Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina

by Misty Copeland

  I knew John had said that was his intention, but I was still stunned by the offer. I was a junior in high school, just sixteen. But my dream of dancing with ABT was right there for the taking.

  I searched to find my voice.

  “I have to ask my mother,” I said finally.

  I practically ran back to the convent so that I could call Mommy. She was uncertain. I needed to finish school, she said, and I had already spent so much time away from the family.

  But then she surprised me.

  “It’s up to you,” she said before we hung up. “I think the year will fly by, and hopefully they’ll make you the same offer next summer. But it’s your dream, and I want you to feel good with the final decision.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I kept stalling, telling Kevin over the next several days that I needed a little more time to figure it all out. He and John said that I would still be able to take classes and earn my high school diploma. And they would essentially offer me a scholarship to cover the costs of my equipment and travel. It was tantalizing, thrilling.

  But my big sister, Erica, would soon be giving birth to her first child, a baby girl whom she already planned to name Mariah. And Mommy and I were spending time together, loving each other, enjoying each other, living in a comfortable apartment all our own with my little sister Lindsey, at last. I didn’t want to leave them to be all alone in the big city. Not yet.

  “I want to finish high school back home,” I finally told Kevin and John. “I hope you still want me next year.”

  They nodded and smiled.

  AS A PARTING GIFT, ABT awarded me a Coca-Cola Scholarship, money that would pay for my pointe shoes and training back in Southern California. They later confirmed that I would have a guaranteed spot with the Studio Company when I finished high school.

  I returned home excited about my career and eager to finish high school. The months whizzed by. I socialized more with the girls at the Lauridsen Ballet Centre than those at San Pedro High, but when the senior prom appeared on the horizon, Mommy insisted that I go.

  Most of my friends at school were Asian, and on Fridays, when they went to meetings of the Mabuhay Club, I would sit at a table on campus alone, except for when Lindsey, now a ninth grader, had time to join me.

  I had two potential prom dates, a Korean American friend, and an African American boy who had also asked. I went with my Korean American friend because he had asked me first, still shocked that anyone had asked me at all. I was so shy, the thought of dating left me petrified, and I’d never been out with a boy. I’m not sure I would have even gone to the movies with Justin Timberlake if he’d asked, and I thought he was absolutely adorable.

  On prom night, I flat-ironed my hair and put on a long red dress with a slit nearly as long as me. The party was in a ballroom at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. I was miserable the whole evening. The nadir came when my date tried to kiss me at the after-party held at one of our classmates’ homes. I backed away in disgust. I had never kissed a boy. I had never even held one’s hand, unless he was my pas de deux partner, lifting and whirling me across a stage.

  That June, I graduated, and I couldn’t get out of my cap and gown quick enough so that I could pack my bags. I was headed to New York City for good.

  This summer intensive program would be a bit different from the one before. By now, I was folded more deeply into the fabric and community of ABT.

  Instead of the convent in Greenwich Village, I would stay with Isabel Brown. Little did I know when I took a cab to her brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that her home would also be mine for the next two years.

  In the ballet world, Isabel Brown is a legend, part of what is known as the Brown Dynasty. Isabel danced with the company when it was founded decades before She met her husband Kelly Brown, also a dancer, through ABT. Their son Ethan became a soloist and daughter Leslie went on to be a principal with the company. In fact, Leslie coached me through both of my summer intensive programs, and Ethan was still dancing as a soloist when I joined ABT.

  I found out during my senior year that Isabel had extended an offer to host me in her home when I returned to New York. It was an extreme honor. She was regal, elegant, and her home was like an abode plucked from the upper-crust environs of The Philadelphia Story. There were antiques tucked in the corners and tables made of glistening mahogany.

  I would rummage through her bookshelves, fingering ABT programs that dated back to the start of the company. The movie The Turning Pointe, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, Shirley MacLaine, and Anne Bancroft was based on the Brown family, and Leslie had a prominent role.

  Cindy had been right. I was dining with royalty.

  THOUGH WE NO LONGER lived together, Ashley was also back at ABT for the summer, and we again won all of the leading roles for the final performance. For the first time I was able to work with legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp, in whose works I would often dance the lead once I joined ABT’s main company.

  During the summer intensive program, my time with Twyla was fleeting. What I remember most was her complimenting my fluidity and technique. Twyla coached Ashley and me, along with her protégé Elaine Kudo, for our performance of her seminal work Push Comes to Shove, a ballet first staged in 1976 in which Elaine and Baryshnikov starred. I’ve always had a tie to Twyla. When I was still at Cindy’s and would watch old videos of Misha and Gelsey and Natalia Makarova, Elaine Kudo was one of the dancers I adored. I must have been fourteen or fifteen the first time I saw Push Comes to Shove, and now I was dancing Elaine’s part for Twyla herself! Having her set her wonderful choreography on me was a dream.

  It was later, when I became a member of the corps de ballet, that I truly got to know Twyla. With her silver bob and baggy pants and blouses, she had the appearance and physique of an adolescent boy. But unlike some dancers, who deprived themselves to remain tiny and thin, Twyla was always armed with snacks. One of her quirks is nibbling on lunch meat straight out of the plastic Oscar Mayer packaging. She works her dancers into the ground—by the time you get onstage to perform one of her works, you’ve practiced it so often that there’s no element of surprise, just perfect, confident movement. You’re almost sick of the choreography by that point, and performances can feel less spontaneous and free because of it. Still, it’s always amazing to watch, and being part of creating pieces with her is an opportunity I never could have imagined I’d have. She is a firecracker with a feral energy and style of movement that I’d never seen before. She especially loved the men in ABT, literally running full speed and jumping on top of them as she choreographed and created. Whenever she showed up to a rehearsal, the boys would strip off their shirts and dance with bare chests glistening, just because they knew that Twyla loved it. She is aggressive, fearless.

  In the midst of the summer program, John reiterated how glad he was that I would be joining ABT’s junior company. Though my spot had been assured it was still a wonderful relief to hear he continued to believe in me. Then, at the end of the summer, when we finished our final performance and the lights fell, Kevin called me back to the stage, where he still stood. He told me that before joining the Studio Company officially, I would apprentice with the main company and travel with it to China.

  I recorded it all in my journal:

  Kevin said congratulations on the performance and congratulations on having a contract. I was in shock. . . . He told me that I was special and they would keep an eye on me. He said that he couldn’t believe how strong my contemporary work was and how I was so grounded within it, yet so uplifting and strong in classical. It was a great surprise.

  Mommy, who hadn’t been able to get the time off the previous summer to come to my show, flew out this time to see me in Push Comes to Shove. She stayed on to help me prepare for the next act of my life, as a professional ballerina in New York City.

  “Do you have a passport?” Kevin asked.

  I didn’t—no one in my family did—but I would have slept
on the sidewalk in front of the passport office to get one, if I had to. I was over the moon. Dancing with the main company at age seventeen, before I’d even completed the Studio Company program, was more than I’d ever dreamed of. Mommy went with me to a local passport office the next day. I was about to turn eighteen, and this would be my first trip out of the country.

  WE WERE GONE FOR two weeks, dancing in Shanghai and Taipei, and we also took a side trip to Singapore. As an apprentice, I had a limited contract, performing as a member of the corps de ballet behind the company’s soloists and principals. It was an incredible honor to be in that position when I had no professional experience. I performed in La Bayadère, as one of the girls in the waltz sequence, and as a flower girl alongside a friend named Leyla. When we weren’t rehearsing or performing, Leyla and I went sightseeing, visiting Bihai Jinsha Water Park and Chenghuang Temple.

  When I returned home, I officially took my place as a member of ABT’s Studio Company. My ascension up the company ladder had begun.

  THE STUDIO COMPANY CONSISTED of six girls and six boys who rehearsed, trained, and performed together for a year to prepare to join the main company. We traveled mostly within the States, to a school in Buffalo, to a small theater in Cape Cod. But we also went to Bermuda, shifting our sore feet through the white sand and turquoise surf. The whole experience was like being in paradise. Most of us had danced together in ABT’s summer program, and so we had the familiarity and affection of brothers and sisters.

  Often, after shows, the dancers would do outreach, speaking to young people who’d been in the audience. To this day, I am teased by many of the dancers who participated in those talks because the students usually directed their questions to me, having seen me on the news during the drama over whether or not I would become an emancipated minor.

  “Are you that girl that was on the Leeza show?” someone would inevitably ask.

  “Yes, but everything’s great,” I’d respond in a rush, a tight grin plastered across my face. “I went back home to my mom, and there’re no hard feelings. Next question?” I was working on putting the past behind me, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the controversy continued to find its way into my life. Even in Bermuda, I was racked with fear that my lingering stress migraines would get in the way of my Studio Company schedule.

  With the Studio Company, I performed the pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty in almost every show. It was an honor to be Aurora, the lead. I danced it with both David Hallberg, now an ABT principal, and Craig Salstein, currently an ABT soloist.

  They loved me in the Studio Company, and I reveled in its embrace. I was starting to find my individuality. And my voice—hushed through most of my childhood, freed when I was with Cindy, and silenced again as I tried to recover from the trauma of the court battle—was once again emerging.

  Now I claimed my identity—I was Misty, the ballerina from ABT! For the first time I was loud, even boisterous. The little girl whose stomach would tremble if she had to give a book report now had an opinion about dance, about music, about everything. I would argue constantly with Renata Pavam, a Studio Company member from Brazil, about who was the better boy band.

  “’NSYNC!” I’d yell.

  “Backstreet Boys!” she’d yell back, before we declared a truce and went out to get burritos at Señor Swanky’s.

  Renata became one of my closest friends and is still with me in the company today as a member of the corps.

  But my very best friend in the Studio Company was Leyla Fayyaz. She and I had been the two girls chosen to be apprentices with the main company in China, and we had formed an instant bond. We both loved hip-hop, and we spent much of our free time jamming to Eminem.

  Will the Real Slim Shady please stand up?

  Leyla and I roomed together in China and throughout our tours with the Studio Company. She was beautiful—of Cuban, Lebanese, and Persian descent—and I thought she had the perfect classical technique and style. We called each other soul mates. We explored New York City together, first as bewildered young girls gawking outside the handful of peep shows that remained in Times Square, and then as young women, going to lounges and dating boys for the first time. We explored the city with all the wide-eyed wonder of visitors from a foreign land. By the time my first full year in New York City came to a close, I had fallen in love with it. Still, Leyla and I leaned on each other desperately. We ventured from the strict structure of ballet, as that was all we knew, to explore the grand world that is Manhattan. Once, we were even stopped by a police patrol in Central Park. They thought we were teenagers ditching high school. We had to explain that we were ballerinas with ABT and show our Metropolitan Opera IDs to back us up. We remained close friends even when she left ABT only after a year to attend Hunter College, and I was there with her as she dipped her toes into the world of study sessions and final exams. I spent many nights with her in her dorm. Not only were we both curious young women, Leyla was also a late bloomer in life, as so many ballerinas are. I couldn’t have survived without her. She now works as a segment producer for the FOX 5 Morning Show in New York City.

  When I was nineteen years old, I was promoted to ABT’s corps de ballet.

  The corps is an integral part of a dance company. They’re the base that helps to weave the tale, coloring the Pasha’s dream in La Bayadère, filling the forest in Giselle. But for most ballerinas, the goal is to soar beyond it, to stand out enough to get a featured part, and hopefully, one day, to become a principal—that small band of stars who are always cast as Kitri, or Sylvia, or Aurora. Advancing from the Studio Company to the corps was like going from the minor leagues to the main team’s second string. The chance to be a starter, to be first, was now within reach, if you could just pitch, tackle—dance—your way there.

  Within the Studio Company, there had been rigor and a constant quest for perfection, of course, but there had also been a strong sense of camaraderie.

  Now I was one of the cattle in the corps. It was intensely competitive. No one in the main company knew that I was a prodigy, nor did they care to find out. Here, my reputation didn’t precede me. I had to start from scratch. It was as if each day, in class or rehearsal, I was auditioning, proving myself, for the first time. There was no room for excuses, no coddling because I had come to ballet late. There was no Cindy to root me on, no Lola de Ávila to hold my hand. Many members of the corps were several years older than me (older than those in ABT’s present-day corps), and I felt that I had to grow up fast.

  I don’t think I stood out for the lack of time I’d spent training, but I did have to learn how to pace myself, how to get along with my dancing peers while also fighting for the chance to dance soloist roles. I was intimidated and I felt my voice beginning to shrink inside once again. I felt that the other dancers, and even some of the instructors, were constantly judging me, and that many wondered why I was there at all. Perhaps some of it was in my head, but, despite my camaraderie with Leyla and my love for ABT, I felt very much alone.

  Ballet has long been the province of the white and wealthy. Our daily, toe-crushing exercises make pointe shoes as disposable as tissues, and they can cost as much as eighty dollars a pair. I came from a family that didn’t always have enough food to eat, and I was nearly fourteen years old when I saw my first ballet. Most of my peers had grown up immersed in the arts, putting on their first tutus not long after they learned to talk. They had summered in Europe while I didn’t get my first passport until I was seventeen. Their families had weekend homes. I had spent part of my adolescence living in a shabby motel.

  But I also stood out in another, even more profound way. I was a little brown-skinned girl in a sea of whiteness.

  Being “the only one” had never bothered me before. Going to temple with Bubby and Papa, peering out from the Bradley’s family photographs, vacationing with them in San Diego, I had rarely even thought about how different we looked from one another. But I also realize my blackness didn’t stand out to me b
ecause it had never stood out, at least in a negative way, to them.

  IN SOME WAYS, BALLET companies are like the military, hierarchical and rigid, with long grueling days spent exerting yourself physically.

  ABT, like most companies, has a school for students that it hopes to cultivate. Then there is the Studio Company, which is a training academy of sorts for the most promising upcoming dancers. After a stint at that level, most are invited to join the main company, as I was.

  The main company consists of the corps de ballet, the roughly fifty members of the company’s chorus, and then the top tier of soloists and principals who are ABT’s stars. There are no quotas, though the number of soloists tends to hover around a dozen, while there are roughly twenty principals.

  ABT has a spring and fall season. In the fall, we perform for three to four weeks in New York, our hometown. While our stage used to be at the City Center, a stone’s throw from Carnegie Hall, we now perform at the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, near our spring season home at the Met. The spring season spans eight weeks, and sometimes in the winter, we have a Nutcracker season, for roughly four weeks, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

  Though the performance seasons are only a few weeks, we are working all year long. Rehearsals begin in mid-September, and we go on tour, whether around the United States or overseas, as soon as two weeks later. We tour almost constantly, in between our rehearsals in New York City and for two weeks after we complete our spring season in July.

  We have about two months off during the summer, but in all, we work thirty-five weeks a year, though those weeks are not consecutive. Eighteen of those weeks are spent rehearsing, and the other seventeen we are performing on the stage.

  It is during those off weeks, which we call “layoffs,” that I usually do freelance dancing engagements to continue honing my technique and return stronger to ABT for the new season.