A Ballerina's Tale Page #2

---

to lose weight by ABT,

and I had no idea

how to handle that.

I mean, I never had

to watch what I ate.

Like, I had no idea

how to take care of my body.

It was just naturally

the way it was,

and it worked for ballet

until I hit puberty,

and then it all changed.

The skinny ideal that

a lot of contemporary audiences

associate with ballet today

is strictly a modern phenomenon,

and it can actually

be dated to 1963,

when George Balanchine

was able to start creating

the ballet and the ballerina

according to a vision he had,

an ideal vision he had,

of a dancer.

Post Balanchine, you get

these very emaciated body types,

and you get no longer

a woman on the stage.

You get these

prepubescent girls...

flat-chested,

you know, encouraged not to eat

to the point of not being able

to menstruate...

and, you know,

that has created a huge,

I think, problem in ballet.

It literally

has killed ballerinas

and actually doesn't need

to exist at all.

It all kind of hit me at once:

moving to New York,

realizing I was the only

African-American woman

in a company of 80 dancers.

I felt like I was

sinking for a while.

I felt alone in a world

that had become my home,

and it gave me mixed feelings.

I was coming home at night

and just feeling

so bad about myself,

and I would call Krispy Kreme,

and they told me

they only delivered to...

to, like, big corporations,

so I was like,

"Okay, yeah, I'm a corporation.

Can I have

two dozen doughnuts?"

And they'd drop them off,

and I would eat

a dozen doughnuts

in one sitting.

I was overeating because I felt

so bad about myself.

I just started this pattern of,

like, feeling so ashamed

that I didn't even want to come

to class in the morning.

I didn't want to stare

at myself in the mirror.

I first became aware

of Misty Copeland

when she joined the company,

the corps,

and I would see her

in performances,

and she always stood out.

She had what you can't teach

and you can't learn.

She had stage presence,

and she had a fire

that the other corps-ians

did not.

Kevin McKenzie,

the artistic director of ABT,

had said to me

from the very beginning

when I first mentioned

how much I admired Misty

that he felt she had

the talent to go the distance

and to go all the way.

The executive director

said to me,

"But there's an issue.

"We feel that she has

all this promise,

"but she lacks a bit of focus.

"And everybody adores her,

but she is doing some things

that stand in her own way."

They did something

unprecedented,

which is, they said to me,

"Would you please

take her under your wing?

"We would like you

to spend time with her.

"We would like you

to become her confidante...

Rate this script:1.3 / 3 votes