1st black principal ballerina, Misty Copeland, to make Broadway debut

Misty Copeland, the first black ballerina to become a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, has announced that she will be dancing the role of Ivy in 'On the Town' Broadway from August 25 to September 6.

The 32-year-old Ballet dancer said that she was contacted by the producers of the show with the offer, for which she was very glad and excited as she never thought about something like this coming to her and if ever she would have dreamt of her doing a Broadway then this was the one, Time Magazine reported.

The African-American ballerina will be playing the role of Ivy, the female lead who falls in love with one of the sailors, a role that was originally played by Japanese-American ballerina Sono Osato as part of a deliberate creative choice to make the ballet racially diverse.

'On the Town' by Leonard Bernstein is a 1944 musical Broadway show, which is about three sailors who get to visit New York City for a single day, and features the famous song 'New York, New York'.