Misty Copeland

Muscular, Curvy, Dark-Skinned. These are not the features the country’s leading ballet company has typically seen in its top dancers. That is, until Misty Copeland jeté’d her way in.

Copeland, a TIME 100 honoree, is many things ballerinas are not and was told repeatedly that she didn’t have the right body for ballet. But on June 30, the 32-year-old broke that decades-old stereotype and became the first female African American to be named a principal, ballet’s highest rank, at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT).

The Missouri native didn’t take her first ballet class until she was 13, while living in a motel with her single mother and five siblings. Within months, she was dancing en pointe, and she later earned a summer scholarship to an ABT program. She soon leaped onto other stages, starring in a Prince video and an ad campaign for Under Armour. And in August she’ll appear on Broadway, in On the Town.

–ALICE PARK