The Mojo of Misty Copeland

Misty Copeland took her final bow with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) on October 22, 2025. She was forty-three. Her career was capped not by a quiet fade-out, but by a theater full of people acknowledging what her body of work has meant for the stage and far beyond it. 

It was a ceremonial goodbye to ABT, not to dance itself, a distinction that matters because it sends a strong message for any woman and “for the little brown girls”: you don’t wait for permission to define your story. You choose it. 

BECOMING AN ICON

You might know Misty Copeland as the first African-American principal in ABT’s history. Or you might know her as the fresh face of Firebird who captured attention as the first Black woman to publicly perform this principal role. She shattered perceptions and smashed misconceptions about what a ballerina’s body looks like and what a curvy, black body can do.

But you might not know that Misty overcame a chaotic childhood, an eating disorder, being the only black ballerina at her dance company, and a lumbar fracture that threatened to ruin her career before she ever became a household name. 

She started ballet training “late”, but her relentless work ethic, natural love of ballet, and tireless tenacity to excel propelled her. It helped that she had a special kind of movement intuition. 

Early in her career, one of her mentors asked her, ‘How do you know when to lift your chin? I never told you.’ Misty just knew.

Eight weeks after she began training, Misty stood en pointe for the first time. Most beginners take months, even years. It was clear that her natural ability and drive were quickly outperforming expectations. She was a rising star, on her own time. 

Even so, her rise would not be without setbacks, battling injuries, insecurity, loneliness, and making peace with her body. With each challenge, Misty Copeland demonstrated that she knows how to make a comeback.

HER FIRST COMEBACK

Early in her ABT years, Copeland was summoned to a meeting no young dancer wants. The message was delivered in ballet’s tidy code: 

“You need to lengthen, Misty. So you don’t lose your classical line.”

She knew exactly what that meant. Lose weight. At 5’2″ and 108 pounds, she left the room in tears, ashamed and furious, and confronted a new enemy: her own body. 

Up to that point, she had fit the ballerina prototype body on the outside, even as her life offstage had been anything but ideal as a child. She grew up in San Pedro, California, sometimes sleeping on motel floors with her family. Ballet gave her a place where excellence could be built from discipline and desire. 

Anyone who saw her dance knew immediately what she was: a prodigy.

The ink was barely dry on her first contract. One day during rehearsal, pain exploded in her back. She was just starting her climb towards becoming a soloist. But an MRI would reveal a fracture in her lower lumbar spine. She was training rigorously, practicing pliés, arabesques, and ballon up to 9 hours a day. 

At 19, she still hadn’t menstruated. A doctor prescribed birth control to protect her bones. Within weeks, her body changed: 10 pounds heavier, breasts fuller, a new silhouette in the mirror. The leotards that used to be shared had to be altered. She suddenly felt a new burden of standing out. And along with it, shame and anger. So, she started hiding her body.

MYTH OF THE PERFECT BALLERINA

There is a part of rising that no one glamorizes. Misty writes about coming home after shows, calling Krispy Kreme, and eating two dozen glazed doughnuts on her couch. She ate out of rebellion, with sugar a coping defense against shame, judgment, and an acute sense of feeling alone. 

She would train hard during the day and return home to overdose on the sugary habit, only to wake up feeling ashamed, her face puffy. The ritual became a see-saw of rebellion and relief. What is remarkable is not that it happened but that she opened up about it in her book, Life in Motion, sharing her story. “This is for the little brown girls.”

It would be 5 years before she would overcome her binge-eating habit and learn to properly care for her body to support her lifestyle. She learned to make different choices around food, health, and identity that moved her from self-punishment to fuel. That clarity is part of her comeback story. 

THE CHOICES THAT CHANGED THE ARC

When you zoom out on this story, it’s a chain of decisions that look small on paper and seismic in a life:

SHE ASKED FOR HELP AND LET IN SUPPORT. A mentor reframed nourishment as care, not penance. Her boyfriend was a consistent champion of her talent, beauty, and value. He was a voice who helped her own hers. She began eating to feel strong, not smaller, and found a birth-control regimen that worked for her body. 

SHE STOPPED HIDING. T-shirts over leotards gave way to a body claimed in public. One day, she looked up at the Metropolitan Opera House and saw her own billboard, curves and power on full display, and cried. That wasn’t vanity. It was reclamation.

SHE KEPT SHOWING UP TO WORK. She focused her feelings on improving her technique, stamina, artistry. The unglamorous repetition that builds greatness did its quiet job. The casting notes shifted. The feedback turned. And in 2015, ABT promoted her to principal dancer, the first Black woman in the company’s 75-year history to hold that rank.

Those milestones don’t erase the cost. They do something better: they demonstrate a different economy. You invest in the body you actually have, in the timing you’re actually living, and watch dividends accrue where the old narratives said they never would.

HER RETIREMENT IS NOT AN EXIT

Misty Copeland’s farewell was not an exit from purpose. It was the end of one era, so she could begin again. After a hiatus to raise her son and focus on her foundation, she returned for a single night, a curated celebration of the work that made her an icon and the communities that lifted with her. 

She isn’t leaving dance as an art form, only a role that no longer suits her next steps. That distinction models something essential for women at a crossroads: you’re allowed to finish well and still stay in the game. 

WHAT HER STORY MEANS FOR YOU IF YOU’VE BEEN UPROOTED

Uprooting is what happens when your life’s soil gets disturbed by force or by growth. Bodies change. Careers pivot. Relationships end. A culture tells you, in code or in plain words, to take up less space. Or conform. 

If you’ve been there, Misty Copeland’s path offers guidance that isn’t about perfection but stubborn reclamation of identity. It’s about learning to embrace the uniqueness of one’s own body, purpose, and path.

Here are a few lessons you can learn:

1. NAME THE SHAME. “Lengthen” sounds like a neutral term until you run it through a truth filter: become smaller. When you hear code in your world, call it what it is. Then you can decide what to do with it. 

2. CHOOSE CARE OVER CONTROL. Control feels safer in the short term. Care builds strength. If you’re using food, overwork, or numbness to manage loneliness, you’re not broken; you’re human. Add one act of care that preserves your energy for the long term. Walks. Protein. Sleep. Actual friends. Mentors who tell you the whole truth. 

3. VISIBILITY IS MEDICINE. Hiding is a reasonable response to scrutiny, but it starves you of the feedback that confirms your growth. Misty Copeland’s shift from cover-up to billboard wasn’t overnight. It was the accumulation of choices that said, I’m still here.

4. ANCHOR INTO DISCIPLINE. Emotion is molten during a comeback. Skill is the container. Keep showing up. Let your work become the proof your nervous system can trust. The promotion or milestone may not arrive on your expected timeline. But it can still come, and when it does, you’ll be ready to hold it. 

You are not alone.

Misty Copeland’s Legacy

It would be easy to end the story at “first Black female principal at ABT,” but her legacy isn’t a single title. It’s a redefinition of what a ballerina’s body can look like, what leadership in the arts can do, and how a woman can author her life in public without apologizing for its evolutions. Retirement at 43 is not a soft landing; it’s a statement: I decide how this chapter ends, and I’ll decide how the next one starts. 

If you’ve been told that you are “too much,” that you need to “soften,” “tone it down,” or any of the thousand ways the world asks women to disappear, take this with you: you are allowed to change shape and still be a force. You are allowed to stay, leave, heal, return, and build. You are allowed to outgrow a mold and then refuse a new one. Your body is not a problem to solve. It’s the instrument you get to play.

If you’re rebuilding after your own rupture and you want structure and support for the next act, join the waitlist for Uprooted to Uprising. These conversations can help you turn pressure into power. Join the waitlist.