51 pages • 1 hour read
Misty CopelandLife in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Misty Copeland opens her memoir on the morning of her premier performance as the Firebird in Stravinsky’s ballet Firebird. The Prologue describes Misty’s morning routine of ballet practice in New York City and her concerns for the night’s performance as she suffers from pain and injury in her left leg. She reflects on the significance of being the first African American woman to perform the title role of the Firebird for the American Ballet Theatre. She repeats to herself, “[T]his is for the little brown girls” (5). As she steps out onto the stage for her performance, she focuses on the mentors and advocates who have helped her along the way and tries to ignore the pain in her shin. Then the music begins.
Chapter 1 Summary
Misty is born in Kansas City, the youngest of four children of her mother, Sylvia DelaCerna, and her father, Doug Copeland. When Misty is two years old, Sylvia leaves her husband and moves with her children to California. Misty has no memories of her father as a child and does not see him again until she is an adult. In California, they meet Harold, the man Sylvia has left her husband for and whom Misty thinks of as her father throughout her childhood.
With Harold, Sylvia has a fifth child, Misty’s sister Lindsey. Misty recalls Harold as “cheerful, comforting, kind.” Harold also has alcohol use disorder, though Misty is not aware of this at the time. Five years after moving to California, Misty’s mother decides to leave Harold.
Misty does not understand her mother’s life or choices. Sylvia was the daughter of an Italian woman and an African American man who put her up for adoption due to the struggles of being a mixed-race couple. Sylvia was placed with an African American couple who died when she was still young. After that, she was handed from relative to relative. Misty wonders if this contributes to her mother’s behavior. All she knows for certain is that leaving Harold “was the beginning of a time when [she] could measure [her] days through [her] mother’s boyfriends, her dependence on an ever-changing string of men” (14).
Sylvia moves the family to San Pedro, a suburban area outside Los Angeles, and marries her fourth husband, Robert. Robert has a mixed Asian heritage and is the opposite of Harold, as he is serious and successful. Misty describes her siblings: Erica, the eldest; Doug, Jr., the second eldest and “spitting image of [their] father” (17); Chris, who will become a lawyer; and the youngest, Lindsey, who eventually earns a track scholarship for university. Misty, meanwhile, is an introverted, anxious child, often overshadowed by her more rambunctious siblings.
Misty becomes briefly interested in gymnastics after watching TV specials about Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Olympics. However, her interest moves on to dance and drill team soon after, partly because her eldest sister, Erica, joins the drill team in middle school and partly because her mother was once a Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader. When Misty enters middle school, she tries out for the drill team and becomes captain. Later, the drill team coach Elizabeth Cantine, who once trained in classical ballet, sees Misty’s potential and suggests that she meet with the ballet teacher at the local Boys and Girls Club.
The San Pedro Boys and Girls Club is Misty’s home away from home, where she spends every afternoon between the time school ends and her mother comes home from work. Though Misty has never even seen a ballet performance, she does as her coach tells her and visits the ballet class at the Boys and Girls Club. The teacher, Cynthia “Cindy” Bradley, invites her to try it, which Misty does. However, Misty is so confused and out of her comfort zone that she only attends one class before leaving in embarrassment.
Chapter 2 Summary
After leaving her single ballet lesson, Misty returns to the drill team. However, Cindy is persistent. She asks Misty to visit the class again, and this time, she gently moves her through each ballet position, using her as an example for the other children. Misty recalls, “Whatever pose she conjured, I was able to hold. Cindy said that in all her years of dancing, in all her years of teaching, she had never seen anyone quite like me” (35). Though Misty is unconvinced, she is also curious and agrees to continue with the lessons.
Cindy is a free spirit with bright red hair and flashy earrings. She studied ballet and danced with several companies before retiring due to injury. She eventually started her own ballet school and married one of her dance students, Patrick, who now helps her with teaching. At the ballet class, Cindy teaches the basics of ballet, and Misty learns quickly. She says that “it was as if [she’d] been doing ballet all [her] life; and [her] limbs instinctively remembered what [her] conscious mind had somehow forgotten” (38). Misty fears that she is too old to succeed at ballet. Most successful ballet dancers begin in preschool, and she is already 13 years old. However, Cindy disagrees. She insists that Misty move from the basic class at the Boys and Girls Club to the more advanced classes at Cindy’s school, the San Pedro Dance Center.
Misty resists at first; she does not want to travel across town to study ballet. She wants to focus on the drill team like Erica. Cindy is still persistent, even offering Misty a full scholarship for the class and funding for proper attire. Finally, Misty tells her mother about the offer, and Sylvia agrees that it is worth trying out. Misty then attends classes at San Pedro Dance Center five days a week with classmates who are mostly white.
At first, Misty just goes through the motions, but eventually, she falls in love with ballet. Within weeks, Cindy moves Misty from the beginner classes to the more advanced classes. Though most ballet students wait years before being allowed to dance en pointe (dancing on tiptoe while wearing pointe shoes), Cindy believes that Misty is ready after only eight weeks. Cindy tells Misty that she matches ballet choreographer George Balanchine’s description of the perfect ballerina. Cindy believes that Misty is destined for greatness, and Misty begins to believe her.
Prologue-Chapter 2 Analysis
The Prologue and the last two chapters bookend the memoir, opening and closing the narrative with Misty’s premiere performance as the Firebird at the Metropolitan Opera. The Prologue introduces the theme of the Intersections of Race, Identity, and Art as Misty reflects on dancing “for the little brown girls” (5). Her thoughts reflect her hope that her success will open doors for the dancers of color in the predominantly white world of ballet. Following the Prologue, Misty then shifts to the past. Like most autobiographical narratives, Misty maintains a roughly chronological order. However, she does occasionally break the chronology to speak from the present to reflect on changes or add future context to a past event. This often includes brief mentions of things that will occur later in the book, as in Chapter 1 when she describes her siblings as children and alludes to their future occupations.
Despite the rough chronological order of her narrative, each chapter is organized by topic, centering around a particular event or issue. Chapter 1 focuses on Misty’s family and the “pattern that would define” their childhood: “packing, scrambling, leaving—often barely surviving” (9). Of primary importance here is her mother’s history of “dependence on an ever-changing string of men” (14). Sylvia’s choices reflect both her own childhood and the impact of race and class on her and her family’s lives, pointing toward the challenges Misty will face as she navigates the white, upper-class world of professional ballet. Chapter 2 centers around her introduction to ballet at the age of 13 and her developing a relationship with her ballet teacher. This chapter sets up the themes of The Power of Mentorship and Dedication and Discipline, showing how both the guidance of her first dance teacher and her own persistence despite early setbacks put Misty on the road to future success. Other aspects of Misty’s early life foreshadow her meteoric success in dancing as well as the personal struggles she will face in her life. Her interests in gymnastics and the drill team demonstrate her inherent need for self-expression through movement, hinting at the successful career as a dancer that she will achieve. Furthermore, Misty’s history as an anxious, people-pleasing child influences her behavior throughout her life. Though her fear of letting people down contributes to her dedication and discipline, it will also cause problems for her.
These two chapters introduce two of the most important people in her life: her mother, Sylvia, and her first ballet teacher and mentor, Cindy. Though we meet Sylvia in Chapter 1, the impact Sylvia has on Misty’s life and ballet career becomes increasingly important in later chapters. Chapter 2, meanwhile, centers on the other significant figure in Misty’s young life, Cindy. Cindy instantly recognizes Misty’s talent and potential and provides her with enthusiastic support and encouragement. She is also, despite being a white woman, the first person to make Misty, an awkward, introverted Black girl, “feel like the most beautiful and loved little ballerina in the world” (36). Cindy provides not only emotional but also financial support for Misty, giving her a scholarship to pay for ballet classes and helping provide her with the necessary supplies. This is one of the most decisive examples of the power of mentorship in Misty’s life. Without Cindy’s early belief and mentorship, Misty would almost certainly not have succeeded as she did.
