Though 2015 was already the year of Misty Copeland, it’s about to get even Misty-er. Director Nelson George has made the dancer the subject of his upcoming documentary A Ballerina’s Tale.
Having come to ballet relatively late at age 13, Copeland became a member of American Ballet Theatre’s corps in 2001. This spring, she was on the cover of Time as one of the magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. She also made two buzzy debuts this past season at ABT, as Juliet and as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, before being promoted to a principal amidst a flurry of headlines for being the company’s first black woman to receive that placement. (Metrosource called her “muscular precision” in The Sleeping Beauty, “so strong and so precise that we could name her left leg Smith and her right Wesson.”)
When she stepped into Broadway’s On the Town for a two-week stint this summer, sales tripled.
Obscured Pictures will release Nelson George’s documentary on Copeland, telling the story of her tumultuous upbringing and near career-ending injuries to how she became a not just a star dancer, but a national celebrity. A Ballerina’s Tale will be in theaters and on VOD October 14.
Last modified: July 27, 2017
