B lack ballerinas develop not just a Black habi- tus, but a Black balle- rina habitus that is con- structed by the ways their bodies are subdued as a result of the intense training, and in the way their blackness is subdued. Because of their race, Black ballerinas are inherently relegated to the margins of the industry. That marginalization encourages them to seek support and community with other dancers who share the same or similar experiences. Then, on the rare occasion that they are able to move from the margins to the center, they are marked and categorized within the historical lin- eage of their position and promoted (like a saint) to the high ranks of Black history. Their legacy is then used to replicate the same system for the next Black ballerina. Firebird , I argue, is a part of the economic investment of Black ballerinas into other Black ballerinas, which shapes their world view, and the world view for those of us who read about them in picture books. WORKS CITED Copeland, Misty. Firebird: Ballerina Misty Copeland Shows a Young Girl How to Dance Like the Firebird . Illustrated by Christopher Myers, Putnam, 2014. Gottschild, Brenda. The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool . Springer, 2016. Young, Harvey. Embodying Black Experience: Still- ness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body . University of Michigan Press, 2010. DR. LASHON DALEY is the assistant professor of Black Children’s Literature at San Diego State University. This article is excerpted from her book project, Black Girl Lit: The Coming of (R) age Performances in Contemporary U.S. Black Girlhood Narratives, 1989-2019 , which charts how children’s literature, film, television, and social media has helped shape our cultural understanding of what it means to be young, Black, and female in the U.S. Lashon recently received her PhD in Performance Studies with a Designated Emphasis in New Media from UC Berkeley. She also holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in Folklore from UC Berkeley. Her children’s book, Mr. Okra Sells Fresh Fruits and Vegetables , was released in February 2016. LashonDaley.com
possess whiteness when it is trained in “white-based ballet,” it is important to consider how Copeland’s Firebird enacts a kind of spillage that augments the versatility of the Black dancing body, while reifying its otherness (22). Interestingly enough, it is actually the protagonist of the text who continu- ously highlights her own lack despite Copeland’s grand Black female repre- sentation. Most likely spurred on by institutional racism within ballet, the
feels like the space she once longed to close has finally been sealed. Copeland’s picture book creates a public record of her experience as a ballerina integrating ballet and, sub- sequently, diversifying the industry of children’s literature. In 2014, the year Firebird was released, out of 3,500 children’s books that were published that year, only sixty-nine were writ- ten and/or illustrated by an African or African American creator and 179
That marginalization encourages them to seek support and community with other dancers who share the same or similar experiences.
protagonist figuratively projects her body as one labeled as “coon,” while labelling Copeland’s body as “Cool.” Gottschild argues that it is not the Black dancing body that has changed, it is rather our perception of it that has changed. For the young protag- onist whose dismay is a result of the space between herself and Copeland— that space between coon and Cool— she must first change her perception in order to begin closing the space. Firebird seemingly ends with both Copeland and the protagonist dressed in that same white ballet costume from the text’s earlier pages stand- ing in sous-sus. Copeland gazes stage right, while the protagonist gazes stage left. However, it is not until upon seeing the back cover that the reader is made privy to how this story ultimately ends. On the back cover, the protagonist is centered, dressed in that same white costume she was dressed in at the end of the narrative. She is now an adult. No longer stand- ing on demi-pointe like in her child- hood balletic practice, but en pointe. Her leg is in a low arabesque with a deep cambré back. Although she is alone again, this time her aloneness does not feel like loneliness. Rather, it
books were about Africans or Afri- can Americans. Copeland’s Firebird intersected both of those categories (a Black author and a Black illustrator), and in addition, diversified the indus- try by not only featuring two Afri- can American female lead characters, but two African American balleri- nas. Firebird exemplifies the growing desire to make Black dancing bodies more visible, more legible, and conse- quently more consumable. It also exemplifies the experience and provides language for what it means to live out a Black ballerina habitus. Black performance studies scholar Harvey Young (2010) explains that the “theory of habitus—thought in terms of a black habitus—allows us to read the black body as socially con- structed and continually constructing its own self. If we identify blackness as an idea projected across a body, the projection not only gets incorporated within the body but also influences the ways that it views other bodies (20). Young goes on to detail how “black habitus has been shaped by the legacy of black captivity and other manifesta- tions of discrimination within society: racial profiling and employment dis- crimination, among others” (21).
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