Incredible human - Misty Copeland Prima Ballerina

Photo credit allure.com

Hello Steemians,
For those of you stateside you've probably already heard and seen the amazing images of Misty Copeland but for us in Europe and the rest of the world she hasn't had much exposure. I came across her in an article written for Soho House and was blown away by her story, a really untraditional route to becoming a prima ballerina and her incredible physique. I wanted to share this with you as I'm sure you'll think she's as cool as I do!

Photo credit graphis.com

In this article, I've taken some inserts from the interview which appears on the Soho House members only website.

Misty Copeland grew up in San Pedro California, one of six siblings to a single mother. A shy child who didn't have any hobbies, for some reason at the age of 12 decided to audition for a role in the school dance team. She choreographed a dance to George Michael's "I want your sex" and was immediately made Captain of the dance team. From there Misty explains how she started doing ballet:

"The coach saw me and said, 'what are you doing here, you have an amazing physique and you pick up movement really quickly, you should take this free ballet class.' A friend of hers owned a ballet school and was looking for diverse students and was offering free classes at the Boys and Girls Club. I was forced into taking this class — I had no idea what ballet was, I’d never even heard classical music. The teacher said she’d never seen a talent like mine and she brought me into her school on a scholarship. I trained there for four years and then went on to become a professional."

Photo credit solarey.net

Misty has recently released a book called Ballerina Body where her central theme is that you should love your body and celebrate it, all shapes and sizes:

"I’ve always been a voice in support of loving who you are, and not following this era of social media tutorials where everyone ends up looking the same. I show images of my body in the book to show that I’m an athlete and that I work my butt off to look like this. But I wanted this to be about people discovering and making their own version of a ballerina body, which is a healthy body to me; one that is so different to how society depicts a ballerina body — typically a thin, anorexic white woman with blonde hair. I wanted to show them that this is a ballerina body too and that everyone can find a path to their own version of a healthy body."

Photo credit gaiahealthblog.com

Photo credit Gettyimages

Photo credit YouTube.com

Being a black ballet dancer has not come without its challenges as ballet tends to be a predominantly white field, Misty found inspiration in Raven Wilkinson:

"...The first person who I feel really changed the course of my life and career was Raven Wilkinson. She was the first black ballerina to dance with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She auditioned two or three times before she was finally accepted, because they didn’t want to take her because of the color of her skin. She ended up leaving the company because they were travelling a lot through the South and the KKK were coming for her, so they told her it wasn’t safe for her any more.
Hearing her story just changed my perspective and I felt that I had such a different purpose — it wasn’t just about being a ballerina, it was about sharing my journey and speaking about the lack of diversity in classical ballet."

Misty Copeland at the time of me putting this together is Prima Ballerina at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre.

Stay tuned my next post will be out soon!

Xoxo Natnot