4.4 • 34.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Copeland says her final performance with American Ballet Theatre was a thank you to the communities that had supported her. "What I represented is something far bigger than me," she says. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about her final bow, her relationship to pain, and the legacy of Black ballet dancers.
Also, David Bianculli reviews the new Peacock thriller series ‘All Her Fault,’ starring Sarah Snook.
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics with Nuremberg. The Allies seek justice for the Holocaust. |
| 0:07.0 | The chief prosecutor leads the trial of the century while a U.S. Army psychiatrist battles Herman Guring's mind. |
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| 0:17.1 | This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. When Misty Copeland stepped onto the stage at Lincoln Center, |
| 0:23.8 | golden confetti rained down as she took her final bow with American Ballet Theater. After years |
| 0:29.9 | away from performing, she returned to dance Juliet one last time and spent through Twyla Tharp's |
| 0:35.6 | Sinatra Suite, closing a chapter that began over two decades |
| 0:39.3 | ago. It was a farewell to a company where she made history as the first black woman promoted to |
| 0:45.3 | principal dancer in ABT's history. By ballet standards, Copeland came to the art form late at 13 years |
| 0:52.8 | old. It was the culmination of a journey that |
| 0:55.3 | began not in a traditional ballet academy, but in a boys and girls' club gym, where a shy teenager |
| 1:01.4 | first discovered what her body could say through movement. Copeland rose through ABT's ranks |
| 1:07.4 | to dance the roles that define classical ballet. |
| 1:17.2 | Odette O'Diel and Swan Lake, Juliet and Romeo and Juliet, and the title role in Firebird. |
| 1:20.7 | But her impact extends far beyond technique and tradition. |
| 1:25.8 | As a best-selling author, film producer, and founder of the Misty Copeland Foundation, |
| 1:28.7 | her goal is to build pathways for children who've never seen themselves reflected on the ballet stage. |
| 1:32.6 | Now as Copeland steps away from ABT, |
| 1:35.1 | she's turning her focus from performance to transformation, |
| 1:39.2 | working to remake an art form that has for centuries |
| 1:41.8 | to find beauty through exclusion. |
| 1:45.4 | Misty Copeland, welcome back to fresh air, and it's a pleasure to have you as you enter this new |
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