Source: (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage) / Getty
Misty Copeland shared a tearful video on Instagram moments after being named principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater.
This makes her the first African-American woman to hold this position in the company’s 75 year history.
The 32 yr old Copeland has been with ABT for 14 years, and has had quite a tumultuous journey, including enduring poverty with her family as a young girl, to leaving her family to live with her dance intructor. She even had a landmark court battle against her mother as a teenager, fighting to be emancipated so that she could continue to dance. She tells her story in her memoir Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina.
