\n After a storied, decades-long career, ballerina Misty Copeland \u2014 known just as much for her advocacy offstage as her accomplishments on \u2014 is retiring from the American Ballet Theatre.\n <\/p>\n
\n Copeland, who last performed for the company five years ago, will be honored in a final star-studded Fall Gala on Wednesday, featuring tributes from Oprah Winfrey and Debbie Allen. In her final appearance, Copeland will perform excerpts from \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d and \u201cSinatra Suite,\u201d as well as the world premiere of a pi\u00e8ce d\u2019occasion choreographed by Kyle Abraham.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAlthough I\u2019ll be saying farewell to the stage, I\u2019ll always be committed to opening doors, creating space, and making ballet a place where everyone belongs,\u201d she wrote in a public Instagram post<\/a> ahead of her performance.\n <\/p>\n \n For those unable to afford the $5,000 gala tickets, the ABT is offering hundreds of free tickets to a live simulcast<\/a> at Alice Tully Hall, just a block away from the event.\n <\/p>\n 2:12 \n It\u2019s a fitting sendoff for a ballerina who brought renewed attention and change to the art form. Copeland began her dance career in California as a 13-year-old (considered late, by ballet standards), eventually becoming a member in the ABT\u2019s corps de ballet in 2001 at the age of 18. <\/strong>Throughout her career, Copeland continued to make history: becoming the company\u2019s second African American female soloist in 2007, and in 2015, becoming its first Black woman principal dancer, the highest company ranking. The <\/strong>New York-based ABT, founded in 1939, is considered one of the premier classical ballet companies in the US.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMisty Copeland\u2019s influence reaches far beyond her extraordinary performances,\u201d said Susan Jaffe, artistic director for the American Ballet Theatre, in a statement. \u201cOn stage, she broke barriers and redefined what it means to be a ballerina, inspiring generations with her artistry, strength, and grace. Off stage, she has used her voice to open doors and expand access to ballet and the arts. Her impact is still being defined, but there is no question it will be felt for decades to come.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n On stage, she was \u201cmagnetic,\u201d said Sarah L. Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic and author of \u201cVerb Your Enthusiasm.\u201d Not only did Copeland have the classic ballerina dimensions \u2014 the hyper-extended legs, the flexibly arched feet, the long neck \u2014 she also had a \u201cliveliness\u201d to her movements. Audiences could see the passion and the warmth on her face, Kaufman said.\n <\/p>\n \n That expressiveness became a distinct characteristic of Copeland\u2019s, but as the ballet world has shifted to prize the more extreme technical qualities of the dance form, <\/strong>such human personal expression <\/strong>has become a lost art.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe\u2019s very small, she\u2019s petite, but onstage she just unfolds into this large scale presence,\u201d Kaufman said. \u201cShe was the kind of dancer you could not take your eyes off of, long before she became a principal.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In an genre where uniformity is prized, Copeland \u2014 once called the \u201cJackie Robinson of ballet\u201d<\/a> \u2014 has spoken about the difficulties she faced as a Black woman in ballet. There were times she wasn\u2019t cast in roles out of concerns she would ruin the piece\u2019s aesthetic, or was told she should lighten her skin. For the first decade of her career, Copeland told CNN last year<\/a>, she was the only Black dancer <\/strong>out of about 100 in the company.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019ve experienced difficulties being a Black woman when you stand out, especially in the corps de ballet when it\u2019s supposed to look uniform, and everyone kind of in the same tones wearing pink tights, which represent the color of your skin,\u201d Copeland said. \u201cAnd that wasn\u2019t always the case.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But Copeland\u2019s rise through the ranks came at a critical time for Black ballerinas. The Dance Theatre of Harlem \u2014 one of the only ballet companies in the world whose mission is to specifically train and highlight ballerinas of color \u2014 went on hiatus due to financial difficulties from 2004 to 2012. Its closure left a gap in the ballet world, said Theresa Ruth Howard, founder of MobBallet, an organization dedicated to preserving Black ballet history. There weren\u2019t many Black dancers at other companies; with the DTH\u2019s hiatus, the number across the board dwindled.\n <\/p>\n \n Simultaneously, Copeland was generating buzz as a soloist at ABT. She appeared in a music video with Prince in 2009, and joined the singer on tour in 2011. Later, in 2014, she went on to publish a best-selling memoir and guest judge on the competition show, \u201cSo You Think You Can Dance?\u201d Once she was promoted to principal, her fame drove a surge of interest and ticket sales. Kaufman recalls, ahead of a performance of \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d at the Wolf Trap performing arts center in Virginia, traffic was \u201cbacked up to the exit ramp of <\/strong>the Beltway\u201d of Washington DC.\n <\/p>\n \n Her ascension, particularly at a time when Black ballerinas were so sparse, Howard said, emphasized the larger conversation around the lack of diversity in the ballet world.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen we see this young, mixed-race woman climbing the ranks as a possibility, that is almost like a lightning rod,\u201d Howard said. \u201cShe\u2019s talented; people are excited about her. And so therefore it becomes the thing that draws the attention. She becomes this catalyst for her ascension, but also for a larger conversation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For example, in a 2023 viral TikTok video<\/a>, Copeland showed how, despite her fame, she had to color her pair of baby pink pointe shoes with a sponge and foundation so the shoes matched her skin tone. She later started a petition<\/a> called, \u201cLet\u2019s Make a Pointe!\u201d to push Apple to offer different skin shades for its pointe shoe emoji. The lack of diversity both in the emoji and in real life was a \u201cconstant reminder of the subtle ways dancers of color have not been included,\u201d she wrote.\n <\/p>\n \n Beyond racial diversity, Copeland also aims to make ballet more affordable and accessible through efforts like the Misty Copeland Foundation.\n <\/p>\n \n The impact Copeland\u2019s presence has had on the ballet world is seen, now, in the swelling number of Black ballerinas across the country. India Bradley, who was just promoted to a soloist at the New York City Ballet this month, is the first Black woman to earn that distinction in the company\u2019s history.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201c(Copeland) has completely left a snail trail for us to glide down a lot easier than the women before her,\u201d Bradley said.\n <\/p>\n \n By becoming such a household name and making such a storm, Copeland opened the eyes of those leading big companies, Bradley said \u2014 forcing them to actually consider Black ballerinas in their companies.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPeople don\u2019t think of Black women in a way where we are an option to be soloists and principals and higher ranks in these companies,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cI genuinely just \u2014 before Misty \u2014 don\u2019t think that they thought of us in that way. And I think that she forced it to happen.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n And yet there is still more work to be done. There has never been a Black woman principal dancer at Bradley\u2019s New York City Ballet. At the ABT, Copeland remains the only Black woman among both principals and soloists. At the Paris Opera, there is only one Black ballerina in their highest rank.\n <\/p>\n \n The hope is that eventually there are no more \u201cfirsts,\u201d Bradley said; that young girls can dance without feeling that type of pressure, just like every other ballerina.\n <\/p>\n \n Copeland\u2019s farewell is as much a goodbye as it is a thank you.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAll of us just love her,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cAnd she deserves every single flower that she\u2019s getting.\u201d\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js<\/a>\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js<\/a> After a storied, decades-long career, ballerina Misty Copeland \u2014 known just as much for her advocacy offstage as her accomplishments on \u2014 is retiring from the American Ballet Theatre. Copeland, who last performed for the company five years ago, will be honored in a final star-studded Fall Gala on Wednesday, featuring tributes from Oprah Winfrey … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Misty-Copeland-permanently-changed-ballet-and-the-arts-As-she.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7100,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions\/7100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Misty](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ap25156439346610.jpg&q=w_860,c_fill\")
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