Brooklyn Mack is Back Onstage, Starting With The Washington Ballet
Washington Ballet audiences are enjoying a familiar face this Nutcracker season: Brooklyn Mack. The star dancer, who spent nine years at the company before embarking on a full-time guest-artist career in 2018, has returned for select performances as the Cavalier through December 8. For Mack, it marks not only a return to his former stomping grounds, but a rejuvenation of his performance career after a partial seasons as interim director, and then two years as artistic director, of Columbia Classical Ballet in South Carolina.
Mack, who resigned from CCB in September, says that new TWB artistic director Edwaard Liang texted him not too long ago to invite him to perform with the company. “We have a pretty deep history,” says Mack. Liang had choreographed and staged several works on TWB during Mack’s time there, and, in 2023, when Liang was directing BalletMet, he invited the dancer to guest-star in his production of Swan Lake.
“It feels so good to be back, and especially to return to this [Nutcracker] production and to perform for the DC audience again,” says Mack. “It’s been great seeing old friends and colleagues,” he continues, adding that it’s been particularly fun to see how dancers who were young at the time of his departure have grown and developed. His Sugar Plum Fairy for these performances is longtime TWB dancer Maki Onuki. “She’s just a brilliant dancer,” he says, adding that they had previously partnered together in the company’s productions of Frederick Ashton’s The Dream and John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet.
While Mack is thrilled to be guesting with his former company, he is returning a changed man—the years away have been both exhilarating and exhausting, and tested his resilience. He talked to Pointe about how this period shaped him, and what he’s planning to do next.
The Freelance Life
Mack left TWB in August 2018 when contract negotiations with former artistic leadership fell apart. He considered trying to join another company. “But I knew whatever contract I could find [so last-minute] would probably not be a forever-home situation,” he says. Mack, who had been performing as a guest artist during summer breaks since 2006, decided to pursue freelancing full-time. “As soon as I made that determination, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.”
Almost immediately, Mack began working with New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck on a reimagined version of Petrushka for the New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival. He went on to book engagements with Hong Kong Ballet, State Ballet of Georgia, American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem, English National Ballet, and “galas all over the place,” Mack says. He rarely had time off in between. “It was a really fortunate time in my life.”
In February 2020, Mack returned home to Columbia, South Carolina, to take a short break from performing. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down a month later, he thought the forced rest might be good for him. But as it dragged on, he grew depressed as he processed not only the pandemic but the sudden death of friend and fellow dancer Danny Tidwell, and the social unrest of the Black Lives Matter movement. “Dance had always been my therapy; I had so much pent up inside and no medium to express it.”
That fall he got another call from Peck, who was working with William Forsythe and CLI Studios to create The Barre Project, a 30-minute online dance film. She asked him to join her, which helped motivate him to get back in shape, and soon enough he was back to booking engagements.
An Unexpected Detour
Mack accepted a new opportunity in November 2021, when his longtime teacher, Redenko Pavlovich, left his artistic director post at Columbia Classical Ballet. The board asked Mack, who had trained at CCB’s once-affiliated school, to take the helm. “Initially I said no, because I was trying to get back to dancing,” he says. “But I saw what the dancers were going through, director-less, and it wasn’t good.” He agreed to get them through the rest of the season as interim artistic director. “I ended up staying for three years.”
Leading a small company meant wearing many hats, but he’d already acquired a lot of skill sets. “I was writing contracts from scratch, something I had learned from my years as a guest artist,” he says. Mack says that due to lack of infrastructure, he put in 14- to 16-hour days doing everything from editing music; revamping the website; writing capital campaign, donor, and sponsor letters; and meeting with local government officials. “All the while, I was also teaching and coaching,” he says, although the company eventually hired a rehearsal director.
One big challenge was that Mack felt there were too few performances. “I wanted to give as many opportunities for the dancers to feel fulfilled, but also for audiences to get what they need. That was the trickiest balance, because we had very few shows.” Mounting financial constraints made that harder—he says last season, a pandemic loan repayment led the board to cancel CCB’s spring production indefinitely, while a reduction in city funding resulted in further cuts, including reducing the pointe shoe budget. Additionally, he felt unsettled by what he says were conflicts of interest within the company’s executive leadership.
Mack says he tried negotiating with the board to improve conditions. When that proved unsuccessful, he resigned, feeling he could not ensure quality productions or the health and safety of the dancers.
Back in Action
Now, Mack is fully focused on resuming his performance career. “It’s a new horizon for me,” he says. “It was not my intent to curb my dance career to this extent.” He has two more Nutcracker appearances this month (in Greenville, North Carolina, December 13–15, with Joffrey Ballet’s Victoria Jaiani, and in Dallas, Texas, December 21–23, with ABT principal Christine Shevchenko), and is in the process of confirming guest-artist engagements in 2025. He also plans to produce special projects and galas.
As for directing full-time again? “I really enjoyed working with the dancers, helping them stretch their capabilities. And the experience helped me to realize some of the things I was capable of, because I exceeded some of my projections,” says Mack. “But now I’m fully focusing on finishing out the last chapter of my career as strong as possible.”
