The Misty Effect: Jasmine Perry, Los Angeles Ballet

February 8, 2018

Most of us first met Jasmine Perry back in 2014, during her turn on Teen Vogue‘s web series “Strictly Ballet.” At that point, Perry was a coltish teenager finishing up her last year at the School of American Ballet. Since then, she’s taken a job with Los Angeles Ballet and matured into a dancer of refinement and charm—but fans still relate to her 18-year-old self. “Doing ‘Strictly Ballet’ was great because it taught me how to be professional, how to work with public relations teams, how to communicate with adults,” she says. “But it’s funny because, especially when I come back to NYC, people always recognize me from the show. There’s this one part of my life on the internet—once it’s out there, it never disappears!”

Perry, who trained at North Carolina Dance Theatre (now called Charlotte Ballet Academy) before enrolling at SAB, grew up in a diverse home, with a black father and a Filipino mother. “My whole family is from different places, so I didn’t really see color until I went to school,” she says. “Realizing that I was one of the only kids at SAB who wasn’t white was eye-opening. But I used that as motivation to work harder.” She admires Misty Copeland’s groundbreaking advocacy, and hopes to follow her example. “It’s heartwarming to come out after a show and have kids asking for autographs because I look like them,” she says. “There’s someone onstage they can relate to, and that’s progress.”