Misty Copeland may not be the first African American soloist at American Ballet Theatre. She may not even be the second or the third. She may not be the first ABT dancer to have to overcome the challenges of dealing with ample breasts or excess weight. She may not be the first ABT dancer to struggle with a disadvantage of being short. What Misty may be, however, is the first ABT dancer savvy enough to use the mainstream media and its extremely hardwired sympathies to twist the balls of ABT’s artistic director so that he will promote her to principal over more accomplished dancers, including other minorities.
In her new book, Life in Motion, an unlikely ballerina published by the Touchstone Division of Simon & Schuster, Misty massages ballet’s history and her own history with inconsistencies, omissions, baseless assumptions, and sophisticated victim mentality to make her case in the court of public opinion that her struggles have been mostly the result of bigotry in America and that it’s time for ABT to pay up — with a promotion to principal. To be clear, the word “reparation” never appears in her memoir. There’s no need. As she writes over and over again that she wants to be promoted to principal dancer at ABT, she ribbons her pages with insinuations of racism that simply are not substantiated.
We’ve been a fan of Misty’s for a long time on this blog - praising her performance in Firebird as being superior to Natalia Osipova’s and recognizing her special natural gifts many times. We haven’t ignored her lack of classical refinement in her port de bras, her excesses, or her lapses in professional decorum on stage and have always assumed that with time and effort the rough edges would be sanded away to yield a startlingly beautiful classical ballerina. But this book – this book is too much. And when coupled with Misty’s ongoing self-objectification in order to attract the media’s sialorrhea, a most unbecoming portrait comes into focus. She knows that we support her. She even quoted 100+ words from a comment in this blog - without a citation. (Simon & Schuster, have your people call Haglund’s people to discuss this oversight.)
While the book jacket notes that the memoir is Misty's "story of adversity and grace," any grace found within the pages belongs not to Misty but to her mother who it seems has yet to experience her daughter’s full respect and appreciation. Not equipped with advanced skills or education with which to support her family, Misty’s mother found herself in the dire situation that so many other single mothers have experienced. She survived by placing herself and her children under the roofs of men whom she married but who were not good choices in the long run – although they provided the food, shelter, and often the parental nurturing and discipline that children need. When Misty’s mother saw the dangers of living with an alcoholic or abusive white bigot, she uprooted her brood and moved them to safety. Safety often meant stark amenities. Sometimes it meant that Misty and her siblings had to sleep on the floor and didn’t enjoy the comforts or the types of food as previously, but they were as safe as their mother was able to make them. At times there were food stamps helping to support the family, but there were also times when Misty’s mother chauffeured the children around in their Mercedes station wagon.
Above all, Misty's mother treated her children equally and refused to make Misty the perpetual center of her universe. Misty’s response to all of this was, “I’m sure Mommie didn’t believe she was being neglectful” – but. If her mother would not make her "the center of her universe," Misty would move on to someone who would. She moved in with her ballet teacher’s family who could offer her more amenities and attention while she pursued her ballet training. She would later disrespect her mother’s orders to come home and would sue for emancipation, backing down only after her mother sought assistance from acclaimed attorney Gloria Alred. The rebellious adolescent was returned to her mother to sulk but also to gain superior ballet training as had been arranged by her own mother.
When reading about Misty’s adolescent determination to get what she wanted or when reading recently about the obnoxious 18-year-old high school truant in New Jersey who ran away from home after having her phone privileges suspended and with the help of the family she moved in with is now suing her parents for financial support, one can really see how the family as a pillar unit in the American culture has crumbled under the weight of society’s win-at-all-costs breeding. These days, more and more children step on and over whomever they need to step on and over in order to get their ways. When they finally grow up, they possess a sense of grand and impatient entitlement with no respect for others.
When Misty was first promoted to the rank of soloist, she boasted to the media that she was the first black female soloist at American Ballet Theatre. She told Jim Farber at the LA Daily News “They’ve never had a black woman make it past the corps.” When Farber spoke to Kevin McKenzie for the same article, McKenzie didn’t correct the misinformation that Misty was promoting. He didn’t mention any of the black women soloists who reportedly came before Misty and helped to open the door for her: Anne Benna Sims, Nora Kimball, or Shelley Washington. Misty writes about getting her soloist contract: “If this could open doors for black women in ballet, that would mean the world to me” but she pays no homage to the ABT black soloists who came before her and helped open the doors for her. She doesn’t even mention their names. It’s as though she begrudges those who came before her and is massaging her message while hoping to make people think of her as the original trailblazer, the real game-changer, which she is not. Despite believing and promoting herself as the first black female soloist when she got her contract, her now-published memory of those events has been carefully scrubbed in the memoir to say she recalls thinking at the time how great it was going to be to be the first black female soloist in twenty years - not necessarily the first. Why didn't she tell the truth and credit those who came before her?
Throughout this memoir, Misty claims time and time again that she has encountered racism in ballet but offers not a shred of evidence. She attributes her internal disarray, insecurities, and her failures to win whatever she desired to others’ racial prejudices. It is all such a crock of self-obsessed self-victimization.
Misty writes that when she moved to New York at age sixteen to study at ABT, “the other ballerinas would look at me, not sure that I was black but certain I wasn’t white, and proceed to ignore me.” They weren’t looking at her because they were jealous of her superior shaped feet, her beautiful legs, her tiny body, her dancing abilities, or all of the attention that she was getting. Nope, it was all because of the color of her skin. Misty was sure of it, because in addition to being a talented dancer, she could read the minds of those mean girls.
When she auditioned for six ballet companies’ summer programs and was rejected only by the New York City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, Misty was sure that it was due to her skin color because her teacher told her that was the reason. She stands by that claim to this day and keeps the rejection letter to spur herself onward. Later, she makes a point of authoritatively ranking the major North American ballet companies in terms of prestige and assures all of her readers that ABT stands above NYCB in terms of prestige. Still later, Misty writes that she considered moving over to NYCB, apparently an option she considered open to her. It is what it is.
Misty relates how in 2005 she had been trying to perfect her pas de chat so that she would be seamlessly in step with other Swan Lake cygnets by the opening night which was due to be filmed for TV. Even though the cygnets casting for that performance had not been determined at that time, she apparently assumed that she would or should be among the four who danced that night.
While in the cafeteria, a friend approached her and told her that she had heard staff members talking about Swan Lake and that “someone" (unnamed or unknown) had commented that Misty didn’t fit in and there was mention of her brown skin. When the final casting for this particular performance was announced, Misty writes that she “was not picked to dance in the second act. The 'white act.’ “ It wasn’t her pas de chat that was the problem or anything other than the color of her skin. She was sure.
Misty latches onto the assumption that Aesha Ash’s lack of progression at NYCB was due to her skin color, and that Tai Jimenez didn’t get hired by ABT because of her skin color. And the basis for all this? A misguided New York Times article written by a reporter who had no more facts about what went into NYCB’s and ABT’s decisions relative to these two dancers than Haglund’s cats had. In the absence of facts and information, like a good Times reporter, you just make it up or speculate.
Misty’s written conclusions are that Aesha Ash, Tai Jimenez, Arthur Mitchell, Star Jones (The View), Lauren Anderson (principal dancer - Houston Ballet), and Alicia Graf are artists who have not "gotten their due” simply because they are black. And the basis for all this? See above.
“Most of my peers had grown up immersed in the arts, putting on their first tutus not long after they learned to walk," she writes. "They had summered in Europe while I didn’t get my first passport until I was seventeen. Their families had weekend homes. I had spent part of my adolescence living in a shabby motel.” Oh really. Most ABT dancers came from rich families with two homes who vacationed in Europe and were put into ballet mode as soon as they learned to walk? Think again. Where are her editors?
“Picture a ballerina in a tutu and toe shoes. What does she look like? Most would say she is a fragile-limbed pixie, with flaxen hair and ivory skin, spinning in pale pink tulle.” Yes, that’s exactly what Maria Tallchief, Cynthia Gregory, Anna Pavlova, Margot Fonteyn, Alicia Markova, Diana Adams, Cynthia Harvey, Cheryl Yeager, Alessandra Ferri, Nina Ananiashvili and Misty’s revered role model, Paloma Herrera, bring to mind: blond, pale, and weak-limbed. In order to complain about and take advantage of a stereotype, you must first make sure one exists - even if you have to make it up yourself. Where are her editors?
Throughout Misty’s career at ABT, there have been significant numbers of minorities in the company, but you wouldn’t know it by reading this book. You wouldn’t know that today Misty competes for roles with fellow soloists who have both stronger and more classical technique and who are also minorities. One is a Japanese dancer, a Prix de Lausanne winner who left home to train in a Chinese ballet school – in China. No prejudice felt in that situation – uh huh, right. You wouldn’t know by reading her book that today one of Misty’s fellow soloists and one of the company's premiere classicists is a dark olive skinned Filipino-American, whose features under certain lighting have a Southeast Asian quality that New York Times critics can't embrace. You wouldn’t know from reading Misty’s book that today there are dark Brazilians, Korean, Chinese, and African American dancers in ABT, including an African American woman with a better ballet body than Misty, more classical port de bras, and longer, thinner legs.
Time is running out for Misty and her push to be a principal at ABT. She has not yet conquered the elite classical technique, style, grace, and musicality that other soloists have and she knows it. In writing this book – in offering specious arguments that she has faced racial prejudice at ABT, in claiming that she is opening doors for others without acknowledging those who have opened doors for her, in ignoring the more qualified, more accomplished soloist colleagues at ABT who are also minorities, Misty may alienate some of her strongest supporters – that is, if they buy her book and read it.
She begins and ends her book by writing over and over again, “This is for the little brown girls.” The truth is that this is for one brown girl at ABT who wants to be a principal dancer and expects her book to help her get that promotion. One thing is for certain, ABT is the company where this sort of public appeal can trump dancing abilities.