Misty Copeland

Misty Copeland is a Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, the first black woman to be promoted to the position in the company's 75-year history in 2015. She has performed some of the most iconic classical ballet roles, including Odette/Odile in Swan Lake; Juliet in Romeo & Juliet; Giselle; Manon; Coppelia; Kitri in Don Quixote; and Firebird, to name a few. Misty has been featured in several publications, including the cover of Time Magazine for the Time 100 and has appeared on CBS' 60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, ABC's Good Morning America, and NBC's The Today Show. She performed in 2019 with Taylor Swift at the American Music Awards and at the 2020 Grammy Awards alongside Camila Cabello, Common, Ben Platt, and dancers from the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, as well as the televised Prince Grammy Tribute performing with award-winning recording artist H.E.R. Misty made her Broadway debut in On The Town in 2015 and her major motion picture debut in Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms in 2018. Misty started her production company, Life In Motion Productions, and is working on her first project, Flower, a silent arts activism film using dance to help raise awareness about homelessness.

Misty is an avid philanthropist and is an ambassador of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, of which she is also an alum, and MindLeaps, an arts education program based in Rwanda that helps young people get off the streets and into an academic setting to help enhance their lives. She is the bestselling author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Life In Motion; an award-winning children's picture book titled Firebird; a New York Times bestselling lifestyle book titled Ballerina Body; and the New York Times bestselling children's picture book, Bunheads. This year, her newest book, Black Ballerinas: My Journey To Our Legacy, will publish in November.