Misty Copeland Changed Ballet. Now She's Ready to Move On.
After 25 years with the company, Misty Copeland is retiring from American Ballet Theater. While the departure of ballet's biggest crossover star is certainly a momentous occasion, it's also not exactly a surprise. The 42-year-old has been away from the Lincoln Center stage for five years, spending that time raising a son with her attorney husband, Olu Evans, and working with her namesake foundation, which aims to bring greater diversity, equity and inclusion to the dance world — at a time when that mission is newly fraught.
Copeland will give a farewell performance with A.B.T. this fall, putting a cap on a career that was both groundbreaking and improbable. She grew up in near poverty in Southern California and was frequently homeless, her mother struggling to make ends meet for Misty and her five siblings. Eventually, she found solace and stability in dance, though she didn't seriously pursue the art form till she was 13 — late for a budding ballerina. Despite that, and the historical struggles for people of color to break into the often hidebound world of classical dance, she eventually joined A.B.T. in 2001, and after a 15-year climb, she became the first Black woman ever to be named a principal dancer with the company.
Speaking with me last month, Copeland explained that although she was personally at peace with the decision, she also knows that she is stepping away at a difficult cultural moment. The whole idea of D.E.I., the value of which she came to both embody and now works to promote, is under political attack, and arts institutions are being forced to reckon with partisan antagonism. So there was a lot for her to wrestle with as she looked back on the legacy she will leave behind and ahead to the rest of her life.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio App
You've been ramping down dancing for a while. Why does now feel like the time to make an official retirement announcement? In all honesty, I've wanted to fade away into the background, which is not really possible. The legacy of what I've created, the way that I'm carrying so many stories of Black dancers who have come before me — I can't just disappear. There has to be an official closing to my time at American Ballet Theater, this company that has meant everything to me. It was in 2019 that I was processing that I think this is the end of this chapter, and though I wasn't saying it out loud to the world, I've already moved on to that next place of what I want to be doing.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Geek Tyrant
19 minutes ago
- Geek Tyrant
Rad Poster Art For G.I. JOE: THE MOVIE Created By Artist Alex Arizmendi — GeekTyrant
Check out this fun poster art for the classic 1987 animated film G.I. Joe: The Movie , which comes from artist Alex Arizmendi. This is a private comission, so unfortunatly you can't buy it, but I had to share it because I love this freakin' movie! G.I. Joe: The Movie expands on the lore of the G.I. Joe universe, diving headfirst into science fiction and ancient evil. The story follows the elite military team G.I. Joe as they face a new threat: Cobra-La, a hidden ancient civilization that predates humanity and secretly controls Cobra Command. When Cobra-La's leader Golobulus plans to wipe out humanity using mutative spores, the Joes must race against time to stop the global catastrophe. The film was originally intended for a theatrical release but ended up going direct-to-video and airing on television due to production delays and the box office failure of other animated films like Transformers: The Movie . Still, G.I. Joe: The Movie is remembered for its ambitious expansion of the franchise's mythology, the darker tone compared to the series, and its infamous scene where Duke is mortally wounded, only for a last-minute voiceover to declare he miraculously fell into a coma instead of dying. softening the blow for young fans. Despite its tonal swings and mixed reception, it remains a cult favorite for fans of the franchise.
Gizmodo
35 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Summer Game Fest Doesn't Just Try Its Best, It Tries Too Hard
Half a decade into its life, Summer Game Fest still just can't get out of its own way. After a PlayStation showcase earlier in the week, the annual video game promo circuit for the summer began in earnest with that two-hour showcase by the name of Summer Game Fest, which had teases, sequels, and wholly new games galore. Par for the course for SGF and host Geoff Keighley, both of which have endeavored to step up during this decade as the once and glorious trade show king E3 has gradually died off. But this year's carried an odd air about it, even before a Splitgate 2 developer walked onstage with a 'Make FPS Great Again Hat' (really) before smacktalking 'the same Call of Duty' and revealing his shooter's battle royale mode. A lot of that weirdness is because the games industry is going through it right now. It's been over a week since EA killed its Black Panther game and developer Cliffhanger, and industry layoffs have only continued since. Time stops for no one, and since 2023, there've been reductions by the dozens or hundreds, sometimes on a daily, even hourly basis. What we thought was just 'survive til '25' in 2023 or 2024 is now just 'survive' as games and their studios die in the blink of an eye. Combined with what feels like a weirdly muted Nintendo Switch 2 launch and the United States government going through another round of bullshit, of course this trade show feels funky. Other factors to this strange feeling are owed entirely to Summer Game Fest. Never is it more clear when the industry is chasing trends than an event like this, which had plenty of souls and roguelikes and shooters of the space, competitive, and extraction variety. The two genres' popularity seemed to wear on viewers and remind us how we easily tire of things we once liked. Compared to PlayStation's showcase earlier in the week, SGF also felt less consistent in what it had to offer: Resident Evil Requiem and Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver were agreeable highs, other trailers seemed to show up to be polite or didn't really land. More problematically, five years in, Summer Game Fest still feels like it has no real identity of its own beyond an extension of the annual year's end Game Awards. Those ceremonies and accompanying game reveals have a substantially different energy thanks to musical performances, celebrity appearances and usually delightful Muppet gags. Without those, SGF feels less 'fun,' for lack of a better word. It wants to be E3, but the big pressers we tuned in for could sometimes be bad as figureheads for game publishers were high off their own supply or overindulged in nonsense they seemed to think was funny. This can't be that, both because publishers have their indvidual, more regular showcases, and it doesn't want to be perceived as disrespectful to the medium and its audience happy to receive recognition but not the criticism that comes with it. Previously, Keighley has caught flack for failing to properly acknowledge the industry's struggles, or doing so in a clumsy manner. This year's Summer Game Fest opened with him highlighting 2025's current crop of best-selling games, some of which came from teams much smaller than your average triple-A studio. Expedition 33's been the biggest and worst offender of this 'honor'; since the RPG's reveal and launch, it's been lauded as a triumph for a developer with a headcount in the small dozens. But its seven-minute credits show that's not the true story: yes, Sandfall has 33 or 34 employees, but it also had third-party animators, QA contractors, and localizers (and more!) that helped make for a fantastic debut title. Keighley's stressing of those small teams—one guy made a brawler with just the help of nine of his friends!—turns what was likely a well-intentioned acknowledgment of into additional fuel for the fiery divide between indie and triple-A developers at a bad time for both. The narrative around game development (and who makes them) is bad enough thanks to ongoing layoffs and increased player harassment, and this will likely exacerbate things. It's a moment that best represents the double-edged sword of Summer Game Fest's prominence and this particular industry figurehead: sooner or later, amid all the flash and celebration this window into the industry provides, someone sours things by putting their foot in their mouth.
Washington Post
39 minutes ago
- Washington Post
I love cooking for my dad. This Black Forest cake is all about him.
When you've been in the food-writing world long enough, it's easy to fall into the same traps and tropes, especially for those special occasions that come around every year. One of the most common for Mother's Day or Father's Day is the homage to a special dish one of your parents would always make for you.
