[woman] I've never fit the mold.
I've never followed along this path that most do.
I was the only black woman at American Ballet Theatre for over a decade.
And when I received my first fan mail that came from a young black girl,
that's when I realized the magnitude of what I represented.
And it was like,
"Wow. My purpose is so much more than I ever could have imagined."
- [woman 1] Dear Misty... - [woman 2] Dear Misty...
- [girl 1] Dear Misty... - [man 1] Dear Misty...
Dear Misty, I was told ballet was no place for a black woman like me.
[woman] When I felt like the dance world would never accept me for who I was,
you showed me that it's self-acceptance that matters most.
[Misty] It's so important to embrace being unique.
Accept all those things about you that make you special and make you different.
You are my reminder that any barrier can be broken.
Misty, your strength has given me the courage to ignore doubt and negativity.
There is no one way. There is no right or wrong path.
Just believe in yourself, and anything's possible.
-Dear Misty... -[woman 3] Dear Misty...
- [woman 4] Dear Misty... - [woman 5] Dear Misty...
[Misty] I think I fell in love with dance
before I realized I fell in love with dance.
Growing up, music was such a big thing in my household.
But I never wanted to sing when I heard music, I wanted to move.
For me, it was a way to escape.
I would find a corner, anywhere that wasn't loud and chaotic,
and I would start choreographing.
When I was two years old,
my mother left my father and took me and my siblings, I was the youngest,
and moved to Los Angeles.
We never really had money.
But it was just so normal to us that we never thought, like,
"Oh, we don't have money," or "Oh, we're poor."
We often were on food stamps and lived in so many different places.
We slept on friends' couches, so not having stability was normal for me.
At 12 and a half years old, my mother had divorced her last husband.
And we were all at the lowest of the low and living in a motel at that point.
Me and my five siblings sleeping on the floor,
we were all in one room.
In school, I was so extremely introverted.
A lot of people thought I couldn't speak.
I didn't really have any friends.
I often would eat lunch in the bathroom by myself.
It was just this fear of people knowing what was happening in my life,
the fear of judgment.
It was so crazy that at the lowest point in-in our lives,
that's when ballet came into my life.
Just a tiny...
[Misty] Cynthia Bradley was a local ballet teacher in San Pedro.
She was teaching free ballet classes at the Boys & Girls Club I was attending.
And I'm the only one that's not in a leotard and tights.
But my teacher, Cynthia, literally was putting my legs into positions
and pointing my feet and my body was just doing it.
She was like, "I think you're a prodigy.
I want to take you into my school on full scholarship,
and I think you have what it takes to be a professional."
[woman] Five, six, seven and...
[Misty] It was the first time I saw purpose in my life.
And it wasn't until I stepped into a ballet studio
and I had on the right attire that it was just like everything clicked.
I was not intimidated. I was not scared.
It was like, "Wow, I'm beautiful."
- [student cheers] -[woman 2] God, that was gorgeous.
I felt so at home.
And I started doing three ballet classes a day.
And within that time, my mental and emotional growth was just massive.
I went from not being able to speak to doing interviews.
This is the photographer.
[man] Hi. You're Misty?
And all of a sudden, I was onstage in front of all these people.
[applause]
I just grew in leaps and bounds.
I felt like, "This is where I belong."
But that was the opposite of what it would become.
Growing up, I was very conscious of the fact that I was a black girl.
My mother just made it very clear, "That's how you are seen by the world."
And my ballet teacher, Cynthia,
she was very aware of the lack of diversity in classical dance.
The color of my skin was a huge topic of discussion at her school.
She had many students' parents that pulled them out because
they thought it was unfair I was getting to dance the leads as a black girl.
So I feel like that's what I'm constantly thinking of: believing in yourself.
That's so hard for a lot of kids to do,
especially who come from backgrounds like I do.
And so I just try and be a voice, try and be a positive example.
[woman] Dear Misty,
Growing up, there was no expectation that I would ever succeed.
My mom struggled to support us.
Basic staples, like food and clothing, required her to take on a second job.
But just like you, I had the opportunity to take ballet, and it became my escape.
That's how I first found out about you.
Misty, I followed your career over the years,
and I saw you face obstacles similar to mine.
But you persevered and triumphed.
You inspired me to push through just like you.
In school, I worked hard and excelled in math and science.
And in my senior year, I discovered a whole new passion: airplanes.
I went on to become the first black woman to get a PhD in aerospace engineering
from Penn State University.
But as a woman of color,
I had a hard time finding my place in the aerospace industry.
I felt that if I showcased my technical abilities, they would be rewarded.
They weren't. For years, I saw people less qualified
obtain greater positions and opportunities.
I constantly fought battles within myself,
wondering, "Am I good enough? Am I worthy?"
Misty, I often thought of you and the strength it took you
to not give up on your dream, even when it felt like a losing battle.
You overcame every setback and challenge with dignity and grace.
With you as an example, I pushed forward in my industry
and eventually accepted a position as an aerospace engineer
at Georgia Tech Research Institute.
I silenced the negative talk within myself and earned the respect I deserved.
I understand the importance of role models like you.
So I partnered with a nonprofit organization, I Am B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L.,
to build confidence in girls so they can see themselves as leaders.
I use you as an example to show these girls
that women who look like them are achieving their dreams
and defying the odds.
Yes, barriers exist, but they are breakable.
[applause]
[male announcer] The competition is Misty Danielle Copeland.
[cheering]
[classical music playing]
My teacher, Cynthia, had put me in this arts education competition.
I was 15 years old. I'd been dancing for a year and a couple of months,
or something crazy like that.
And I ended up winning this competition.
And it was the first time that ABT saw me.
[music ends]
[applause]
American Ballet Theatre was on the level of
the Royal Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet,
San Francisco Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet.
But out of all these companies, ABT was the one that was the most diverse.
They had dancers that came from all over the world.
And so my teacher just felt like if I was going to thrive anywhere,
ABT was going to be the place.
After high school,
American Ballet Theatre offered a contract with the Studio Company.
I was like, "Wow, I'm living a fairy tale."
ABT has always been my dream.
So I arrived at ABT at the Met.
[man] Just across the floor...
And the very first ballet I danced in was Swan Lake.
But when the ballet was being filmed for an ABT ballet,
I was pulled from the second act.
And deep down I knew why.
The second act of Swan Lake, it's a "white act."
There are a couple of ballets that have white acts in them.
It's not just for the color of your costume.
Everyone should look uniform and the same.
And I'm this one brown girl in this white act, and I didn't fit in.
And to then see the video and not see myself in that film
was so extremely hurtful.
This is the first time I've been in the ballet world
and I feel like I don't belong.
And that's when I realized how much the lack of diversity in classical dance--
how big it is.
[male narrator] When experts consider classical ballet in America,
they consider first, choreographer and guiding spirit George Balanchine.
As George Balanchine has said,
a ballerina should have fair skin,
skin the color of a freshly-peeled apple.
She should have very long, straight hair, be tall, extremely thin.
No curves or real muscle tone.
[laughs]
And that was not me.
The first time I saw myself in front of the mirror when I was 13 years old
was the first time I felt beautiful in my life.
And then years later, I'm looking in that mirror and thinking,
"You're not beautiful. You're fat. You're wrong. You're too brown.
You just aren't what ballet is."
So I went through an extremely difficult time,
not just because of my skin color but because of my body type.
It's not really legal for these companies to say,
"Lose this much weight" or "We need to weigh you."
But they just said, "You really need to lengthen."
I didn't understand what beauty was, what they wanted.
So I would go home and just rebel and eat everything I wasn't supposed to.
And it was just this vicious cycle of feeling they hated me, ABT.
I hated myself when I looked at myself in the mirror every day.
And then I'd go home and repeat the cycle and hate myself after.
I think that it really made me less confident.
And it just kept pushing me down more and more and more.
And the more I lost that confidence, the more I lost that sparkle,
that thing that I had that made me different.
When I was growing up, food was whatever we could get our hands on.
I was actually a seven-year-old
the first time that I had fresh cooked vegetables in my life.
So I never knew anything about taking care of my body and fueling it like an athlete.
So it was just this long process of figuring out what worked for me.
I realized I needed to find my own path,
uh, to becoming a new Misty, a healthy Misty,
that I can never go back to that 13-year-old body or self.
And so that was kind of the start of this, um, growth.
I want people to see a person, a real human being
that doesn't have this stick-thin figure and white skin.
If you really think about it, it's the most ridiculous thing ever
to say this one thing is what beauty is, when no two people are the same.
So why do we try so hard to morph into someone else?
Dear Misty,
Ballet was the first style of dance that I loved,
but my relationship with it hasn't always been simple.
Like you, I began training pre-professionally at the age of 13.
For as long as I can remember,
I was scared of becoming too curvy or too tall.
Constantly striving to fit the idea of what a dancer was supposed to look like
eventually became too much.
When I was in middle school, my disordered eating began.
It quickly turned into something I carried around with me daily.
My pattern of purging after meals or not eating for extended periods of time
was further rewarded by some of my ballet teachers.
Noticing that I had lost weight almost always led one of my teachers
to comment about how good or strong or beautiful I looked.
After a while, I became so weak from not eating that one day in class I fell,
tearing half of my Achilles tendon.
The injury took away my ability to dance en pointe,
and within seconds, my dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer was crushed.
Despite my injury, my eating disorder still continued.
Finally, at age 21, my college encouraged me
to go to an inpatient facility to get professional help.
Adjusting to the treatment center wasn't easy.
But when one of my doctors there actually said that I reminded her of you,
everything changed.
I learned about your struggle, and it reminded me of a time in my life
when my relationship with food and my body almost erased my love of dance.
Knowing that someone like you was plagued with these issues through your career
was the wake-up call I needed.
It opened my eyes to the fact that I was not alone.
As I continue to heal, I feel a great responsibility to share my story
and help others the way you helped me.
I've had the opportunity to write and speak
for the National Eating Disorders Association and Teen Vogue.
I am using my experience to bring a message of body kindness and positivity
to young people, especially dancers that need it so desperately.
Misty, you gave me the strength to keep going
and to work to feel comfortable in my own body.
Instead of conforming to the status quo, you are finding ways to challenge it.
[Misty] After a couple of years of being a professional dancer,
I was kind of on the up, trying to figure out and understand
how to navigate through ABT as a black woman, and feeling good, like,
"Maybe I will be promoted to soloist or become principal dancer."
The principal dancer is the star role in any ballet.
That's every little girl's dream, or every boy's dream,
when they're entering the ballet world.
[applause]
And then this article comes out.
ABT was criticized, New York City Ballet was criticized.
Every major company was criticized,
because they've had amazingly gifted black dancers in their company
and none of them have ever been a principal dancer.
There have been so many black women that have come through these major companies
and they never quite get past this hump.
So, being the only black woman at ABT, it was just eye-opening.
Then the white dancers in the company were like,
"We don't ever think of you as black. That's not how we see you."
And it's like, "What does that mean?"
They saw me in a certain way,
which I guess wasn't the stereotype of how they envisioned black people to be.
Then they read this article, and it was so far from their realm of experience.
They just kind of dismissed it.
And I ran into another studio and I closed the door
and I just bawled my eyes out.
It was just like, "Nobody gets it. No one understands me."
And I felt like it was proof that no matter how hard I worked
or how much support I had, it was never going to happen for me.
And it was just devastating.
So I thought about leaving ABT.
And then Arthur Mitchell called.
[classical music playing]
Arthur Mitchell started the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
And one. That's it.
[Misty] He was the first African American man
to be a principal dancer in a major ballet company.
So, when he came calling, I was like,
"Yes, Mr. Mitchell. [chuckles] What is it that you need?"
So he invited me to Dance Theatre of Harlem.
One, two and three, four.
It was the first time I'd been surrounded by other black ballet dancers,
completely immersed in them.
And it was like, "This is where I belong.
This is what will make me feel good and make me comfortable."
And he offered me a soloist position in the company.
And I thought about it, and I thought about it.
But I was like, "If I give in to what's expected of a black dancer,
the ballet world will never grow or change."
And I made the decision not to leave ABT.
The thing is, when I look back...
[sniffles] at my life...
[sobs]
I wouldn't be where I am or who I am without ballet.
[sniffles]
And because that opportunity is taken away from so many people
because of something they can't control,
it just made me want to do everything that I can to change that.
Years later,
when I had been at American Ballet Theatre for over a decade,
I was still the only black woman in the company.
But I was in a place where it was like, "I'm kind of picking up momentum."
But at 29, who cares if you have momentum? It's kind of the end of your career.
And then, in 2015, I was sitting in a company meeting,
which is common, and you're all just on the floor.
And, out of nowhere, I was promoted to principal dancer.
Misty, take a bow.
[cheers, applause]
To be surrounded by my peers, um, in that moment
made it even more emotional.
It was just shocking and incredible.
But at the same time, I literally panicked.
I remember getting to dance Odette-Odile in Swan Lake.
And when I did the tech rehearsal,
I was like, "I'm not supposed to be in this costume.
I'm not supposed to be doing this role. I'm supposed to be doing a little swan."
It was the most crazy moment to hear that music
and then be dancing to a different part of it.
It wasn't until I stepped onto the stage that I realized my presence in that space
and simply holding that title could change so much for so many generations to come.
Young people will see a brown ballerina and think that that's normal.
That's what a ballerina looks like.
So I embraced that it was happening
and that I'm not going to be like any other swan.
Becoming principal dancer
gave me a purpose beyond what I ever imagined it could be.
And so, no matter where I am in the world,
whether I'm at the Boys & Girls Club...
or even working with children in Rwanda,
I just wanna do everything I can to make the most out of an opportunity like this.
It doesn't matter what your skin color is.
It doesn't matter what body type you have or what neighborhood you grew up in.
Those are the things about you that make you special and different.
So I want to be known
for bringing this dialogue of the lack of diversity to the forefront,
not just of the ballet world, but of the world.
Dear Misty,
My life as a kid in Kigali was very tough.
I was born here in Rwanda, but when I was very young,
my mother died and it became difficult to survive.
I had no choice but to go to the streets.
At night, I slept in a sewer alongside other street kids.
I scavenged used charcoal and sold it to buy food.
Then I heard about a place called MindLeaps.
They ran a dance program that would give me the skills to get me off the streets.
So I decided to give it a try.
Dance became an escape for me.
It helped me forget about the outside world
and the pain of my childhood.
And soon I was dreaming of going to school and learning like other kids.
But the best day at MindLeaps was the day you came.
[chattering]
You told us about your difficult childhood,
how you did not always have enough food to eat or a place to sleep.
I knew you understood me.
Oh, this way, this way.
And then...
Then you gave me an opportunity I never thought possible.
You sponsored me to go to a private boarding school.
I have now been at school for three years.
Now I speak English.
I was the top student in my class last year.
I love dance, but I love school more.
Misty, I'm so grateful to you.
Just as you helped me, I too want to help other kids in Rwanda.
Because of your kindness, I now have an education and a bright future.
For me, being on the stage and dancing those roles:
the Firebird, Juliet, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake,
that is everything I've wanted to do.
But to hold the title of principal dancer was important for the ballet community,
for the African American community.
[cheers, applause]
Dance, it's literally, I think, saved my life.
And so, it just makes me want to open it up to more people
and allow other people to experience the joy, beauty and tools that I've learned
by being a part of the classical ballet world.
It's been a long journey, but I think things are already changing
in terms of what the world is now envisioning as a dancer.
To be able to be a clear representation and a voice for brown dancers,
that is something that is so symbolic and will live on for generations to come.
Misty, you are a beacon of hope and inspiration.
Thank you for reminding black girls that they belong everywhere.
There doesn't have to have been someone that came before you.
It's okay to be the first.
Show the world that this can be beauty, this can be strength.
[woman] Thank you, Misty,
for giving me and so many people the courage to stick to what we love.
Sincerely, Kimberly.
You opened doors for me I never thought possible.
Thank you, my friend. Ally.
You are remarkable. Sharae.
[Misty] I think it's important for me to be seen in the ballet world,
not for myself, but to show that I am you.
I am all of you guys, and this is something that's possible.