Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland

Author:Misty Copeland [Copeland, Misty]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Retail
ISBN: 9781476737980
Amazon: 1476737983
Barnesnoble: 1476737983
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2014-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

THIS WAS ALSO THE summer that I met Paloma Herrera. I have to say that, at first, I was a bit disappointed.

It must have been lunchtime. We summer students weren’t really allowed to wander around ABT’s studios, a warren of run-down rooms. The company occupied two floors of a building downtown, at 890 Broadway. There were five studios where we rehearsed. Each of them had two walls covered floor to ceiling with mirrors, and barres were attached to all the walls but one; more barres were stacked like firewood in the back, to be moved when we needed them to the floor’s center. A piano was invariably tucked in the corner, and each studio had a television and sound system in the front so we could watch videos to help us with our choreography, as well as old-fashioned wall phones, where we’d line up to order lunch to be delivered from Andy’s Deli on our breaks.

The studios that make up the company’s rehearsal spaces look like sets taken straight from one of the 1980’s dance movies I’d watch with Cindy and Patrick in California. It’s one of the few dance buildings that hasn’t become super-high-tech and sleek—a total contrast to San Francisco Ballet, for example. It’s typical New York, I guess, to have the office building of America’s National Ballet Company be as quirky as an East Village apartment building. Like in so many of the aging buildings that crowd New York City, the perimeter of ABT’s practice rooms were lined with ancient radiators to keep them warm. They clinked and clanged so loudly in the winter that it was sometimes hard to hear the playing of the piano. And in studio five, one of our two large rehearsal spaces, the windows got so fogged up from the sizzling steam and dancers’ body heat that you couldn’t see out to Nineteenth Street.

The studios were sweltering in the summer as well. There were air conditioners installed in the windows, but we dancers didn’t want them turned on for fear our muscles would get cold and stiff.

There were also two large dressing rooms, one for women and one for men. They were filled with benches and creaky lockers that dancers claimed their first days with the main company and held on to for the duration of their careers there. Our physical therapy room was filled with all you’d find in a high-priced gym, from cardio and weight machines to Pilates reformers. There was also a small massage room, where the company’s therapist would rub and knead our tired, sore muscles.

Upstairs, on the third floor, there were two more studios and the company offices housing the artistic staff, stage managers, and company management, as well as the fund-raising, publicity, and education departments, and our executive director.

At lunchtime, I would usually take a walk down the street, pick up soup or a sandwich at a local salad bar, and then come back to the studio, where I’d eat and relax with other dancers before heading back to class.

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