Interview: Principal Dancer Julian MacKay, Bayerisches Staatsballett

DanceLifestyle

Dec 9

Julian MacKay is a fountain of energy and ideas. The young principal dancer is still in his early twenties, but while building an international career, he has already completed a bachelor’s degree as ballet master and choreographer at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS). In addition, together with his brother Nicholas, he has founded the production company “MacKay Productions” to bring high quality dance content to a wider audience. The medal winner of several international ballet competitions has danced with London’s Royal Ballet, St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theatre and San Francisco Ballet and guested all over the world. Since the beginning of the 2022/23 season, he is a principal dancer at the Bayerische Staatsballet in Munich. TWoA talked to Julian about his artistic journey.

From Montana to Moscow

Julian’s journey to centre stage had an unusul starting point: “I grew up in Paradise Valley, Montana. It’s a really beautiful place, but there is not a lot of culture outside of cowboy culture and mountains. But my parents from a young age definitely tried to show me as much of the world as possible.” By the time Julian was five, he had already been to Europe a couple of times: “We would always go to museums and get the audio books and put the headphones in and walk around the museum. I really enjoyed learning about things. It really gave me an international perspective even before I went to Moscow for ballet school. I saw how closely connected everything was, but also how art and culture really allow people to communicate, no matter where you are from or what language you speak.”

Julian’s oldest sister deserves credit for starting the ballet trend in his family: the two sisters and two brothers all trained as dancers. By the time Julian began to look seriously for a ballet school, the family already knew how important it was to get good schooling from as young as possible: “A lot of the private teachers that I ended up really liking, or understanding the best, were Russian, or had ties to Russia. I felt that the Vaganova technique was something where I could understand the building blocks and how everything progressed.” The teachers advised him to go to the source – Russia. Julian got a scholarship for a summer program with Russian teachers in Connecticut, who held an informal audition for the fabled Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow. Julian got selected – but, since he was only eleven, he was told that he would have to come with a parent.

Life in Russia

Julian and his mother left the idyllic river valley flanked by the Rocky Mountains. They arrived in the sprawling Russian metropolis in October: “My mom and I thought: well, we’ll stay until January, see if we like it a little bit, that’s probably going to be it. When we got to that point, I said: ‘Well, mom, I really like it here, I really want to stay. I understand it’s hard for you, because it’s a different country, a different language, a different culture. But you can go home, it’s ok, I’m going to be staying here.’ She was kind of shocked” – and decided to stay with her son and support him. By the next year, his younger brother Nicholas had joined him at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy.

It took Julian about a year to speak the language fluently. But a lot of the people around him, whether they were older babushkas (grandmothers) or older teachers at the school, “were quite loving and endearing.” Maybe most importantly, his classmates wanted to get to know him. He became part of the group quite quickly, even though he remained the only foreigner in his age group for a couple of years: “I remember the first friend that I made, his name is Timofey, he came up to me. I think I’d been at the Academy maybe for a month and, really, they were just dragging me around the classes: I didn’t know where I was going, why, what was coming up. There wasn’t any website that explained how things were supposed to be, or an online schedule. I remember, he came up to me and said in broken English and Russian: how long are you going to be staying for? I felt this was a weird question – I’m going to school here; I want to graduate! He said to me: ‘I really want to be friends with you, but the last person I’d become friends with was a Korean student who left after a month’ and he didn’t want to have that experience again. So, he was asking me ‘how long are you going to stay’ because he wanted a guaranteed option.” Julian and Timofey are still friends.

Media Attention

Julian quickly became part of the closed world of the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. But as the first young American boy to attend the school, there was also some media attention. In his first year, the New York Times ran a story on Americans at the Bolshoi (there was another, older American girl at the school). The article made the front page. Julian had already grown quite close to his teacher and classmates and remembers the visit of the paper’s photographer to his ballet class with a grin: “I already understood Russian ballet is such a serious thing to them, that even though I was eleven, it wasn’t like you are showing up to playtime. It was very bootcamp, every minute of ballet class matters and how you approach everything, it has to be with a specific intention. How you are dressed, all of it is very important. So, when this photographer came, we had a whole, entire warm-up ballet class before our class was supposed to start because my teacher knew this was going to be important. I was young, I didn’t really have an understanding of the media or how international something like the New York Times really is. I’m wearing my outfit, we are doing our warm-up, sweating a little bit, the photographer comes in. And she gives a very serious performance of ‘ballet teacher’. She definitely was quite a strict teacher, but she was very loving: it was never too much. She could definitely push you and poke you and all that stuff, but it was always loving. So, she puts on a little bit of a performance for the photographer, he stayed for 15-20 minutes and then leaves. We are all finished by the time he leaves. And she asks one of the boys to run out and see whether he’s fully gone. He runs out, checks, comes back, and she’s like – ok, let’s start again. For me, that was kind of how I felt about any of the media attention: I was in Russia for ballet, I was focused on that, and because it is so competitive and intense, I didn’t have any time for anything else. I don’t think I really ever got in trouble, or was a problem teenager growing up, just because I was so focused on ballet.” In his free time, he enjoyed skateboarding, played chess for lunch money, and he liked to yo-yo, which was quite popular at the time: “That is one of the only times that I ended up at the ER at the school because I hit myself in the face with a metal yo-yo because I was trying to learn a new trick before a class.”

Performing with the Bolshoi

One of the highlights of his time at the Bolshoi Academy was the possibility to perform with the Bolshoi Ballet: “All the kids line up and a certain amount of them are chosen. You have to get good grades in class and be able to partner, but it’s more like holding hands, waltzing a little bit. The first role that I went on stage for at the Bolshoi Theatre was in Esmeralda.” Julian had already performed small parts with some companies in the US, including a run of Nutcracker with American Ballet Theatre, but this was unlike anything he’d ever seen before: “At the Bolshoi, they were so detail orientated. I went on stage, and there are some random extras in the back of the performance. They have these big cards, but they are actually playing cards, they are actually living whatever life they are supposed to be living, even though you can barely tell from the audience. But for them, it was super important. That was definitely really special, to be part of that kind of world from the beginning, dancing alongside some of these big Bolshoi stars. As a child, it gives you a great perspective on what is possible in the future and the career trajectory. It gives you a lot of love for the art form.”

Challenges

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Julian. As a foreigner, internal school politics could be a special challenge. Julian felt that he had to work really hard to get to a similar position as some of his Russian classmates. Other kids were chosen to represent the school in competitions, while he had to go as lone warrior, finding his own costumes and organising his own rehearsals. Now he is grateful: having to fight for his place and the teachers’ attention pushed him to go further. It taught him to be creative, and to fight for his goals.

In his fifth year, he was the only boy in his class who had achieved a certain grade, but who was not invited to join a repertoire class where the boys would start preparing solo variations. Julian realized that he would inevitably fall behind the other boys if he didn’t join this class. He asked his teacher for permission to join. The teacher responded bluntly that he did not want Julian in the class and that he didn’t want to work with him: “I remember this was probably one of the only times that I felt: well, I’m a foreigner. For a very long time, the qualities that I saw that were good at the school were to be as Russian as possible, to fit in as much as possible. And, of course, to pursue excellence in ballet. But you learn Russian, you become a part of the system. That was my goal: to not stick out in a way. I think I definitely achieved that from quite early on.” Julian realized that he had to switch to another teacher, even though switching class meant that he lost a lot of his friends because they were no longer on the same schedule. But Julian was in Moscow to become the best dancer he could, and he knew he would not be able to mend the relationship with his teacher: “I just wanted to get a teacher who would try and work with me. I just wanted the opportunity to try a variation.”

From the Royal Ballet to St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theatre

His perseverance and brave willingness to fight for himself paid off. During his final year at school, former Bolshoi principal Vyacheslav Gordeyev invited Julian to perform the principal role of Prince Siegfried in a production of Swan Lake touring Germany. He had never danced a full-length ballet before – and there was only a week and a half to prepare: “I panicked for a little bit, and then I thought: if this is what I want for my career, if I ever really want to get to that point, I might just as well say ‘yes’ now and try. Maybe I’m not cut out for it.” The run went well – and prepared him for the prestigious Prix de Lausanne competition, which would pave his way to the Royal Ballet, which he joined as 2016 Prix de Lausanne winner after graduating top of his class, the first American to have completed both the Bolshoi’s lower and upper school.

But Julian returned to Russia before the end of the season. He was eager to gain experience and to dance parts beyond corps de ballet roles, but realized that at an institution like the Royal Ballet, it might take five, ten years before greater opportunities became available. When Mikhail Messerer from St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theatre offered him a second soloist contract, he jumped at the opportunity. He had never been to St. Petersburg: “I heard all these wonderful things about this Venice of the North and the theatre culture there. So, I thought: this is exciting! I might just as well see what it is.”

On his first day at the theatre, he met his coach Mikhail Sivakov. They started rehearsing the Slave from Le Corsaire: “And I just kept pushing and pushing, trying to add more because I felt, ‘oh, I’m not good enough to do this role, I need to show him that I can do it.’ And he kind of just started laughing because he saw, I think, the desire to do it.’” This was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. Julian got to dance a lot of roles very quickly. In the first two months alone, he danced seven or eight roles for the first time, including the peasant pas de deux from Giselle, Bluebird from The Sleeping Beauty, the pas d’ésclave from Le Corsaire, roles which would have taken a long time to get into anywhere else: “They were kind of like: we need someone, go on stage, here’s the costume. My coach prepared me as best as he could. I realized that the more you dance, the more you get on stage, the more you know how to use this. You become more comfortable with the process, you put your make-up on, you get your costume on, your call comes, you go on stage and do what you’ve been trained to do. You get over that hurdle: ‘can I do it, I don’t know, is it going to be good enough.’” In his second season, he danced his first principal role, James in La Sylphide: “I have Scottish roots, so for me this was super special. I got to wear the kilt and everything. My dad was quite proud of me. It was really a beautiful journey.” He was promoted to first soloist and dancing a lot of principal roles while starting to perform at galas: “Stuff just kind of built. I developed a wonderful fan base in China from random tv shows that I didn’t really know what they were but ended up on.”

But after a few seasons, Julian was growing restless. He wanted to become a principal, but as a foreigner in a Russian company, he felt the timing wasn’t the best (Russia had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea). He was also beginning to crave a different repertoire: “I think I was looking for some of these characters that would be truly challenging emotionally.” There were also personal considerations. His father was battling cancer and he wanted to support his family more. He was guesting and getting ready for his next moves when the pandemic struck. His father’s situation had worsened, and his mother asked him to come home. The world went into lock-down. When Julian tried to take the last flight out of Russia, the flight got cancelled. He was stuck. About a week and a half later, he finally got on a plane to go home. He arrived a day before his father passed away.

San Francisco and Munich

Julian was back in Montana, where he had started, not knowing what would be next, and how the arts would emerge from the pandemic. One day, while he was walking through Target, he got a call from Helgi Thomasson, the head of San Francisco Ballet, who offered him a contract. Julian left San Francisco Ballet at the end of Thomasson’s tenure and joined the Bayerische Staatsballett in Munich as a principal dancer at the beginning of the 2022/23 theatrical season: “I think fate guided me here. I really started this whole journey in Germany. When I went to the Bolshoi Academy for the first time, it was through a flight going through Germany.” Both of his sisters were dancing in Munich at the time, one with the company and the other with the junior company and he stayed with them in their apartment before going on to Moscow: “Ending up back here after this whole journey - it’s quite interesting to see the adventures life takes you on.”

The War in Ukraine

Given the central role of Russian ballet in Julian’s life, watching the war in Ukraine unfold has been particularly difficult: “It’s definitely heart-breaking, seeing my Ukrainian friends and my Russian friends being in this kind of situation because I really truly think that none of them wanted this. When I grew up in school, there were kids in my class that were Russian and I had friends that were Ukrainian, and it wasn’t this whole massive split of culture. There are quite a few Russian friends of mine that have left Russia and now don’t want to speak Russian. And I know a lot of people on both sides that are hurt in so many different ways. Art is supposed to bring us all together, it’s supposed to be healing. One of the ballets that I created – I got my bachelor’s degree in GITIS (the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts) - one of the ballets that I created was about the life of [artist] Nicholas Roerich. He has this beautiful quote that’s like ‘beauty saves the world, beauty heals.’ That is really the direction that I would love to see, that I want to see, that I dedicate my life towards seeing. And I know a lot of my classmates, a lot of my Ukrainian and Russian friends, have done the same with their lives, dedicated it to this art form and to beauty and bringing beauty to the stage. Some of my classmates, they start going to Bolshoi Ballet Academy because for them, it was a way out of poverty. For others, they were the oligarchs’ daughters, and it was a kind of status symbol. Everybody gets into it for a different reason, but at the same time, when you are on stage dancing, you are portraying a story, and it is almost like a different world. It is something that I think, hopefully, in the future, can go back to bringing people together.”

For Julian’s advice to young dancers and musicians, please click here.

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Christina Ezrahi