Words by Molly Hays<\/strong>
\nPhotography by Jacklyn Greenberg<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll bet you didn\u2019t know that I could fly,\u201d Misty Copeland writes in Life in Motion, her recently released memoir. \u201cI can bounce into the air, then float there a little while before lighting, softly, on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simple, no?<\/p>\n

But, of course, we all know that ballet is the art of rendering the excruciating, effortless; the utterly grueling, exquisitely graceful. And this for the ordinary ballerina. Misty Copeland, described by many accounts as the first African American female soloist for the American Ballet Theatre, is anything but ordinary, even in the extraordinary world of classical ballet.<\/p>\n

Packing, Scrambling, Leaving <\/em>
\nIn the rarefied world of classical ballet, there\u2019s no one path to the top. Still, Copeland\u2019s road stands among the least traveled.<\/p>\n

The fourth of six children, Misty Copeland was born into a family as tight-knit as it was itinerant. From age two, Copeland writes, when \u201cmy mom squeezed our lives onto a bus headed west, our family began a pattern that would define my siblings\u2019 and my childhood: packing, scrambling, leaving\u2014often barely surviving.\u201d Dramatic? Yes. Though the next sixteen years would only prove more so.<\/p>\n

To read more about Misty Copeland, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Words by Molly Hays Photography by Jacklyn Greenberg \u201cI\u2019ll bet you didn\u2019t know that I could fly,\u201d Misty Copeland writes in Life in Motion,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40],"tags":[245,246,247,248,29,249,250,185],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/misty2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1123"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2955,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions\/2955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}