Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

Raven was dealing with the KKK, stampeding the stage and threatening her life and coming on to the tour bus and looking for the black dancer.

But this was the journey of a lot of black dancers in that time.

{MUSIC } Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe' Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week are woman thought leader is Misty Copeland, the first African-American female to become principal ballet dancer in the 75 year history of the American Ballet Theatre.

The ABT is one of three leading classical ballet companies in the U.S. Copeland's life reads like a rags to riches story of determination, passion and definitely talent.

She was not deterred by critics who said she couldn't make it to the top of her field due to her race and body type.

She proved them wrong, and now, as a role model, she's also working to make a difference for the next generation and grateful to those who helped pave the way for her, especially the woman she calls her North star Raven Wilkinson.

It's in Copeland's second memoir in her 40 years.

Welcome, Misty Copeland.

How are you?

I'm wonderful.

Thank you so much for having me.

We are thrilled to have you.

And so is our audience and millions of little girls who have you as a Barbie doll, which is just one of your many, many, many honors, having done the things that you have done with your life.

Now, you started out poor and with a fair amount of changing homes, moving, etc., in your childhood.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I am one of six children I was actually born in Kansas City, Missouri.

At two years old, my mother picked up and left her second husband and moved to Los Angeles with me and my three siblings.

At the time.

She would eventually marry two more times and have two more children.

For the most part in my childhood, she was raising us single handedly and there was just a lot of instability and uncertainty.

As you said, you know, a lot of movement and a lot of moving around, changing schools and sometimes not having a roof over our head or food on the table.

It was it was a lot of struggling.

And this state of survival, I would say, for for me and my siblings and my mother.

And it it was at the age of would be 12 and a half, 13 that we were at our lowest point financially.

We were living in a motel in one room, all of us kids sleeping on the floor and we were on food stamps.

And it was at that time that ballet found me and completely changed my life at the community center where my mom had all of me and my siblings going at the Boys and Girls Club of San Pedro, California.

And it all changed from there.

Do you think you were able to channel that?

That you know, that really rough beginning into the power to take all of the rejection that you had to take and fight back against racism, even sexism?

I know ballet is primarily way more women dancers than men, but still there is sexism.

Is that what gave you your backbone or was it something else?

Yeah, it was a combination of things, but that was definitely a big part of kind of my grounding as a as a person that really shaped me, you know, all of these experiences.

I mean, I definitely watching my mother with, you know, as a single parent, never give up.

You know, her her perseverance and her strength is definitely something that is ingrained in all of my siblings and myself.

You know, I think she she prepared us in a lot of ways that I you know, being being biracial, being mixed.

You know, she raised us to understand that we were going to be seen and viewed and treated as black people in America.

And that definitely was another layer of preparation that helped me when I entered into the ballet world.

But seeing her strength coming from the background that I, as you said, that I that I came from, definitely gave me a tougher skin.

And it also gave me more like life experiences to pull from in becoming an artist, in going on the stage and being able to utilize this incredible art form and craft into this the peaceful time in my life.

Like when I went on stage, it was this beautiful escape and I could forget about all that was happening in the realities of my worlds.

And that's why I often say that ballet saved me in so many ways.

It's not only that you could and I speak speak from experience, not as as a ballerina at all, but as an equestrian when you're up there riding, and I'm sure it transfers to, you know, in controlling a 1300 pound animal underneath it, you have different.

Yes.

You can't think about anything else or you're on the ground.

And so and a lot of what you were doing, which made you look so graceful and elegant, was incredibly difficult.

Difficult, right?

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

I it takes a lot of focus and strength, especially as a young person, to be able to kind of put aside all that's happening in your life and and focus on this on this one thing that takes so much discipline and sacrifice and focus and and strength and grace and and all of these things.

But I fell in love with it.

I fell in love with the hard work.

And I fell in love with how it made me feel and what and what the outcome was from putting in the hours and the sweat equity.

And it was just to this day, it's it's one of the best parts of all of the journey of my training is being on stage and getting to give back, you know, the work that I put in and give that back to the audience that gets to enjoy our art.

You devote your book to your role model.

Raven Wilkinson.

Tell us about how you met and how she became larger than life, to you?

Yeah.

I learned of Raven Wilkinson in 2010 watching a documentary on the world famous Ballet Russe Monte-Carlo.

The ballet company that came from Europe really brought ballet to America.

You know, one of the most important ballet companies of the 20th century.

And Raven was the first black woman to dance in the company.

She eventually became a soloist with the company.

But watching this documentary, I was a soloist at American Ballet Theatre.

So I was very much, you know, in the midst of my career.

And and I discovered this black woman in this important ballet company.

I had no idea that she even existed.

It made me it made me angry that that's not, you know, part of our history as black people, that's been documented and shared openly.

But at the same time, it was like this this instant connection and recognition.

You know, to be, you know, for myself, being the only black woman at American Ballet Theatre for the first decade of my career, I understood her journey and and it kind of gave me this understanding of a purpose that I didn't realize I had, you know, that it wasn't just about me and my own personal goals of becoming a principal dancer, accomplishing, you know, getting to do certain roles, but that I had a responsibility stepping onto the stage to carry on her legacy and the legacy of so many black women who came before me.

But what's incredible is that a year later, in 2011, my manager had done some research and found out that Raven was still alive, living in New York City and actually a block away from me on the Upper West Side, which is unbelievable.

We we met for the first time at the Studio Museum in Harlem where we had a conversation together in 2011 for two generations of black ballerinas and, you know, we just hit it off.

And she was like no mentor I'd ever experienced, no teacher I'd ever experienced.

And that raven, you know, simply was just sharing her love and appreciation for the fact that I was doing what I loved.

And and in carrying on her, her legacy in some way.

Ballet is, of course, a European form of dance.

Europe is for the most or was certainly back then, predominantly white, if not exclusively white.

Tell me about the special issues that breaking into a field like that has for a woman of color.

Yeah, you know, it being a European art form and having been created and really built around white men and women, there's so much that's just naturally I don't if it's natural, but it's, it's ingrained from from its origins to really just represents white people.

You know, I even think about, you know, the tights and the the ballet slippers and the pointe shoes that dancers wear.

And the color is European pink.

And that's supposed to represent the color of your skin.

So for a person of color, especially a black woman, you're already being told from day one from the start that this is not something that is meant for you or built for you to be a part of.

You know, there are there are genres of ballets called the White Ballets the Ballet Blanque , and it literally is excluding people of color simply by the name, by the fact that in the second act of these ballets, all of the women are to look uniform, have the same colored skin, this white tool.

And throughout history, even to this day, black women have often been removed from those ballets to not break the esthetic, break the line of this uniformity.

You know, so many roles for black women have been told that they cannot be the Swan Queen or Giselle.

You know, these leading characters because they don't fit in to what the intentions were, I guess, when they were created.

Did you ask if it's actually true that the ballet completely excluded all people of color, going back to its its beginnings in Europe, or were there always people of color involved?

Just their roles minimized.

100%.

There have been black people, black women, people of color that have learned the craft, that have been doing it, you know, in their own, you know, little sections of wherever their communities and where they live.

But you just don't hear about it.

And that's a really big part of what I feel my responsibility is by being in this position and having the voice that I have and the the reach and the platform to able to write books.

You know, the last book that I that I wrote last year, it's called Black Ballerina as and I wish I had thousands of pages for this book, but I could only highlight a certain amount of dancers.

But to be able to share the history of black women and not just black women who have been in top professional companies, but black women that didn't get an opportunity but made an impact on the ballet community in the ballet world and brought in people from the black and brown community to learn this craft.

It's so important for us to be educated and know.

You know, for me at least, the shoulders that I stand on and who opened the doors for me to be here.

They're really you mentioned the black, the Queen swan and being told you couldn't be the Queen swan because you are black and yet there are black swans.

Right.

Well, did that see?

Tell me your reaction when you heard that.

Well, this is a known thing throughout history that's been said to generations and generations of black women.

I mean, I write about it in The Wind At My Back where Raven was literally told you know, after seven years at the Ballet Russe Monte-Carlo, she was told by the lead dancer in the company that this was probably the end of the road.

She wasn't going to go any further than she had, and she would never be the Swan Queen.

That's just not something that a black woman can do.

So it it has been something that's been ingrained in this culture.

I overheard and a friend relayed to me that that I should not be dancing.

This was something that a staff member at American Ballet Theatre said early on in my career that I shouldn't even be allowed to be a part of the second act of Swan Lake and not even not the Swan Queen.

But this is in the corps of ballet, the lowest ranking of the big group of dancers.

And when the company filmed the ballet to be released on video, I was removed from the second act, from the white act.

So it is it is a reality for so many dancers of color.

And what I feel is that we are in an art form and we're here to tell a story through movement and to, you know, go beyond the realm of reality.

This is supposed to be this incredible fantasy artistic outlet where these, you know, who is a swan and who is to say what a swan should look like.

Swans come in all shapes and sizes and colors and, you know, and I think about so many fairytale like characters, you know, that it's about us using our imagination and telling a story through dance that we should be focused on.

You saw your Northstar, your mentor, being trying to dance in the South and and having white people and Jim Crowe laws, I guess, but work really hard against her.

Tell me about that.

What's so interesting is that Raven joined the ballet roost in 1955.

So this was before segregation, Right before.

So her experience began as this fairy tale, you know what people dream about when they when they join or hope to join a professional touring company.

She was the only black woman, but she was embraced.

You know, there were dancers from all over the world through different cultures.

And she never felt like an outsider.

The company was touring through the South at the time, and she stayed in hotels with her colleagues and performed on the same stages and only a short two years later, everything changed and shifted.

She was going visiting those same, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, where else?

Mississippi, you know, places that she had been to before.

And and now everything had changed.

And the KKK, you know, their presence was so prominent.

And, you know, she had so many instances where I can't imagine, you know, being an athlete and being a performer, what it takes to get yourself prepared mentally, physically, emotionally focused before a performance.

And Raven was dealing with the KKK, stampeding the stage and threatening her life and coming on to the tour bus and looking for the black dancer.

So this was the state of mind that she was in when she was going into a performance.

I can't I can't even imagine, you know, that experience.

But only seven years into her professional career, she it was just too much for the company and for her.

And she ended up moving to Amsterdam and finishing out her professional career with the Dutch National Ballet.

But this was the journey of a lot of black dancers in that time.

But I think it's important that we educate people today, especially that this was the path and journey of black dancers, and we're still dealing with the repercussions of that.

But do you think you have not had to suffer?

I'm guessing to the extent that she did her, the racism she faced was overt.

Maybe yours is covert.

Is that an accurate.

Would you say yours was an easier path or am I fooling myself?

100%.

I mean, I have not had the physical threats on my life and things like that that that Raven had.

But the ballet world, I would say, is so far behind the rest of the world and, you know, has actually had an easy time getting away.

You know, we exist in this very niche bubble and a lot of people don't even know what's going on within this world.

I mean, up until, I don't know, three or four years ago.

And actually I think it's still a practice, but there are ballets that are still being performed in blackface in Russia in particular, and in Europe, I believe.

But that's how far behind we are.

So there is there is a lot of racism, overt racism that still exists in ballet today.

I'd say that a lot of what I've experienced, you know, in this day and age, it's it's being written on social media and blogs and things like that.

Like that's the overt racism I'm seeing now, people behind their computer that are writing these things.

But I still use the stay even with the success that I have, even though I'm a principal dancer with the company, there are still people that feel that, you know, the change is too much and that this these weren't the intentions of, you know, how ballet was created and what it was intended for.

You've just described kind of the the progression, if you will, between Raven's generation and your generation.

What do you see for the next generation?

The last three years?

It's the most progress that I've seen.

You know, it's it's really us definitely, you know, post George Floyd and within the pandemic, you know, it's I think it's really made the arts and ballet in particular, look at how are we going to maintain, how are we going to continue to grow, how are we going to stay relevant?

And, you know, I think that the pandemic really helped us to understand the importance of having a broad reach, you know, bringing ballet to bringing ballet and dance and having it be accessible through our computers, through streaming services and the importance of that.

But it's also then kind of put us out there for more screens.

And I think that's a good thing, you know, that people are really understanding and seeing the lack of diversity in every way and that it's holding us back.

It's holding this art form back.

And, you know, it's been a topic of conversation for years now.

That is ballet a dying art form.

How do we keep it relevant?

And, you know, especially in America, if the audience members don't see themselves reflected and they don't see their stories being told, why would they want to support the art form?

And, you know, it's it's proven that it does work, you know, simply, you know, by me existing at American Ballet Theatre and seeing the more than half of the Metropolitan Opera House full of black and brown people and young people, and that they want to be there and they they want to see themselves reflected.

They want to be a part of this art form.

They want to contribute to it.

But I think it's an effort that everyone has to make, not just people of color, but everyone has to make in order for people to really see change happen.

Let's talk about the physical challenges you have faced and overcome.

Ballet is very hard on any dancers legs.

Tell me about that and how that influenced your career.

Injury is such a big part of an athlete's life, and that's what we are as dancers.

We are athletes and we are artists, and it's something that you're going to come up against when you're putting your body through so much physical, you know, so many physical feats.

For for me, all of my injuries have really helped make me a smarter dancer, a smarter athlete, and shaped, you know, who I am as a person, having that really severe injury and at a critical time in my career.

You know, it was after receiving my first principal role in a full length classical work, The Firebird, that I ended up with six stress fractures in my tibia and I had to pull out of the performances and, you know, wasn't really sure what would come of my career or if I'd be able to get back to where I was and and continue on and progress and, you know, through support and having mentors in my life like Raven Wilkinson and so many other incredible women, especially women of color, that allowed me to understand that with the right support, you can get through anything.

And it's about changing your mindset and changing how you get to the end destination.

And, you know, and throughout my journey, it's really been about understanding that I don't I can't follow anyone else's path, that we are all unique individuals.

And that's what makes it so spectacular.

You know, to have diversity within these art forms is so many different interpretations and outcomes by having different life experiences and injuries have only, you know, I think helped to shape me even more.

Tell us about how you how the stress fractures happened and whether you think with all the advances being made in in medicine at warp speed at this point in time, do you think they will find a way?

Will they invent a cushion that's very small, that will you can put in your toe shoe, you know, and help protect the leg from concussion?

What I've been drawn to and just love about the classical art form, the ballet is the brilliance of the technique.

The technique has not had to change in hundreds of years because it was so thoughtfully put together.

And so I wouldn't even put it on the ballet technique and the physicality of it.

I think it's really about the evolution of us learning how to take care of our bodies, you know, the recovery process, which as a young dancer, that wasn't something that was really taught to me or that I understood the importance of, you know, as a young person.

I just want, you know, any day off was I was falling behind and I didn't understand that it's equally as important the rest that goes into it.

So it was, you know, sometimes being on surfaces, dancing on surfaces that weren't ideal for ballet, that didn't have, you know, a strong floor.

So that's really bad when you're jumping.

So for me, it was it was repetitive jumping and impact in the role of Firebird is one of the most physically, you know, athletic roles in the in the ballet repertoire.

So it was a combination of all of these things that I think definitely could have been and could be prevented.

And we're learning more and more the same way in sports.

You know, they are learning it's what you're putting into your body and it's how you're taking care of your body.

Thank you so, so much.

And please come back for your third memoir when it comes out or anything else that you write the book about.

Black Ballerinas sounds fascinating and thank you so far.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me, such a pleasure Take care.

That's it for this edition.

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