Country of Birth

United States of America

Industry

Sports/Dance

Top Achievements

Misty Copeland is an American ballet dancer who, in 2015, became the first Black principal ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT).

Early Life and Education

Misty Copeland was born on September 10, 1982, in Kansas City, Missouri, to Sylvia DelaCerna and Doug Copeland. Her father is of German and African American descent, while her mother is of Italian and African American ancestry. Delacerna’s four marriages and continued financial instability resulted in Copeland and her siblings moving several times before finally settling in San Pedro, California, where Copeland attended Point Fermin Elementary School and Dana Middle School.

At the age of 13 she began taking ballet classes at her local Boys & Girls Club, where her immense natural talent quickly emerged. She won first prize in the ballet category of the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards just two years later. In 1998, aged 15, she was accepted with a full scholarship into the intensive summer program at the San Francisco Ballet.

Early Career

In 2000 Copeland won another full scholarship, this time to the ABT’s intensive summer program. At the end of the summer, she was one of only six dancers invited to join the ABT Studio Company, a selective program for young dancers still in training.

Aged just 19, she became a full member of the ABT’s corps de ballet in 2001, the only Black woman in a group of 80 dancers. Just eight months after joining ABT she developed a lumbar stress fracture which delayed her progress for a year but despite this, Copeland rapidly climbed the ABT ranks by virtue of her exceptional technique and artistry.

Achievements in Her Field

In 2007 Copeland became the company’s first Black female soloist in two decades. In June 2015, she scored a monumental achievement when she became the first Black performer to dance with ABT in the iconic dual role of Odette and Odile in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and later that same month became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal ballerina in ABT’s 75-year history.

In 2014, Copeland published her New York Times bestselling memoir Life In Motion and in 2021 Black Ballerinas: My Journey To Our Legacy.

Recognition

In 2014, Copeland was named to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition. After her promotion to ABT principal ballerina in 2015, she was named one of Glamour’s Women of the Year and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, a rare feat for someone from the dance world. She appeared on the cover of Time, making her the first dancer on the cover since 1994. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Hartford and New York University.

Additional Facts

• Misty is an active philanthropist and is an ambassador of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, of which she is also an alum.
• She founded The Misty Copeland Foundation in 2022, which provides afterschool programs for children, combining affordable ballet training alongside musicianship, mentoring and general tutoring.
• Copeland married attorney Olu Evans in 2016. They have one son, born in 2022.