MISTY COPELAND’S BALLET MENTOR

MINA KIM: Misty, congratulations on the book. It was such a lovely tribute to Raven Wilkinson, and also to intertwine her story with your incredible story. Let me start by asking you: Who was Raven Wilkinson?

MISTY COPELAND: Thank you so much for having me. It is such an honor.

I think I say this with every book that I write, but this one is my most proud accomplishment of all the books that I’ve written. And that’s because of what Raven means to me.

Excerpted from the November 16, 2022, program

“Misty Copeland: What I’ve Learned from My Mentor Raven Wilkinson.” This program was generously supported by the Applied Materials Foundation; it is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

MISTY COPELAND, Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre; Author, The Wind at My Back: Resilience, Grace, and Other Gifts from My Mentor, Raven Wilkinson

In conversation with MINA KIM, Host, “Forum” on KQED

Raven Wilkinson was the first Black ballerina to join a mainstream, major, elite touring classical company, one of the first ballet companies that came to America, I believe in the ’30s, the ballet Russes de Monte-Carlo. She joined the company in 1955, and she was the first Black woman to dance there. She became a soloist very shortly after joining, which was unheard of for a Black woman in the ballet fields. She endured so much adversity and hardship throughout her career, having her life threatened whenever the company would tour through the South, experiencing the KKK. Incredible stories. Them coming onto the stage in the theater, stopping the tour bus, look- ing for the Black dancer and really threatening her life.

It derails her career for a little while, and eventually she ended up moving to Amsterdam and dancing with the Dutch National Ballet for about 10 years before returning to New York City. But she never did dance again in America in a classical ballet company, because no white company would take her. She went into performing with the New York State Opera, where she sang and acted and danced a little bit. But she is a pioneer in the classical ballet world and became a close mentor and friend of mine over the last about 10 years or so.

KIM: And a close mentor and friend of yours. But you happened to learn about her by watching a documentary. Can you tell us how you found out about her?

COPELAND: Yeah, it was really unbelievable. I’ve spent the majority of my career, at least the first 10 years or so, not really knowing my history as a Black person, as a Black woman in classical ballet. I was searching for this sense of belonging and acceptance. Where is my history within this world?

There’s just not a lot of documentation of Black women’s con- tributions to this art form. So I was always looking for a way to learn more. I happened to be watching a documentary on the ballet Russes de Monte-Carlo, wanting to learn more about the history of this art form. And, I don’t know, an hour and a half or so into this documentary, this elegant Black woman appeared on the screen, and it was the first time that I even became aware that there was a Black woman in that company. I was stunned. I was angry that I didn’t know her, her story. But I also felt like she gave me the second wind in a time when I felt like I was at a standstill in my career, and knowing that there had been someone who had walked the same path as me gave me a different sense of purpose and made me feel as though it was my responsibility to do everything that she didn’t have the opportunity to do.

It’s really incredible that after learning of her and feeling that I needed to share her story and every platform that I had, then eventually finding out that she was still alive and she actually lived a block away from me in New York City.

KIM: I think that’s incredible. And that she knew about you. She had actually been watching you well before you found out about her.

COPELAND: That was one of the more remarkable things. I mean, of course, the fact that we probably had passed each other on the street a number of times and never knew it, but meeting her and I’m expecting for her to just be learning about me and to be meeting me for the first time. And the first thing she says to me is, “I’ve followed your career since you were 15 years old, and I’ve come to most of your performances throughout your professional career”—that was just mindblowing to me.

KIM: I remember you talking about that moment of seeing her in that company and feeling a certain sense of recognition, which I think can mean so many things. But you also say that it was at a certain time in your life where you really needed to discover someone like Raven. What were you going through at that time?

COPELAND: You know, I spent the first decade of my career the only Black woman at American Ballet Theater in a company of between 80 and 90 dancers within that time. It was a sense of just feeling isolated and feeling like maybe this is not the place for me, the place where I can truly thrive.

I had been a soloist, I think, for three years when I learned of Raven. And though I had made it to soloist and I was only the second Black woman to ever reach that position in the company’s 70-year history or something like that—I just felt like maybe that was as far as I could go.

There had never been a Black woman to reach the rank of principal dancer. And I wasn’t being challenged. I wasn’t being given opportunity, and I was often overlooked. There were so many instances where I would ask about certain roles and why I wasn’t cast in them when my other soloists in the company were, and it was literally, “Oh, sorry we overlooked you.” I feel like that’s the story for a lot of minorities, where you feel that even though you stand out, you’re not seen or heard. I felt that I needed someone who understood my journey and my path to help guide me, in a way.

A lot of the mentors I had at that point were incredible Black women who had done so much for me and inspired me and nurtured me, but were not a part of the ballet world. They were successful in their own right and in different fields. But Raven was literally the perfect person that I needed to show me how to look at my career in a different way. She was so hopeful and so present and so balanced and had incredible empathy after all that she has endured throughout her career.

KIM: She passed in 2018. For all the incredible things you learned from her throughout your relationship with her, I was also struck by how it also made you realize how little had changed for Black ballerinas, even from the time that she was dancing to the time that you were dancing.

So let’s go back a little bit to talk about your arc as well and how it reflected to you that there was still a long way to go. When were you first introduced to ballet?

COPELAND: I had, I guess, an unusual path into the veins of the ballet world. I was 13 years old when I really kind of stumbled upon it—I mean, I really stumbled upon dance in general. I was never a part of any structured classes. I never took a dance class in my life. But I loved movement. It was something that I was doing in the privacy of my home, because I was so shy and so introverted.

Music and dance became this escape for me. I had a very chaotic childhood. I was one of six children in a single-parent home. A lot of moving around and changing schools and sometimes not even having a roof over our heads. We were living in a motel actually at the time when I discovered ballet, but the first form of dance that I did was joining the drill team at my middle school in Southern California.

For some reason I had no confidence when it came to anything in my life. And for some reason I felt that I should audition for the position of captain of this drill team when I had no experience. I did [audition], and they made me captain. It was from there that the coach said, “You know, you have a lot of potential, and I think you should take these three ballet classes that are being offered in the Boys and Girls Club in San Pedro, California.” I was already a member. My mom had me and my siblings there to have a safe place for us to go after school. That’s when I was introduced to my first ballet teacher, who was teaching this ballet class on a basketball court in the gym at the Boys and Girls Club, looking for more diverse students to give scholarships to [and] bring [them] into her school.

She said from the first class that she taught me that she knew that I was a prodigy. Eventually, she invited me to live with her and her family so that I could really focus and catch up since I started so late—because most professionals would go off to join companies between the ages of 16 to 19, and I was already 13. So I had a lot of catching up to do. I ended up training for four years before I moved to New York City and joined American Ballet Theater.

KIM: You talked about how music just made sense in your body, that doing ballet just felt so natural and organic. I’m curious what you feel like ballet gave you, especially as you describe the backdrop of your life at that time.

COPELAND: Ballet gave me everything I think I was searching for as a child; it gave me stability and consistency. It made me feel safe, just the environment of being in a stu- dio where you’re literally like naked, you’re vulnerable, you’re literally just wearing tights and a leotard. But you’re in this environment where I just felt so at ease.

I felt like my body could relax, like all of the tension that I always had, from just the environment that I grew up in, I could let go. And I felt beautiful for the first time in my life. I felt like I was good at something. I was being told I was good at something. There was something that was just mine. I didn’t have to share it with my five siblings. It was really difficult for my mother to put in the time and give attention to each one of us when there were six of us and she was working many jobs. It gave me confidence, and it showed me what perseverance and strength and grace [could do]—all of these things. I understand the power of dance and the power of art, which is why I started my own foundation with a similar program to the one I came up in.

KIM: The description of it giving you this sense of power was a very powerful thing to read, because the irony is, once you really committed yourself to it, the gatekeepers of the ballet world kept trying to chip away at something that gave you power. So it had this dual effect.

I remember even when you were describing being the Swan Queen in Swan Lake and just the way that they asked you to dust yourself with white powder and things like that, to be able to sort of blend in and follow the idea that this is really an art form for white dancers, those kinds of things are just the tip of the iceberg of all the kinds of messaging that the ballet world would give you.

Do you want to talk a little bit about getting the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake, what that means? I think it really does in so many ways encapsulate all of the pressures, expectations that you were experiencing while also trying to be and own that space of power that ballet gives you.

COPELAND: Swan Lake is really the most iconic ballet in the repertoire, and for a principal ballerina, that’s the top; that’s what most dancers aim for. Even if you are principal dancer, it doesn’t guarantee that you will ever perform that role. I know principal dancers that have danced at ABT that never even had the opportunity to do that role.

It’s also one of a category of classical works that is called the ballet blanc, which translates into “white ballets.” It’s probably one of the most recognizable from that genre. It’s when the second act of the ballet is typically characters that are spirits or otherworldly, not alive or not human. So they will powder their skin to take away the shine so they don’t look human.

But for generations and generations, Black women have not been cast in the second act of these ballet blanc ballets, period, let alone even be considered to do the lead. The White Swan, the Swan Queen, the dual role of Odette Odile, which is the white and the black swan. There is this long kind of generational trauma that is connected—this Black ballerina, generational trauma—that I think is so connected to Swan Lake in particular.

So that’s not even a role I allowed myself to dream of doing. Joining the company, Swan Lake was the first ballet that I performed as a ballet member with ABT when I was 19 years old. I remember a colleague in the company overhearing a very important person in the company who was a part of the artistic staff saying that I should not be allowed to perform in the second act because I will ruin the aesthetic, I’ll ruin the line, this unison of white dancers dancing in white.

When the company filmed the ballet—it’s actually a video you can purchase today—I was not a part of the second act of any of those parts of the ballet, because of the color of my skin. So there’s a long history connected to that. It must have been 14 or 15 years after I joined the company, which is a very late age to be given some of your first principal roles. If you’re not a principal dancer by that point, it most likely is not going to happen. So when I was told that I would be learning the role of Odette Odile at 32 years old, my mind was blown and I literally had to kind of reassess, change the way I thought about this ballet.

I should have gone to therapy. I shouldn’t go to therapy strictly for Swan Lake. I did it, because there was so much change in my mindset that needed to happen to allow me to really feel confident and that I should be performing that role. So there was a lot of baggage that came with it.

KIM: You write about how you kept questioning whether you were worthy of it, and then at the same time putting the pressure on yourself that if you didn’t do it well, that you would make it harder for other Black ballerinas to be given that role. That is just an incredible amount of pressure to carry.

But I was struck by something that you said in the introduction, which is that what you learned from Raven was that when “I enter the hall, when I enter, the whole race enters with me, that it’s not just a burden or pressure, but it offers the promise of possibility.” I just was wondering, how did Raven teach you that? And how did you come to internalize that so you could see it as an opportunity as opposed to just something tremendous to carry?

COPELAND: It took me having a lot of—I guess you could say Raven was my therapist, especially having a lot of conversations with her. Raven was such an incredible, I guess you can call her teacher, but not your typical teacher, where she’d sit down and have these life lessons that were so clearly being told. But it was through these stories or just the way that she treated people that allowed me to see that even with everything she experienced throughout her career, she still had such a love and respect for the art form and for the people in it as well. That she was a part of something that was so much bigger than her and that she had a responsibility every time she went on stage—and that it wasn’t just a responsibility, but a privilege to be able to do what we do, to be able to do something that you’re passionate about and that there could be one person in the audience that you’re affecting and you’re changing their lives.

It really allowed me to kind of step back and think about these opportunities in different ways. How many people can say that they had the opportunity to perform the Swan Queen? This was my shot to go out there and enjoy myself. That was one of the big things that she would always say, that you’re doing this because you love it. You want the audience to feel that it’s coming from a true and natural and genuine place. But she just changed the way that I looked at things. It’s a serious thing when you’re on stage and you work your whole life to do these roles, but at the same time, it’s just ballet.

KIM: I was struck by how she would talk about how ballet itself, the core of ballet, is not racist, that it’s not designed to be exclusive. It’s the gatekeepers who make it that [way]. Did you question that, too, as you got into it and saw the lack of representation? And initially you were like, that’s okay. Like, [your] love of this is so powerful that it overcame whatever concerns you had about the lack of representation of Black dancers in it.

But the way that she talks about how it’s not racist, the core of it is not racist. What did she mean by that?

COPELAND: If you think back to the fact that this art form was created hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and the technique has not changed, we’re literally still doing the exact same technique that our ancestors were doing. It’s such a pure technique and art at its core that it’s not had to change in that way. Of course, the stories that we’re telling and the body types that have evolved because of cross-training and the physicality of things and the way that we’re eating and taking care of our body has changed and shifted. But the technique does not discriminate against different body types. All body types can do this art form, and it creates the most incredible outcome.

Black, being African-American, to be told that you should be doing African dance when that’s not at all something that [the dancer] was trained in. But a lot of Black dancers are steered toward more modern dance, because the stereotype is that Black people have flat feet, and it’s more suitable when you’re not in a pointe shoe you don’t have to articulate your feet. [To be told] that ballet is something that takes more skill than a Black person has, intelligence that a Black person doesn’t have. And so we’re often told that we will find more success if we try jazz, hip hop or African dance, modern dance. Not classical.

KIM: We have questions coming in from the audience. One of them: Is there a role or performance that is still on your bucket list?

COPELAND: It’s a subjective art form, but it’s the artistic director’s preference, and there’s so much of it that you can’t control. I feel like a lot of times, they don’t want to ever make clear promises, because you never know how a dancer might change, or [suffer an] injury, and the expectations that are set, so there’s just so much fuzziness when it comes to that aspect of the ballet world now.

KIM: This audience member wants to know what is the best piece of advice either professional or personal that you’ve received and who has it from?

It’s even more beautiful what it’s done on different body types and people from different backgrounds. But it’s so clearly the structure, the institutions that have kept people of color out of it. It’s not the technique that’s saying these certain body types can’t do it. It’s the people involved, and it’s these institutions that have been built with a certain aesthetic in mind. It’s really convinced people that ballet dancers look a certain way, which just perpetuates the same discrimination and exclusion and racism.

KIM: To the point that there were times when people suggested that you dance in a different type of dance.

COPELAND: Yeah, it happened for both Raven and I. It’s pretty awful just being

COPELAND: Oh, my goodness. I’ve done so much in my 20-plus year career at ABT. I think that there’re certain roles that I haven’t done enough that I want more time, more of an opportunity to do. You know, these more really powerful story ballets, where it’s just a lot of meaty acting and it’s so difficult. It’s like this in life; you have a young body and you physically can do so much, but you don’t have the life experiences, you don’t have those reps. So doing something and feeling comfortable in it, it’s like a double-edged sword. I feel that tackling these meaty acting roles, like I’m ready and I have all the life experience, but my body is not what it used to be.

KIM: I think you talked about how determining who gets a solo in a performance is a secretive [process] that’s really opaque.

COPELAND: I received so much incredible advice. It’s hard to say just one person. Susan Jaffe, who was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater and is taking over as artistic director next year, which is so exciting; but she was someone that was always saying, whenever I’d be distracted by the reviews or critics or blogs or whatever it is, people writing about me on the Internet, to not let other people’s words define you and that you really have the power to take what you want from people.

Prince was another one—the musician. I worked with him for some time. He definitely changed the way that I looked at myself as being “the only” and feeling isolated in a company and having this negative outlook on that. He was like, “You know how incredible it is to be different and to be unique and to be the only? There’s so much power in that. People are looking at you. You know how many people want that focus?” And I was like, huh? I never looked at it in that way. That definitely helps me to understand and change my perception of myself and the power I did hold by being the only and being the first.