Misty Copeland
Misty Danielle Copeland is an American ballet dancer and author. She has danced primarily for American Ballet Theatre, one of the three leading classical ballet companies in the United States. On June 30, 2015, Copeland became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in ABT's 75-year history.
Copeland was considered a prodigy who rose to stardom despite not starting ballet until age 13. Two years later, in 1998, her ballet teachers were serving as her custodial guardians, and her mother was fighting a custody battle against them. Meanwhile, Copeland, who was already an award-winning dancer, was fielding professional offers. The legal issues involved filings for emancipation by Copeland and restraining orders by her mother. Both sides dropped legal proceedings, and Copeland moved home to begin studying under a new teacher, who was a former ABT member.
In 1997, Copeland won the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award as the best dancer in Southern California. After two summer workshops with ABT, she became a member of ABT's Studio Company in 2000, its corps de ballet in 2001, and an ABT soloist in 2007. As a soloist from 2007 to 2015, she was described as having matured into a more contemporary and sophisticated dancer. She retired from ABT in 2025.
In addition to her dance career, Copeland has become a public speaker, author, celebrity spokesperson and stage performer. She has written two autobiographical books and narrated a documentary about her career challenges, A Ballerina's Tale. In 2015, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, appearing on its cover. She performed on Broadway in On the Town, toured as a featured dancer for Prince and appeared on the reality television shows A Day in the Life and So You Think You Can Dance. She has endorsed products and companies such as T-Mobile, Coach, Inc., Dr Pepper, Seiko, The Dannon Company and Under Armour.
Early life
Copeland was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in the San Pedro community of Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Sylvia DelaCerna and Doug Copeland. Her father is of German and African American descent, while her mother is of Italian and African American ancestry and was adopted by African American parents. She is the youngest of four children from her mother's second marriage and has two younger half-siblings, one each from her mother's third and fourth marriages. Copeland did not see her father between the ages of two and twenty-two. Her mother, a former Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader, had studied dance. She is a trained medical assistant, but worked mostly in sales.Between the ages of three and seven, Copeland lived in Bellflower, California, with her mother and her mother's third husband, Harold Brown, a Santa Fe Railroad sales executive. The family moved to San Pedro, where Sylvia eventually married her fourth husband, radiologist Robert DelaCerna and where Misty attended Point Fermin Elementary School. When she was seven, Copeland saw the film Nadia on television and its subject Nadia Comăneci became her new role model. Copeland never studied ballet or gymnastics formally until her teenage years, but in her youth she enjoyed choreographing flips and dance moves to Mariah Carey songs. Following in the footsteps of her older sister Erica, Copeland became captain of San Pedro's Dana Middle School drill team, where her natural grace came to the attention of its classically trained coach, Elizabeth Cantine.
By 1994, Copeland's mother had separated from Robert. After she and her children lived with various friends and boyfriends, and were homeless at times, DelaCerna moved with her children into two small rooms at the Sunset Inn in Gardena, California where Copeland and her siblings slept on the couch or floor. In early 1996, Cantine convinced Copeland to attend a ballet class at her local Boys & Girls Club. Cynthia Bradley, a friend of Cantine's, taught a free ballet class at the club once a week. Copeland attended several classes as a spectator before participating. DelaCerna allowed Copeland to go to the club after school until the workday ended. Bradley invited Copeland to attend class at her small ballet school, San Pedro Dance Center. Copeland initially declined the offer, however, because her mother did not have a car, was working 12–14 hours a day, and her oldest sister Erica was working two jobs. Copeland began her ballet studies at the age of 13 at the San Pedro Dance Center when Cynthia Bradley began picking her up from school. After three months of study, Copeland was en pointe.
Her mother told Copeland that she would have to give up ballet, but Bradley wanted Copeland to continue and offered to host her. DelaCerna agreed to this, and Copeland moved in with Bradley and her family. Eventually, Copeland and DelaCerna signed a management contract and a life-story contract with Bradley. Copeland spent the weekdays with the Bradleys near the coast and the weekends at home with her mother, a two-hour bus ride away. Copeland would spend most of her next three years with the Bradleys. By the age of fourteen, Copeland was the winner of a national ballet contest and won her first solo role. The Bradleys introduced Copeland to books and videos about ballet. When she saw Paloma Herrera, a principal ballerina with ABT, perform at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Copeland began to idolize her as much as she did Mariah Carey. The media first noticed her when she drew 2,000 patrons per show as she performed as Clara in The Nutcracker at the San Pedro High School after only eight months of study. She played a larger role as Kitri in Don Quixote at the San Pedro Dance Center and then performed with the L.A. Academy of Fine Arts in a featured role in The Chocolate Nutcracker, an African American version of the tale, narrated by Debbie Allen. The latter was presented at UCLA's Royce Hall. Copeland's role was modified especially for her, and included ethnic dances.
During this period, Copeland received far more personal attention from the Bradley family than her mother could give each of her six children. Raised in a lapsed Christian household, when Copeland lived with the Bradley family, she attended their synagogue and celebrated Shabbat with them, enjoying their family's closeness. In addition to Bradley's intensive ballet training, her husband, a modern-dance teacher, served as Copeland's pas-de-deux instructor and partner. The summer before her fifteenth birthday, Bradley began to homeschool Copeland for 10th grade to free up more time for dance. At fifteen years old, Copeland won first place in the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards at the Chandler Pavilion in March 1998. Copeland said it was the first time she ever battled nervousness. The winners received scholarships between $500 and $2500. Copeland's victory in the 10th annual contest among gifted high school students in Southern California secured her recognition by the Los Angeles Times as the best young dancer in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
Copeland attended the summer workshop at the San Francisco Ballet School in 1998. She and Bradley selected the workshop over offers from the Joffrey Ballet, ABT and Dance Theater of Harlem. Of the programs she auditioned for, only New York City Ballet declined to make her an offer. San Francisco Ballet, ABT and New York City Ballet are regarded as the three preeminent classical ballet companies in the US. During the six-week workshop at San Francisco, Copeland was placed in the most advanced classes and was under a full-tuition plus expenses scholarship. At the end of the workshop, she received one of the few offers to continue as a full-time student at the school. She declined the offer because of the encouragement from her mother to return home, the prospect of continuing personal training from the Bradley family and dreams of a subsequent summer with American Ballet Theatre.
Custody battle
Copeland returned to her mother's home, where the two frequently argued. Her mother had long resented the Bradleys' influence and soon decided that Copeland would cease study with the Bradleys. Copeland was distraught with fear that she would not be able to dance. She had heard the term emancipation while in San Francisco; the procedure was common among young performers to secure their financial and residential independence. The Bradleys introduced Copeland to Steven Bartell, a lawyer who explained the emancipation petition process. The Bradleys encouraged her to be absent from home when the emancipation petition was delivered to her mother. Copeland ran away from home for three days and stayed with a dance friend, while Bartell filed the emancipation papers. After her mother reported Copeland missing, she was told about the emancipation petition. Three days after running away, Copeland was returned to her mother by the police. DelaCerna engaged lawyer Gloria Allred and applied for a series of restraining orders, which included the Bradleys' five-year-old son, who had been Copeland's roommate, and Bartell. The order was partly intended to preclude contact between the Bradleys and Copeland, but it did not have proper legal basis, since there had been no stalking and no harassment.The custody controversy was highly publicized in the press, starting in August and September 1998. Parts of the press coverage spilled over into op-ed articles. The case was heard in Torrance, in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County. DelaCerna claimed that the Bradleys had brainwashed Copeland into filing suit for emancipation from her mother, Allred claimed that the Bradleys had turned Copeland against her mother by belittling DelaCerna's intelligence. The Bradleys noted that the management contract gave them authority over her career, but they stated that they would wait until Copeland became eighteen before seeking twenty percent of Copeland's earnings.
After DelaCerna stated that she would always make sure Copeland could dance, both the emancipation papers and restraining orders were dropped. Copeland, who claimed she did not understand the term emancipation, withdrew the petition after informing the judge that such charges no longer represented her wishes. Still, DelaCerna wanted the Bradleys out of her daughter's life. Copeland re-enrolled at San Pedro High School for her junior year, on pace to graduate with her original class of 2000. DelaCerna sought Cantine's advice on finding a new ballet school. Copeland began ballet study at Lauridsen Ballet Centre in Torrance with former ABT dancer Diane Lauridsen, although her dancing was now restricted to afternoons in deference to her schooling. Late in 1998, all parties appeared on Leeza Gibbons' talk show, Leeza, where Copeland sat silently as the adults "bickered shamelessly". As a student, Copeland had a 3.8/4.0 GPA through her junior year of high school. In 2000, DelaCerna stated that Copeland's earnings from ballet were set aside in a savings account and only used as needed.