Misty Copeland Is Lead Ballerina for Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

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It’s far from Christmas season, but Misty Copeland just revealed that she’ll be joining Disney’s live-action The Nutcracker and the Four Realms as lead ballerina. My holiday spirits are soaring.

It was announced that Disney picked up The Nutcracker earlier this year, and that it would be directed by Lasse Hallstrom and written by Ashleigh Powell. The story will combine the Tchaikovsky ballet and the E.T.A. Hoffmann short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. When you put Disney and The Nutcracker together, I’m sure most minds naturally goes to Fantasia so it’ll be interesting to see how the live-action adaptation goes.

It’s been reported that Copeland will perform in the film’s sole dance sequence, so it sounds like the movie itself will take more from the story than the ballet. It makes sense, since the Land of Sweets portion of The Nutcracker isn’t very plot-heavy. I’m going to guess Copeland will play the Sugar Plum Fairy, since that’s one of the biggest moments of the ballet and it’s also a role that she’s done previously. Check out this gorgeous clip of Copeland and Sterling Baca performing “Pas de Deux” back in 2014! And this one of her performing a Nutcracker excerpt at WSJ Cafe!

We won’t see the film for a while, but from those clips we can definitely expect an amazing performance from Copeland.

(via Deadline)

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