After a storied, decades-long career, ballerina Misty Copeland — known just as much for her advocacy offstage as her accomplishments on — is retiring from American Ballet Theatre.
Copeland, who last performed for the company five years ago, will be honored in a final star-studded Fall Gala on Wednesday, featuring tributes from Oprah Winfrey and Debbie Allen. In her final appearance, Copeland will perform excerpts from “Romeo and Juliet” and “Sinatra Suite,” as well as the world premiere of a pièce d’occasion choreographed by Kyle Abraham.
“Although I’ll be saying farewell to the stage, I’ll always be committed to opening doors, creating space, and making ballet a place where everyone belongs,” she wrote in a public Instagram post ahead of her performance.
For those unable to afford the $5,000 gala tickets, the ABT is offering hundreds of free tickets to a live simulcast at Alice Tully Hall, just a block away from the event.
It’s a fitting sendoff for a ballerina who brought renewed attention and change to the art form. Copeland began her dance career in California as a 13-year-old (considered late, by ballet standards), eventually becoming a member in the ABT’s corps de ballet in 2001 at the age of 18. Throughout her career, Copeland continued to make history: becoming the company’s second African American female soloist in 2007, and in 2015, becoming its first Black woman principal dancer, the highest company ranking. The New York-based ABT, founded in 1939, is considered one of the premier classical ballet companies in the US.
“Misty Copeland’s influence reaches far beyond her extraordinary performances,” said Susan Jaffe, artistic director for the American Ballet Theatre, in a statement. “On stage, she broke barriers and redefined what it means to be a ballerina, inspiring generations with her artistry, strength, and grace. Off stage, she has used her voice to open doors and expand access to ballet and the arts. Her impact is still being defined, but there is no question it will be felt for decades to come.”
On stage, she was “magnetic,” said Sarah L. Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic and author of “Verb Your Enthusiasm.” Not only did Copeland have the classic ballerina dimensions — the hyper-extended legs, the flexibly arched feet, the long neck — she also had a “liveliness” to her movements. Audiences could see the passion and the warmth on her face, Kaufman said.
That expressiveness became a distinct characteristic of Copeland’s, but as the ballet world has shifted to prize the more extreme technical qualities of the dance form, such human personal expression has become a lost art.
“She’s very small, she’s petite, but onstage she just unfolds into this large scale presence,” Kaufman said. “She was the kind of dancer you could not take your eyes off of, long before she became a principal.”
In an genre where uniformity is prized, Copeland — once called the “Jackie Robinson of ballet” — has spoken about the difficulties she faced as a Black woman in ballet. There were times she wasn’t cast in roles out of concerns she would ruin the piece’s aesthetic, or was told she should lighten her skin. For the first decade of her career, Copeland told CNN last year, she was the only Black dancer out of about 100 in the company.