Misty Copeland Explains How She Deals with Haters After ‘Swan Lake’ Criticism

Ballerina Misty Copeland performed “Swan Lake” in Singapore a few weeks ago and she’s been shutting down haters since.

During the ballerina’s performance, she only completed 15 out of 32 fouettés, a “quick whipping movement of the raised leg in ballet usually accompanying a pirouette” and had to abruptly improvise. Critics were quick to blast Copeland in the ballerina world, specifically one Twitter user who deemed her “the WORST”, but the 35-year-old’s clapback was pure bliss.

After shutting down the hater with poise, Copeland told Cosmopolitan that she doesn’t worry too much about Internet trolls and tries not “to get caught up in reviews and reading things on the internet.”

“People don’t know your journey and I think that especially in America, especially in New York, when people come to see ballet, I think everyone kind of feels like they’re a critic,” she stated.

“You’re coming to see live theater, it’s not edited! Anything can happen in those moments. I think that’s what’s so exciting about it as a professional, because you have to figure out how to recover from things that may go wrong in the moment, so with the post I posted on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, I felt like it was really important for me to be an example of how to respond to the negativity that I know every young person experiences, especially with social media these days,” Copeland continued.

The dancer opened up about her craft as an artist and how she allows herself “to be sensitive” and “vulnerable” while not letting “things affect” her performance.

“I wanted to show that you can learn from these things, whether they’re negative or positive and I wanted to show there’s a positive way if you want to address these people, your critics, whoever is saying things about you who doesn’t even know you. There’s a way to do it so that it’s not putting someone else down, but just kind of learning from the experience,” Copeland added.