She performed on Broadway in On the Town, toured as a featured dancer for Prince and appeared on the reality television shows A Day in the Life and So You Think You Can Dance.

[14] The family moved to San Pedro, where Sylvia eventually married her fourth husband, radiologist Robert DelaCerna and where Misty attended Point Fermin Elementary School.

[16] Copeland never studied ballet or gymnastics formally until her teenage years, but in her youth she enjoyed choreographing flips and dance moves to Mariah Carey songs.

[17] Following in the footsteps of her older sister Erica, Copeland became captain of San Pedro's Dana Middle School drill team, where her natural grace came to the attention of its classically trained coach, Elizabeth Cantine.

[19][20] After living with various friends and boyfriends, DelaCerna moved with her children into two small rooms at the Sunset Inn in Gardena, California where Copeland and her siblings slept on the couch or floor.

She declined the offer because of the encouragement from her mother to return home, the prospect of continuing personal training from the Bradley family and dreams of a subsequent summer with American Ballet Theatre.

[11][21] DelaCerna engaged lawyer Gloria Allred and applied for a series of restraining orders, which included the Bradleys' five-year-old son, who had been Copeland's roommate, and Bartell.

Copeland recalls that in one month she gained 10 pounds, and her small breasts swelled to double D-cup size: "Leotards had to be altered for me ... to cover my cleavage, for instance.

[51][53] Copeland says that, over the next year, new friendships outside of ABT, including with Victoria Rowell and with her boyfriend, Olu Evans (now her husband), helped her to regain confidence in her body.

[59][60] Recognition continued in 2004 for roles in ballets such as Raymonda, workwithinwork,[61][62][63] Amazed in Burning Dreams,[64] Sechs Tänze, Pillar of Fire,[65] "Pretty Good Year", "VIII" and "Sinfonietta, where she "stood out in the pas de trois – whether she was gliding across the floor or in a full lift, she created the illusion of smoothness".

[99][100] During the 2009 Spring ABT season at the Met, Copeland performed Gulnare in Le Corsaire and leading roles in Taylor's Airs and Balanchine's Pas de Deux from Swan Lake.

"[112] Her Summer 2011 ABT solos included the peasant pas de deux in Giselle[113] and, in Ratmansky's The Bright Stream at the Met in June, her reprise of the Milkmaid was called "luminous, teasingly sensual".

[121] She also danced the role of Gamzatti in La Bayadère at the Met to praise from Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times, who noted her "adult complexity and worldly allure".

[138] Siebert praised her work in Balanchine's Duo Concertant, to Igor Stravinsky's eponymous score for violin and piano performed by Benjamin Bowman and Emily Wong.

[142] Of her Flower Girl in Gaîté Parisienne, Apollinaire Scherr of The Financial Times wrote that she "tips like a brimming watering can into the bouquets her wooers hold out to her".

[141] In June 2014 at the Met, she danced the Fairy Autumn in the Frederick Ashton Cinderella, cited for her energetic exuberance in the role by Hochman, who missed the "varied texture and nuance that made it significantly more interesting" in the hands of ABT's Christine Shevchenko.

[148][149] Her ascension to more prominent roles occurred as three ABT principal dancers (Paloma Herrera, Julie Kent and Xiomara Reyes) entered their final seasons before retirement.

[156] She made her American debut as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake with The Washington Ballet, opposite Brooklyn Mack as Prince Siegfried, in April at the Eisenhower Theater in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

[177][178] That October, in New York, Copeland performed in the revival of Tharp's choreography of the Brahms-Haydn Variations,[179] in Frederick Ashton's Monotones I,[180] and "brought a seductive mix of demureness and sex appeal to 'Rum and Coca-Cola'" in Paul Taylor's Company B.

[181][28] The same month, she created the role of His Loss in AfterEffect by Marcelo Gomes, danced to Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, at Lincoln Center.

[184] Her spring 2016 schedule also included leads in ABT productions of The Firebird, La Fille Mal Gardee, Le Corsaire, The Golden Cockerel, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.

[101] During the New York City and New Jersey portions of Prince's Welcome 2 America tour, Copeland performed a pas de deux en pointe to his song "The Beautiful Ones", the opening number at the Izod Center and Madison Square Garden.

[193] New Line Cinema has optioned her memoir, Life in Motion, for a screen adaptation,[194] and the Oxygen network has expressed interest in producing a reality docuseries about Copeland mentoring a Master Class of aspiring young dancers.

[204] In July 2015, a black and white book, Misty Copeland: Power and Grace, was released by photographer Richard Corman, with an introduction by Cindy Bradley.

[208] In October 2015, she performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert accompanied by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who played "Courante" from Bach's Cello Suite No.

[209] In February 2016, Copeland and President Barack Obama were interviewed together in the first of a three part video series with Time and Essence magazines on topics of race, gender, achievement and creating opportunity for young people.

[213] The feature was favorably noted by several media outlets,[214] but Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe argued that contemporary ballet performers take Degas' ballet-themed work too seriously.

Shortly afterwards, she criticized statements by Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank that praised Donald Trump, stressing that her sponsors should believe in the "importance of diversity and inclusion".

[258][28] The two-year fellowships are in recognition of "young artists of extraordinary talent with the goal of providing them with additional resources in order to fully realise their potential".

[205] In 2014, Copeland was named to the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition[260] and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford for her contributions to classical ballet and helping to diversify the art form.