American Ballet Theater ballerina Misty Copeland drew from artist Edgar Degas to recreate some of his famous pieces from the Paris Opéra Ballet. In a Harper's Bazaar shoot called "The Art of Dance," Copeland opens up about what it’s like to make history and work as a ballerina.
"The Art of Dance" features Copeland mimicking the paintings of Degas to takes us back in time. Although Copeland is used to being in front of the camera, she said the shoot was a challenging new experience for her.
"It was interesting to be on a shoot and to not have the freedom to just create like I normally do with my body," she explained to Harper's Bazaar. "Trying to re-create what Degas did was really difficult.”
"I see a great affinity between Degas' dancers and Misty," Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, told Harper's Bazaar. “She has knocked aside a long-standing music-box stereotype of the ballerina.”
The photo shoot was timed with Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty, a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, which opens this month.
Read the whole interview with Copeland in the March 2016 issue of Harper's Bazaar.