Celebrities don’t only entail popular singers and actors. Among them, many other famous people arise and win us over with their skills and talents.
One such celebrity is Misty Copeland, a popular American dancer. Stick with us if you want to learn more about her career, her net worth and other interesting information.
Early years
Misty Copeland was born in 1982 in Kansas City, Missouri. She is growing up with her seven brothers and sisters in Los Angeles. Encouraged by her teachers, she joined the San Pedro Dance School at the age of thirteen.
Despite her late beginnings, she is quickly considered a prodigy. She joined the American Ballet Theater in 2001, was named soloist in August 2007.
She dances works of contemporary choreographers, as well as pieces from the classical repertoire. In 2009, Prince asked him to dance in the clip of “Crimson and Clover”.
In 2012, she made her first lead role in The Firebird, choreographed by Alexey Ratmansky. In June 2015, the ABT names three new first dancers: Misty Copeland is one of them, the first African American to know such a consecration.
Career path
In 1998, she received a Spotlight award from the Los Angeles Music Center, which earned her the distinction of being recognized by six companies that invited her to participate in their summer workshops.
She chooses to take part in San Francisco Ballet. In 1999, she went to New York and participated in the summer workshop of the American Ballet Theater.
She joined the corps de ballet in 2001. In August 2007, she became the first African-American dancer of the New York Company to be named soloist since Anne Benna Sims and Nora Kimball in the 1980s.
She dances works of contemporary choreographers, as well as pieces from the classical repertoire. In 2012, she made her first lead role in The Firebird, choreographed by Alexey Ratmansky.
She then takes the lead several times: Coppelia, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet. In June 2015, the ABT names three new first dancers: Misty Copeland is one of them, the first African American to know such a consecration.
Misty Danielle Copeland, of African, German and Italian blood, was born on September 10, 1982 in Kansas, Missouri, and currently lives in Manhattan, New York.
At the age of seven, watching Nadia Comāneci on television aroused her interest in Olympic gymnastics and ballet since Nadia is a Roman gymnast who won nine Olympic medals, five of them gold.
Copeland never had formal classes, until at age thirteen he entered ballet classes at the San Pedro Dance Center. At fourteen, he won a national competition, obtaining his first solo role.
In 1988, he decided to leave school and continue with education at home so he could have more time to dance.
After several presentations, she won first place in “Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards” in 1998. Thanks to this, she was recognized by the LA Times as the best young dancer in the entire Los Angeles area. After this, he entered the San Francisco Ballet School.
In 1999, he entered a summer program of the largest ballet company in the United States: American Ballet Theater (ABT). In September 2000 he joined the ABT Studio Company, and in 2001 he became a member of the ABT dance corps. In 2007, Misty was named soloist. In several presentations his elegance, sophistication and contemporaneity were recognized.
In March 2014, he published his autobiography called “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina”. This year, 2015, she was chosen as one of the 100 most influential people in America from Time magazine, so she appeared on the cover.
Likewise, a documentary of his life called “A Ballerina`s Tale” was released on April 19. On June 7, Misty was a presenter at the Tony Awards.
On May 30, she became the first African-American woman to be promoted to a principal dancer in the history of ABT.
When you open a book, you are expected to enter a world where emotions and “adventure” merge, and that the magic reaches a point where the reader is trapped to the end. And even in the end, feel like more. Some of this happens with “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina” by Misty Copeland, published in March this year by Touchstone / Simon & Schuster.
Her foray into dance was through her mentor and trainer, Cynthia Bradley, who introduced her in her pointe shoes and in that magical world of classical ballet. And not only did she open the door of her house and her family, but she also sheltered it, protected it, and moved it away from the emotional and economic instability that meant sleeping on the floor of a hotel room with six brothers, and the Your mother’s fourth husband
Bradley, made her discover ABT, and since then Copeland had the goal of becoming the first dancer of this company. One of his models and his idols was Paloma Herrera, whom he later met, when he began to be part of this assembly directed by Kevin McKenzie. Bradley also allowed this hopeless teenager to find a way out of daily death loaded with marginality, pain, shame and desolation.
With simple, dynamic, well-written English, and with few photos, Copeland shows key people in his life. Some of them, like the case of their first love, remain without entity in the story, as well as in the photographic edition (without last name and without reference or credit).
The same goes for his father, who appears in a chapter, but the reader does not find the continuity of the link. These absences, due to a failure of editing and journalistic sharpness, take away some intensity and rigor from some of the fourteen chapters of the book.
Certain passages are confusing and disorganized, and the key information of several important dance characters is blurred. (Such as mentioning the director of the San Francisco Ballet and not saying his name until after several paragraphs)
Copeland is not a writer, she is a dancer. And it is the function of the assistant editor to refine the writing and leave nothing to chance that can take away strength from the content. The editor did not notice the repeated insistence of the protagonist in reaffirming her condition of “prodigy dancer” and “special talent” without including it as a textual quote from whoever told her. And it sounds petulant.
Subliminal messages that point directly to the ABT and its director, at times they smell like a claim. And it would give the sensation that the book not only aims to tell the heroic trajectory of a girl who discovered dance as salvation, as a vocation and as the final reason for her life.
More than the biography of a dancer, “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina”, it is an attractive novel story with cinematic rhythm, which shows how dance, or art in general, can be vehicles of social transformation. Although this is an individual case, it is worth knowing the history and passion of Misty Copeland and getting drunk with her hopeful message. Misty’s net worth is estimated at around 500 thousand dollars.
Personal life
Misty Copeland was born in 1982 in Kansas City, Missouri. She grew up with her seven brothers and sisters, under the responsibility of their mother, who raises them alone, in the San Pedro district of Los Angeles. Encouraged by her teachers, she joined the San Pedro Dance School at the age of thirteen. Despite her late beginnings, she is quickly considered a prodigy.
Copeland, one of the few African-American dancers who managed to become a soloist in the last two decades of the history of the American Ballet Theater (ABT), began to tell her story, despite being still young enough to approach an autobiography.
However, his wandering through life, his hard personal experience within a disjointed family, nomadic, and with limited resources for their survival, make this story justified, and even serves as an argument for a blockbuster movie from which he usually takes Hollywood.
The narrative, captivating at times, moving to tears in others, focuses on inequalities, discrimination, and lack of opportunities, promiscuity and poverty.
Although it would give the feeling that Copeland tried to omit some elements that could further question his family situation, and on the other hand, that he used racism as a social awareness tool. Especially in a country where that topic is still today, taboo.
Written with the support of journalist Charise Jones, the book leaves several loose ends in the story of this dancer who discovered the dance late, who grew up in a family of six siblings with the presence of different “fathers”, and a conflicting mother.
In the midst of this social and cultural inequality, Copeland built his world admiring and imitating gymnast Nadia Comaneci until he was discovered by one of his Boys and Girls Club teachers.
Quick summary
Full name: Misty Copeland
Date of birth: September 10th 1982
Birthplace: Kansas City, USA
Age: 37
Profession: Ballet Dancer
Height: 1.57 m
Weight: 54 kg
Net Worth: 500$ thousand