starred in “Swan Lake” with Ballet Theater last week —
becoming the first African-American to do so with the company at the
Met — the crowd of autograph-seekers was so large that it had to be
moved away from the cramped area outside the stage door.
In
a break with ballet tradition, Ms. Copeland was unusually outspoken
about her ambition of becoming the first black woman to be named a
principal by Ballet Theater, one of the country’s most prestigious
companies, which is known for its international roster of stars and for
staging full-length classical story ballets. She wrote about her goals
and struggles in a memoir published last year, “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina.”
A
number of leading dance companies and schools, including Ballet
Theater, have begun new efforts to increase diversity in classical
ballet, but there is a long way to go. Jennifer Homans, the author of
“Apollo’s Angels,” a history of ballet, said that ballet had fallen far
behind other art forms, like theater, in that regard — making what she
called the “phenomenon” of Ms. Copeland all the more important.
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