Before the curtain rises, you’ll find world-renowned ballerina Misty Copeland alone on the stage. She may be acclaimed for creating transcendent experiences for audiences over the past 25 years. Still, these moments are her favorite. She orients her body to the space and quietly moves through parts of the ballet.
“It’s a way to get grounded,” she says. “It’s almost like going back to my beginnings—in that the stage was always that place where I could forget about my problems and things at home. It’s like going back to that innocence and vulnerability. To be able to go back and tap into that before you go on stage and perform is so, so special.”
Copeland took her first ballet class on a basketball court at the Boys and Girls Club when she was 13 while living with her mom and five siblings in a motel. Sixteen years later, she became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in American Ballet Theatre’s 75-year history and continues to make a transformative difference as an artist, author, and activist.
The stage is sacred for Copeland. Still, the impact she makes off it fulfills her even more, most recently with the launch of The Misty Copeland Foundation in 2022. Inspired by her own experience, they created BE BOLD: an afterschool program for children of color that not only makes ballet and other dance forms accessible but offers mentoring, tutoring, music, and well-being education.
Here, Copeland discusses finding beauty in the journey, how she “keeps dancing” through challenges, and why her purpose has always been “bigger than ballet.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Fast Company: You described the deep internal knowing you felt when you began ballet when you said: “I don’t think I really understood, but I knew there was no way I could go another day without doing it.” First, what do you consider that feeling to be and have you felt it again? Then, how do you stay connected to your intuition and what role does it play in your art and life?
