Left: 8:25 AM Misty Copeland wakes up at home on the Upper West Side, recent after a “terrible” tech rehearsal the day before. “It’s a big shift when you’re not used to being onstage. You’re breathing different air,” she says. Right: 8:50 AM Copeland has made a point of not developing preshow habits. She wants the hours before a performance to feel as casual as possible: “I’ve always felt like if I get myself locked into a ritual, then I can’t do it; it’s going to mess me up mentally.” Photo: Henry Leutwyler for New York Magazine
Dance has been Misty Copeland’s life for 30 years, including the past 25 she spent with the American Ballet Theater. She was the kind of teenage ballerina whom adults described as a “prodigy.” When, in 2015, she became the first Black woman to be promoted to principal dancer at ABT, the media applied a new label: “trailblazer.” She knew her success was never going to be about just her. She rose to the occasion, speaking about the need for more diversity in ballet. To an outside observer, her leaps and fouettés seemed untroubled by the responsibility foisted upon her. By the end of 2019, though, she had doubts: Was performing really the best way for her to change anything? In the time the pandemic afforded her, she decided to step away from ABT. “I always thought, I don’t want to be that dancer in my 50s who’s holding on while all these young dancers are waiting for this opportunity,” she says. “I want to bow out when I’m still in my prime and keep it moving.”
While Copeland showed signs of doing just that — founding a dance-education nonprofit, having a child, developing film and TV projects — ABT begged her for one last performance. “A couple times a year, I would get a call that was like, ‘Misty, people want to see you!’” she says. Ultimately, she agreed. On October 22, she did her final show with ABT in a special program for the company’s fall gala, dancing in three distinct pieces that she and ABT’s artistic director, Susan Jaffe, selected to represent her career. It had been nearly six years since she’d performed, and it took months of training for the 43-year-old to feel ready for this one night — a testament to the awesome strength ballet requires. She was also dealing with a hip injury that caused her so much pain and one of her dance partners had to alter their choreography so she could get through it. Afterwards, she confesses, she felt “like I got hit by a truck.” But to the audience that clapped and wept through the extended, flower-filled curtain call, Copeland made it look easy. Some things never change.
9:04 AM Copeland heads to New Jersey for a bodywork session with her usual guy to “loosen my body” before returning to Manhattan.
11:37 AM She puts on her pointe shoes at a private warm-up class. When Copeland was dancing full time, she went through ten pairs of pointe shoes a week.
12:28 PM She returns to Lincoln Center in time for dress rehearsal. Managing her injuries has been a major part of her preparation: “My team of doctors actually said, ‘You shouldn’t do this.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m doing it, so let’s find the best way forward without me hurting myself worse.’”
1:21 PM Before rehearsal, Copeland gets dressed for her favorite role: Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. “The costumes are so lovely to dance in — easy and flowy and light — and that is not always the case with ballet costumes,” she says.
1:39 PM During dress rehearsal, Copeland moves through a pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet with fellow principal Calvin Royal III. If not for the pandemic, they would have performed the full ballet together in 2020 — the first ABT production of it to feature Black dancers in both lead roles.
4:35 PM Before she dances, she needs to work the red carpet. She sits for her first hair-and-makeup session of the day.
4:45 PM In full glam with a dress from Carolina Herrera, Copeland rushes down a hallway to meet the crowd of photographers.
4:56 PM Copeland’s stylist, Karla Welch, suggested the dress with its corset top and flowing tulle skirt: “She was like, ‘I don’t want to be too on the nose, but I think you need to be the ballerina of the evening.’”
5:19 PM Post-red carpet, she rushes straight back into hair and makeup for the show: “I didn’t really stop, but I kind of prefer things that way. I continue moving my body — I’m not ever getting cold, and I’m not sitting around thinking.”
6:11 PM Copeland carries the heating pad that she uses to soothe the pain in her hip. She didn’t realize how many injuries she had until she started training again for this performance. “I seem to thrive on the drama,” she says. “Whenever I have these big moments in my career, there’s always an injury that comes with it.”
6:31 PM “Typically, I would prepare my shoes within the week leading up to a performance and know exactly which shoes I was going to wear for which pieces,” she says. “I didn’t do that this time, which added to the anxiety of the day before. The dress rehearsal gave me a second chance to get it together.”
7:17 PM The performance has begun, requiring three separate costumes for Copeland.
7:20 PM Royal and Copeland dance in a new work, Wreck Stow, that choreographer Kyle Abraham created for Copeland’s last ABT performance. “I said, ‘I want it to be fun, I want it to have a groove, and I want you to make me look good — but I don’t want to do too much because I’m tired,’” she says. “He was like, ‘Queen, whatever you want. I’m here to serve you.’”
8:19 PM During the curtain call, Copeland’s 3-and-a-half-year-old, Jackson, walks onstage with his father and Copeland’s husband, Olu Evans. Jackson is fascinated by the confetti raining from the rafters. “I had no idea what to expect about how he was going to respond to the audience,” says Copeland. “I knelt down and hugged him, and he pulled this little Dalmatian out of his pocket and handed it to me: ‘Here, Mom!’ I was trying to get rid of it the rest of the night.”
8:59 PM After taking her final bow and accepting piles of bouquets, Copeland retreats to her dressing room to take off her last costume and prepare for the night’s gala. She says even if this is the end of her time as a dancer at ABT — where she’ll stay on as a member of the board of trustees — it is not the end of her career. “I want to be in control of the stories I’m telling through my body. I want to produce shows,” she says. “I would love to dip my toe in Broadway.”
9:11 PM Copeland’s gala look is also from Carolina Herrera: a sparkly jacket that was originally part of a pantsuit. (She wears it as a minidress instead.)
9:14 PM Copeland kisses good-bye to her ABT theater case, in which she has stored supplies for many years at the company.
Source link
اترك تعليقاً