Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Misty Copeland

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Renowned American ballet dancer Misty Copeland opens up about the instability she faced in her childhood and how her natural athleticism and incredible discipline led her to shine as a dance prodigy in her teens. She talks about the evolution of her relationship to food and nutrition from growing up in various different kitchens to eating like an athlete. Plus, you’ll hear how to make one of her healthy, go-to recipes: Baked tilapia with veggies.Misty Copeland is a Principal Dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. She made history in 2015, becoming the first African-American woman to ever be promoted to that position. She’s written several New York Times bestselling books and launched her own foundation in 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cindy said that she drove away and the thought of me not continuing on with so much potential, just she couldn't let it happen. So she turned around, you know, we didn't have cell phones then. So she couldn't even call her husband and tell him what she had decided. So we drove back to San Pedro, walked in the door and Patrick, her husband, was making dinner. And she yelled up to him and said, Misty's here with us. She's moving in.

Can you set another place at the table? And that was the start of it. I ended up living with them for three and a half years. Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids. I'm Michelle Norris. Today, we're graced with a special guest, Misty Copeland. She's the first African American woman to be a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. That's a big deal because the ABT is one of the top classical dance companies in the entire world. Raised in San Pedro, California, Misty began her ballet journey late by typical standards.

She didn't start dancing until she was in her teens, but she was immediately recognized as a prodigy. Misty's family experienced a lot of instability during her childhood, moving often, living in motels, the stress of unpaid bills. Yet you wouldn't know all that by the radiant confidence that shined through in her dance. Copeland was focused, disciplined,

and a natural in ballet shoes. She had a meteoric rise to the ranks, making stops at some of the country's top ballet programs. You might think that a good diet was necessary to fuel that journey, but Misty never really had a significant relationship with food growing up. There was never enough of it, never a consistent kitchen to prepare it. It was only after she got to the ABT and met her husband, Olu Evans, that she started to really understand how nutrition was vital to her craft and her general well-being.

Today she's a bona fide foodie. She loves to grab a glass of Prosecco and just create in the kitchen with her young son Jackson alongside as her sous chef. In this episode, we hear how a shy kid became one of the world's most celebrated ballet stars on a journey filled with both pain and triumph. We get a recipe for one of her favorite go-to meals, tilapia baked with tomatoes and veggies.

And get this, we hear about her special bond with the late musician Prince. Yes, his purple majesty followed her career from the start and repeatedly brought her on stage as part of his live shows. This is a great story and a great episode. It's all coming up. ["The Time Is Now"]

Misty Copeland, thank you so much for making time for us. I've been looking forward to this. Oh my gosh, me too. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure to have you in the studio with us. I was interested to talk to you because for so many reasons, because you've moved around a lot. Kitchens were a place of comfort, but also it sounds like a place of want. It sounds like in your family now, the kitchen is a place where you come together and find both strengths and solace. So when I ask about your mom's kitchen, I don't want to direct you anywhere. I just kind of wonder, where does your mind go? It goes to so many places. I think about my upbringing. So I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. My mother had married her second husband when she had me and my three siblings.

My mother divorced him and we moved to California when I was two years old. I have no early memories of a kitchen, of being in a kitchen, of that idea of kind of family gathering around a table. There's a lot of movement from the time I was two years old. So my mother eventually would marry two more times, have two more children, so I'm one of six kids. The first time I can remember food being made in my household was when I was seven years old with one of my stepfathers.

But he was very strict. So it wasn't kind of a family gathering. He was in the kitchen, he made a lot of rice. He's Hawaiian and Filipino and so a lot of spam and rice and curries and things like that. But I was never really a part of it. So it kind of felt like the kitchen was not a place for kids to be, wasn't a place where I kind of felt like love. And so I would say the first time that I experienced, I guess all of those adjectives I'm describing is maybe what I was yearning for, was probably when I was 13 years old.

And when you went to live with the Bradleys? Yes. I was introduced to ballet was 13 years old. And when you went to live with the Bradleys? Yes. I was introduced to ballet at 13 years old at my boys and girls club on a basketball court. And the local ballet teacher, Cynthia Bradley, was looking for more diverse students to bring into her ballet studio on scholarship. And I happened to be one of those students.

She immediately said I was a prodigy, invited me to come live with her and her family. That was kind of the first time that I really experienced what that meant, I guess, like family sitting around a table in the kitchen, all kind of coming together, sharing stories, what happened to them that day. Her husband, Patrick, cooked. But the first time that I was really invited into the kitchen was by her mother, Catherine, who we all called Bubby. Every Friday, Shabbat dinner, and Bubby would have me make the matzah balls with her, and

we would have matzah ball soup, or whatever it was she was making that day. And that was the first time that I experienced what it was to put love into food and feel nourished in kind of this nurturing way that made me fall in love with being in a kitchen and cooking. What a wonderful memory to hold on to when you're describing that. I can imagine you with Bubbie in the kitchen with your hands and the matzo meal making the matzo balls. But when I asked the initial question, you said you don't have a memory of a kitchen.

I'm not entirely surprised by that because in reading about you and reading your book, I must say I wasn't able to find a lot about you in the kitchen. Is it just that the kitchen was a place that you chose not to remember because stuff happened in the kitchen that you wanted to push out of your mind? Or was the kitchen just a place that you just didn't, you know, you went there to eat and then you're up and out? Why do you think in your case, it's not part of your memory bank? Well, until I lived with my stepfather, we didn't have a stable home.

We were often houseless. We lived in a lot of motels. There was a lot of moving around to different motels and there wasn't really a kitchen. You'd call it a kitchenette or something like that. There was a lot of cooking going on. So I don't really have memory of cooking happening. It was fast food or we shopped at the 99 cents store or whatever cheap grocery store. We're eating cup of noodle and canned vegetables. So, I don't know that there was

necessarily like a negative experience or something that happened in the kitchen. I just really don't remember kitchens being like a present part of my upbringing. It sounds so like the instability in some ways created the discipline that served you so well later on. 100%. You were saying that there was so much instability that you tried so hard to create stability in other parts of your life. I thought it was so interesting that you timed how long it would take you to get to school

and then how long it would take you to get to school, and then how long it would take you to get from class to class. You were taking control over what you could control in a life where you didn't have control over in a lot of other areas. Yeah. I was hungry for a discipline. And I think a lot of kids are when they don't have a structure. It's like they need some kind of structure and I feel like I didn't have that or something that I had control over. And so it became time, it became school, like you were

saying, I had such anxiety and fear of standing out. I didn't want to stand out in any way. I wanted to just be like everyone else. I didn't want people to know about what was happening in my personal life. So everything I could do to control that narrative, I would. Coming into the ballet world gave me this sense of structure and consistency, something I could depend on. I would go to ballet class and no matter what age you are,

even as a professional today, ballet class looks exactly the same. It's the same format and there's something so comforting about that that I would rely on. When I was 13 and starting out, it was the one place where I could relax and just depend on the fact that I was going to do plies and tendus and degages and I had the same structure within every class. And as soon as I left the studio or as soon as I left the stage, all the chaos came back. May I ask a question about your mom? Yeah.

She was a cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs. Sounds like she was a very feisty woman and a survivor in a lot of rough circumstances. You guys had to pack up and move quickly, but it sounds like she always figured it out. Are there things that you recognize now looking over your shoulder that you realize as hard as it was, as tumultuous as that relationship may have been, that you took from watching her that live inside you today? Oh, absolutely. So many things.

I think that's why I have gotten to where I've gotten in my career. That I've never allowed for myself to kind of stay in situations that, you know, weren't going to push me, that weren't going to get me to where I wanted to go. And my mom was so strong in that way. You know, I think that because of the way she grew up, she didn't always pick the right men or environments to be around, but she knew when she'd reached her tolerance and it was no longer okay to have her children in a situation. She just was constantly persevering. There was never a moment where, no matter how low we were, that she just gave up and let things happen around her.

It was like, okay, well, what's next? What can we do to make the situation better? What can we do to move on to a better situation? And so I definitely have my fight and my strength and perseverance from her. I think I also have this really strong connection to who I am and my culture in terms of being a black woman. That's something that she instilled in me and my siblings. She was adopted and struggled a lot with identity, I guess. She's biracial,

but her adoptive parents were black. And so she had, you know, her difficulties and her challenges of being biracial, but, you know, her parents had instilled in her that it doesn't matter how much black you have in you, when you walk outside of these doors, you know, this house, you're going to be seen and treated as a black woman in America. And that's something that I'm grateful for how she raised me and my siblings. You know, I think that it prepared me, as you were saying, to come into the ballet world as a black woman and really, I think, have a sense of who I am and how I'm perceived.

And then, of course, with all of the obstacles that we had, I think that, you know, after experiencing how I grew up, I stepped into the ballet world and I was like, oh, this is a piece of cake. I can handle this. I can handle it. Yeah. Cynthia Bradley, who we mentioned, the woman who invited you to come and live with her,

she spotted you, you were going to classes and they were some distance from your home. And so getting from your house to school, to class, I could envision just how difficult that had to be. And there was the day that Cynthia Bradley tried to do you a favor and give you a ride home. Can you just describe that day for us and what was going through your mind as you were getting closer and closer to where your family lived at that point and realizing that this

woman who represented your hopes and dreams for a different kind of future was going to see where you actually lived at that moment. What was that day like? That was the day that really changed everything for you. I went my whole childhood really in school know, in school, not really having any close friends. Luckily, I had five siblings and so we were each other's best friends, but I wasn't close with anyone because I didn't want them to know these things about my life.

So you know, we were taking a couple of buses every day and my mom decided, you know, this is just too much. This is too much trying to figure out how you're, you know, someone had to always be with me, you know, if I was taking a bus or, you know, I was someone's, my sister's boyfriends were driving me back and forth. And so it got to the point where she was just like, this is too much, you know, you need to focus on school and I need to make sure my all my children are safe and are getting home in one piece. So can you find a ride home?

And that's it. You're going to have to tell Cindy that this is your last class. And so I was devastated. I didn't even know where to begin. So I asked Cindy if she would drive me home. I gave her the address, but I didn't tell her the name of the place we were going. She was pretty upset the whole ride home thinking it was the last time she was going to see me. So we pull up to the Sunset Inn Motel in Gardena and drove

into the parking area and I just ran out of the car. No goodbye or anything? No, I just, I was so embarrassed and just sad. So I ran out of the car and into the room. I just was kind of sitting in the corner. There was a knock on the door and it was Cindy. And she was talking to my mom. I couldn't hear what they were saying. And then my mom turned around and said, Cindy asked if he wanted to live with her and continued training. And it was just like, what? This wasn't even something that I considered was possible. And my mom said, I'll let you do it. I'll let you go.

And so I got my backpack and I mean, I had very few clothes anyway. So I just kind of shoved it all in my school bag and walked out. And, you know, on the way home, Cindy said that she had, she drove away and she just, the idea, the thought of me not continuing on with so much potential, just she couldn't let it happen. So she turned around, you know, we didn't have cell phones then. So she couldn't even call her husband and tell him what she had decided. So we drove back to San Pedro, walked in the door and Patrick, her husband, was making dinner. And she yelled up to him and said, Misty's here with us, she's moving in,

can you set another place at the table? And that was the start of it. I ended up living with them for about three and a half years. And they had a child also, right? A three-year-old son. His name was Wolf. Yeah, Wolf. And I just kind of fit right in. I became a part of their family. And it was the first time that I'd really experienced real stability on a daily basis. I grew immensely within those three and a half years. I feel like

I was really underdeveloped for my age at that point in my life. It was so easy for me to kind of just hide between my siblings and not have a voice. Even in school, just not really being pushed in any real way and not feeling I was good at anything, being a part of the arts and being a part of ballet and dance, it just kind of woke up everything inside of me. Not everyone learns in the same way. That's why the arts are so vital and important, that not everyone learns, you know, from sitting in a classroom and being talked at

or reading from a book. You know, some people need to be, or visual learners need to be physical and kind of connect all parts of their brain and body. And I flourished in that environment. Coming up, how Misty Copeland found her footing and her voice in ballet. What should we have for dinner?

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for life and of course free shipping on your first box. Go to homechef.com slash ymk. That's homechef.com slash ymk for 18 free meals and free dessert for life. You heard that right. Homechef.com slash YMK. Must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. Well, speaking of being physical, did you also start to grow in different ways because you were getting regular nutrition?

Yeah, I don't even think that I realized it at that point, but I definitely was like malnourished. I was very, very small when I moved in with Cindy. I mean, naturally I was very petite and still am, but when you're eating different types of food, my muscles were kind of blossoming and growing in different ways. It's really wild that even when I wasn't eating properly, how strong I was. You know, Cindy put me in pointe shoes only two months after I started dancing. That's unusual, isn't that?

You usually work your way up to that. I mean, you have to train just in ballet slippers, I don't know, for five to seven, maybe more than that, years before you even begin the process of putting pointe shoes on. So I mean, I think that just goes to show, like, my genetic makeup and that I naturally kind of was built to be an athlete. But I grew, I was just healthier in every way and I think my brain was operating on a different level, you know, once I was kind

of fueling my body properly. Did you realize in looking back how hard that must have been for your mom? I think around the age of 15, when I came back home was when I think I started to see things from her perspective. And of course, having my own child now, I can't even imagine how difficult that must have been for her to let one of her children go because there was a future for me. We should explain that you lived with Cynthia and Patrick Bradley for a number of years, and then you had tried to declare yourself as an emancipated adult while you were still a teenager.

What happened there? My mother just didn't understand why I wasn't able to come home every weekend or, you know, have a two-day weekend with my siblings. And a lot of the time it was because I was performing. I was also training on the weekends. There's a lot of stuff that, you know, it's not an extracurricular activity, what I was preparing for anyways. From the moment I came into Cynthia's school, the goal was to get me to American Ballet

Theater as a professional. Can we just say a word there? Because you didn't start until you were 13. Right. Most of the principal ballerinas who work their way to the ABT, the American Ballet Theater, start when they're learning how to walk, essentially. They're three and four years old. So that was, I just want to make that point there, that that was incredibly ambitious, but also based on your talent, quite possible.

Right. But, you know, from my mom's perspective, she felt like I was just being taken away from her. It got to a point where Cindy felt like, you know, this is getting in the way of your training. Like what are we going to do? Like what is the plan? And we couldn't find a common ground. And so, Cynthia and I had conversations with a lawyer. They had me understand, I was 15 years old at the time, and they had me understand that I would become an adult. I

would emancipate myself. I would still see my family, we'd have the exact same kind of setup and situation, but I could make these decisions about my future and my career. And then it ended up not being that way. I'm not really sure what happened exactly, but you have to be 16 years old to emancipate yourself. And I was not at the time, the way that the adults in my life went about it, it wasn't the best setup for me. I ended up going and living with a family who was at the ballet school and my mom didn't know where I was. So she, you know, then the police got involved and

then there was a restraining order, you know, against my ballet teacher my mom had filed. So I ended up in court and it ended up, I mean, everywhere. It's 60 minutes in 2020 and different talk shows. It was my biggest nightmare. It was everything I was trying to avoid my entire childhood. I didn't want anyone to know about the circumstances that I was living in. And it literally was plastered everywhere for the world to see. It was one of the toughest times in my life, and it was ballet that kind of centered me

again. I ended up finding another ballet school in Torrance, California, and training there the remaining time before I would go on to dance professionally. But yeah, literally to this day, one of the most difficult times of my life. I have this image in my head of you holding on to the bar, just holding on to something, you know, to keep you through that ballet was your ballast. Being in a studio, all the tension went away. All the stress from my life outside went away and I could just completely focus on this

thing and have this beautiful music playing and just create and use my body and forget about everything. It's the same way on the stage. It's like the one place where I feel like the most at home. You can't see anyone's face in the audience. It's completely dark and I can just do what I do. And there's just always been such a security and safety in ballet for me. Did you go straight to New York?

In terms of my professional career, yes. So I would go away my very first summer to San Francisco for the San Francisco Ballet School, where they brought me in on full scholarship. I'd only been dancing about a year and a half or so. And they put me in the highest level. And that was the first time that I was really surrounded by other students that were, you know, their goal was to become a professional. How were you received? It was very interesting.

I think I was one of two black girls in the entire program. I mean, and it's like hundreds of kids that come from all over the world to train. It was difficult. There were other dancers in the class that were just kind of like, why is she here? And the teacher, the director of the summer intensive program was really focused on me and she wanted to give me the attention so that I could grow and people saw that. And so it wasn't great in that sense, but I grew immensely in terms of like my technical training. And then the following summer, I would be invited to New York City for the first time with American Ballet Theater.

And that was a huge shock, you know, coming from this small town in California, living in the city, pretty much on my own. I would spend my first summer in New York and then the following summer I moved here at 17 years old. It's not like you're in a dorm or you have people around you that are helping, teaching you or this is how you take care of your money or this this is how you pay bills, or this is how you cook. There was none of that happening. I was literally just in an apartment living with some other dancers, but pretty much just

on my own. Figuring it out at 17. Figuring it out, yeah. And somewhere along the way, you go through puberty. Not exactly. That would happen a little bit later after I had moved here already. So that happened when you got to, I was, you know, because puberty, no one wants to do that a second time.

No. I mean, I just think no one wants, you know, you may, you may reminisce about your youth, but no one says I want to go through puberty again. But if you were an athlete, and particularly if you're a dancer, where your physicality is so important and your physical form is so important, that had to be a particular challenge for you. And again, leading back to the kitchen, because it's about, you know, so much of ballet is the pressure to present in that ideal Balanchine kind of form of a ballerina with a long slim torso and sort of long languid legs.

And you know, when you go through puberty and also if you're a person of color and you have a little bit more curvature, that can be challenging. Yeah, it was extremely challenging. Again, I don't feel like I had anyone that was really preparing me for all of these things that were going to happen. All of the women in my family hit puberty later in life, and we're all like very athletic,

and I was so physical at the time. So it was normal for me at 17, 18 to still have not started my period. I didn't hit puberty until I joined the main company, until I actually became a professional dancer with American Ballet Theater. I was 19 years old and it was, I only started my period because I ended up with a stress or a fracture in my lower lumbar and I ended up with a stress or a fracture in my lower lumbar and I ended up having to miss my very first year of dancing professionally in the court of ballet because of this back injury and the doctors were convinced that it was because

I hadn't gone through puberty yet. And so they put me on birth control. Is that to try to strengthen your bones a little bit? Yes, to try to strengthen my bones. And I think it was one of the biggest mistakes. I ended up gaining 10 pounds in like a month and no longer was me. I didn't know how to take care of my body. It was just way too much.

And so then when I went back to ABT a year later and was a completely different person, it just made it even more challenging. And again, I had no idea how to fuel my body. I didn't understand the value of food and quality food. And again, IBT, they had a nutritionist that you could pay to go see. And I'm like, I don't have the money to do that. And so you're just kind of left out there on your own to fend for yourself. And that's why a lot of dancers end up with eating disorders and things like that, because

there's no real guidance in this field, especially for young people. I have this image of your mom moving from place to place to place. And when you live in apartment buildings or in motels, there is a kind of community. If your mom was a survivor, she probably would walk into a place and figure out, okay, that's the person who calls the shots. That's the person to avoid. This is the person who's nosy. That can be useful. She can watch over my kids. You know, and you sort of do this immediate calculus when you move into a community like that. Did that help you when you moved into a ballet troupe? Yeah.

I definitely feel like I have a natural radar for those things. I'm someone who kind of sits back and observes, you know, I think the way what you're describing of like the way my mother had to be in certain environments. And I think I watched and learned how to survive in certain situations. And so I definitely was that way. You know, watching a lot of the black men that I was surrounded by, I learned so much from, you know, and it's more rare to see a black woman in an elite ballet company than it is to see a black man. The woman, she represents ballet.

She is the one that's at the center. She's dancing. You know, these leading roles, when you think of ballet, you think of the woman. You're saying you think of the white woman. You think of the white woman. And it's a lot easier for a black man to stand behind a white woman and support her than it is for a black woman to be in the front and kind of central to the story. And so, you know, there were a handful of black men that would come and go

throughout my time, you know, in American Ballet Theater. And I learned so much from watching how they navigated through these white spaces. But me understanding, I think I came into the ballet community and the ballet world thinking, if you have the talent that will shine through and that will get you to where you need to go. And that was not the case, especially when you're surrounded by literally the top talent of the world in one company. And so, you know, it was about building relationships and being transparent and having honest conversations when things, you know, when I was having difficult times. And so it took me some time, but I ended up developing really beautiful relationships with some of the artistic staff, even some of my colleagues, where I could have difficult

conversations about race and about the things that I was seeing where I had to advocate for myself. And I think in a different way than any of my white colleagues had to in order to get to where I've gotten to. But of course, I wouldn't have any of the understanding or strength, I think, to do that without having had the incredible black women that have mentored me throughout my career. That really kind of got me to that place of understanding and comfortability to be able to have those conversations. When and how did you find the confidence

to fully step into your blackness on stage? Because for a long time, they were trying to lighten you up. They were lighting you in a certain way. They were using all kinds of facial powders. Even the tights and the shoes that you wore were meant to project a certain kind of, kind of porcelain veneer when you stepped onto the stage. You know, I think that it kind of coincides with, you know, everything that I'm talking about,

like kind of coming into my own and understanding how to articulate myself and advocate for myself. I think that it kind of all happened at the same time. I don't think there was ever a time that those things were happening where I was okay with it. You walk into a room with a man who's your boss, a white man, and this little black girl crying about these issues. And it's like, I feel like I wouldn't have been taken seriously. It took me years just to be able to be in a room with my artistic director and not feel over emotional about the things I experienced day in and day out. But yeah, I got to a point where it was just like, what is the point of doing these things? You know, what's the point of me wearing the same color makeup as the white girls next to me?

And challenging, challenging, you know, people to think about the artistic side of things and, and what's really behind it. Was there a particular conversation that you had that wound up being useful, you know, that you point to and say, okay, that was one that really worked. He heard me, she heard me. Oh gosh, there are so many. I mean, one that worked, like it was like within a week I was like, oh, I see results. And it was a combination of having conversations with both Olu and my mentor at the time, Raven

Wilkinson, who's a former ballerina, black ballerina. And there was a soloist role that's very common for a soloist to perform. I think every female soloist in the company was performing this role in The Sleeping Beauty called Princess Florine and the Bluebird and I was not cast to perform it. And there were other corps de ballet dancers, which is lower rank, that were also performing that role. And I was just kind of left out. And so kind of practicing like, how am I going to go in there and say, like, I should be doing this?

Like I never wanted to come off as though I'm like begging for a role, but coming to the table with, I know I'm capable of this. And I would love to be given an opportunity. What are the things I need to do in order to get to that place? And so I'm, you know, going in there with that frame of mind thinking, I'm going to be told, well, maybe, you well, these are the things that you don't have and the things you need to work on technically. And instead, my artistic director said, oh, you've performed that role, right?

And I'm like, completely had been overlooked. It was shocking to me. It was like how many roles or opportunities had I been overlooked for? He thought, oh, she's done that or she's whatever it may be. And that was a big learning lesson for me. So, you know, within a couple of days, I was cast to perform the role. And, you know, and I remember Raven telling me, she's like, I don't think you realize how many people go into that office and say, I want to be doing this role. And it's not a bad thing, you know, to go in there and say, I want to be doing this role. And it's not a bad thing, you know, to go in there and say

what you want, but not just, you know, not just say it, say I'm willing to put in the work and work for it. What is it that I need to do? It's interesting, Misty, because you say you never wanted to be in the spotlight, but you became a principal dancer. We have seen you on billboards, really big billboards. We have seen you on television ads. We have seen you in magazines. You developed a platform outside of the company. How do people inside the company react to that? I feel like throughout my journey that my colleagues have been right there with me, like, you know, on this path and seeing my intentions and seeing the work and the consistency.

And so I feel like I've just gotten a lot of respect and pride, you know, from my colleagues internally. But I would say in terms of the institution of ballet and the institution of American Ballet Theatre, it's been more difficult. I think a lot of the outside work that I've always understood the bigger picture, whether it's working with Prince or signing with Under Armour, the books that I'm writing, I understood the bigger picture and that in the end it's going to bring more people into the theatre. And that's what I wanted. How do we bring more of a diverse audience and how do we bring ballet to more people?

And I think that it's taken ABT a long time to understand that this is bigger than me and that it's, you know, and it's even, it's bigger than ballet, but it's for the future of ballet. You know, you just said something, working with prints, like that's just a thing that everybody gets to do. How did he find you? You know, I never got a straight answer from him.

That sounds like that's true to form. Yes, it is. I found out after he passed that he had been following my career since I was 13. I mean, I was constantly like in the news or articles being written, this prodigy and all the things that were happening with me. And so I found out that he had followed me since then. And then when I moved to New York, he kind of, I think, like kind of was following me but didn't really know what had happened where I was. And he had just done this remake of the song Crimson and Clover.

And his vision was that I would be dancing in it, like that's what he wanted. And he said he couldn't find me. And so he ended up hiring another ballet dancer and they filmed the whole video and he wasn't happy. And he was like, no, I still, this is what I have in mind. It's Misty in this video. And so he had someone of, he found me through like a friend who reached out to me. I remember waking up on like a Saturday at like 6 a.m. and my friend, Kaylin calling

me and she said, Prince is trying to get ahold of you. And I was like, who, what are you talking about? I was like, the Prince of what country? She was like, no, no, no, the artist Prince. And so we ended up connecting like that day over the phone. I think I flew out to LA like the next day or something. It was on the set and shot the video. And then whenever he was just so respectful of my career.

So whenever I wasn't on stage performing the Nutcracker with American Ballet Theater, I was on stage with Prince on top of his piano, dancing to the beautiful ones. ["The Beautiful Ones"] You know, Misty, you had said that it was hard for you to imagine kitchens earlier in your life because you were moving around all the time, but now you have the stability in

your life with your husband and your son Jackson. What are you doing in your own kitchen now to make sure that Jackson has those memories, foundational memories of the kitchen that he's growing up in. Again, the kitchen has become a place for me to unwind. There have been times where my husband's like, can you get out of the kitchen, please? Can you come hang out with me? Because I love being in the kitchen just putting on music and I have a glass of Prosecco and just I create.

And so that's something that I knew I wanted Jackson to be a part of. He just turned two a couple of weeks ago. He has his little like tower that he stands on. And he's literally my sous chef. I give him things to do. He's a part of the cooking process. He chooses the music we listen to. It's like a dance party in there. Just for him to see that it's not just about eating, it can be about love and family and community. And so I want him to be able to be self-sufficient and be able to take care of himself at an early age,

to be able to make his own himself at an early age, you know, to be able to make his own food and understand like the value in that. But it's beautiful to be able to have that relationship with Jackson in the kitchen. So we always gift our listeners with a recipe. And since your husband and Jackson are both pescatarians, not surprising that you're giving us a recipe for fish. Tell us about the baked fish that you're giving us a recipe for fish. Tell us about the baked fish that you're leaving with us. I've baked so many different types of fish and have so many

different recipes, but this one I was introduced to actually not that long ago and it became one of Jackson's favorites immediately. I was with my sister-in-law who's my husband's brother's wife in Paris and they made this beautiful white fish with tomatoes and tomato sauce and all these herbs and I kind of took it and made it my own. It's a baked tilapia. I bake it at 400 degrees. I put fresh tomatoes, chopped and garlic and olive oil and thyme and rosemary and a little bit of lemon and I kind of just blended all together salt and pepper and I bake it for about 20 minutes

at 400. And then I love to do like a roasted vegetable also. And that's something that we have leftovers for and Jackson can eat, you know, onions and carrots and broccoli, just some salt, pepper and olive oil, maybe a little bit of lemon too. Just like simple stuff that's like clean, but like very flavorful and healthy. Fish covered or uncovered? Uncovered. Okay.

And tomato, do you use a large tomato or do you use like a plum tomato or cherry tomato? A large tomato. I like to have the juices from it to kind of all, like it keeps it really nice and juicy. It's like a built-in sauce. Oven or air fryer? Oven. Oven. Oh, oven, yeah.

People who listen to the show know that I love my air fryer. Oh, I have not yet ventured into the air fryer. Girl, you need to get you an air fryer. This really has been just lovely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Misty Copeland's life and her career are the embodiment of both grace and strength.

She's a striver and a survivor. And you may have noticed how forgiving she is of the places and the people that were a source of pain. It's truly amazing how she went from being a kid who didn't want to attract attention to being a standout prodigy and then a principal dancer and a spokesperson for creating a more diverse world among dancers. She uses her voice, she knows what she deserves, and she backs all that up with a rock-solid work ethic. In the kitchen, she's rewriting the script for her son, that's clear.

But if you listen closely to the way she lit up when she talked about her unwind time in the kitchen with a glass of Prosecco, the woman who couldn't even remember a childhood kitchen is rewriting the script for herself as well. Good on her. There's a lesson in that for all of us. You can't change your past, but you can reframe your future. If you'd like to give a test run to Misty's baked tilapia in your kitchen,

you can find that recipe on my Instagram page at michelle underscore underscore norris, that's two underscores, and you can also find the recipe at our website yourmommaskitchen.com you will find all the recipes from all the episodes at yourmommaskitchen.com now before we go one last thing we've been asking our listeners to tell us about their kitchens my name is Sonji Patrick I grew up in the Bronx and we landed in Harlem, where we last lived until my mom passed away.

My mother was Filipino. She was famous for her pancit canton and her shrimp fried rice, believe it or not. My biggest memory though, is that the kitchen was always a place for experimentation. It was a place where she allowed me, her only child, to learn how to cook, whether it was breakfast or learn how to make a new baked good. And so I did a lot of experimenting in my nana's kitchen. That time cooking and baking independently are my biggest memories of my mama's kitchen.

Thank you for allowing me to share some part of my story. I just love these stories and we want to hear from you. Send us a voice memo to tell us about your Mama's Kitchens, the memories or the recipes, even thoughts on some of the stories you've heard on this podcast. It's easy to do. Record your thoughts on your phone and send us the voice memo at ymk at highergroundproductions.com. Your story and your voice might be featured on a future episode. Thanks for joining us. Make sure to follow Your Mama's Kitchen. Give us a review,

subscribe so you never miss an episode because you know we're always serving up something special. See you next week and until then, be bountiful. This has been A Higher Ground, an Audible Original produced by Higher Ground Studios. Senior Producer Natalie Wren, Producer Sonia Tan, and Associate Producer Angel Carreras. Sound Design and Engineering from Andrew Eapen and Roy Baum. Higher Ground Audio's Editorial Assistants are Jenna Levin and Camila Thurtacus. Executive Producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Muktam Mohan, Dan Fearman, and me, Michelle Norris.

Executive producers for Audible are Nick D'Angelo and Anne Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Baer and Say What Media, our talent booker is Angela Peluso. Special thanks this week to Threshold Studios in New York City, and as always, thanks to Clean Cut Studio in Washington, D.C.

Chief Content Officer for Audible is Rachel Giazza. And that's it, goodbye everybody. Make sure and come back to see what we're serving up next week. Copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Higher Ground.