Misty Copeland

Misty Danielle Copeland was born on September 10, 1982, in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in the San Pedro community of Los Angeles, California. The daughter of Sylvia DelaCerna and Doug Copeland, she is the youngest of four children from her mother's second marriage and has two younger half-siblings from her mother's subsequent marriages. Her father, who is of German and African American descent, was absent from her life between the ages of two and twenty-two. Her mother, of Italian and African American ancestry, had studied dance and worked as a trained medical assistant, though she was employed mostly in sales. Copeland's early childhood was marked by instability; by the mid-1990s, her family had lived with various friends and boyfriends and experienced periods of homelessness before settling into two small rooms at the Sunset Inn in Gardena, California.

Copeland did not begin formal ballet training until she was thirteen years old, a late start by classical standards. Her introduction to the art form came through Elizabeth Cantine, the classically trained coach of the drill team at Dana Middle School, where Copeland had become captain following in the footsteps of her older sister Erica. Cantine connected Copeland with Cynthia Bradley, who taught a free weekly ballet class at a local Boys and Girls Club. After attending several sessions as a spectator, Copeland began participating, and Bradley eventually invited her to study at the San Pedro Dance Center. Because her mother lacked a car and worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, Copeland initially declined, but Bradley began driving her to and from school, and Copeland's formal training commenced. Within three months, she was dancing en pointe.

As her training intensified, Bradley offered to host Copeland in her home so that her studies could continue uninterrupted. Copeland's mother agreed, and Copeland moved in with the Bradley family, spending weekdays near the coast and weekends at home, a two-hour bus ride away. Bradley's husband, a modern-dance teacher, served as Copeland's pas-de-deux instructor and partner. Bradley also began homeschooling Copeland for tenth grade to allow more time for dance. During this period, Copeland performed as Clara in The Nutcracker at San Pedro High School after only eight months of study, drawing approximately 2,000 patrons per show. She subsequently played Kitri in Don Quixote at the San Pedro Dance Center and appeared in a featured role in The Chocolate Nutcracker, an African American retelling of the story narrated by Debbie Allen and presented at UCLA's Royce Hall.

By age fourteen, Copeland had won a national ballet contest and earned her first solo role. In March 1998, at fifteen, she took first place in the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards at the Chandler Pavilion, a competition among gifted high school students across Southern California. The victory brought her recognition from the Los Angeles Times as the best young dancer in the Greater Los Angeles Area and a scholarship ranging between five hundred and twenty-five hundred dollars. The Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award had previously been noted in 1997 as well, with Copeland recognized as the best dancer in Southern California. That same year, she attended a summer workshop at the San Francisco Ballet School, where she was placed in the most advanced classes on a full-tuition scholarship that included expenses.

Copeland's ascent through the professional ranks of American Ballet Theatre was methodical and historic. After two summer workshops with ABT, she joined ABT's Studio Company in 2000 and moved into its corps de ballet in 2001. She was promoted to soloist in 2007, a position she held for eight years during which she was described as having developed into a more contemporary and sophisticated dancer. On June 30, 2015, Copeland became the first African American woman to be named a principal dancer in ABT's seventy-five-year history. She retired from ABT in 2025.

Beyond her ballet career, Copeland built a substantial presence as a public figure and stage performer. In 2014, she appeared on Broadway in On the Town. She also toured as a featured dancer for Prince and appeared on the reality television programs A Day in the Life and So You Think You Can Dance. She narrated A Ballerina's Tale, a documentary about the challenges she faced in her career, and authored two autobiographical books. In 2015, Time magazine named her one of the one hundred most influential people in the world, and she appeared on the magazine's cover that year. Her commercial partnerships have included T-Mobile, Coach, Inc., Dr Pepper, Seiko, The Dannon Company, and Under Armour.