Misty Copeland

Ballet’s Eurocentrism dates back to its formation in the 1400s. So has its systemic racism, aligned against dancers from the African diaspora, as has been reflected in everything from the historical single color of manufactured pointe shoes—“European pink”—to the ceiling that only the smallest handful of artists of color, like Raven Wilkinson and Janet Collins, began to crack during the 1950s. But after Misty Copeland smashed through those barricades in 2015 as the American Ballet Theatre’s first female African-American principal dancer, she became an outspoken activist for bringing racial equity to her art form. “George Balanchine created this image of what a ballerina should be: skin the color of a peeled apple, with a prepubescent body,” she told the London Daily Telegraph in 2015. Her conversation with Susan Jaffe, dean of dance at UNC School of the Arts, is likely to be every bit as frank, and kicks off Carolina Performing Arts’ new season. (American Ballet Theatre appears at Duke Performances in February.)