When Alicia Graff Mack taught her final ballet class to the spring graduating students of the dance department at the Juilliard School, it was a serene, filled with lots of laughter, inside jokes and memories, and a few tears. It was a celebratory session. She is a warm and kind teacher who sometimes calls herself Mama Mac, but she made herself cry a little.
“I’ve had that feeling in my chest all week,” she said.
They were the first students Mac had admitted since he became dean and dean five years ago. She and her students have been through much together, including the pandemic and the many changes she has brought to one of the most prestigious and influential dance programs in the country.
Mack, 44, represents change. She is the first and youngest black person to hold the position. Speaking at the office a few weeks before her graduation, she said every decision comes from the goal of increasing equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. But looking at these decisions, it’s also clear that she values continuity. During her lessons, she kept alluding to what she and her students had in common: her teachers and teachers. She called the class “a meditation on what holds them together,” and said, “It’s about connection, folks.”
Many of the changes the Mac introduced seemed long overdue. She added hip hop and West African dances. She brought in more women and choreographers of color than ever before in her Spring Dances series, in which her students study and perform classic works. Gone are the specialized ballet classes that were once separate for men and women. Anyone can now take a pointe class.
Some of these changes may annoy traditionalists. But it would be misleading to imagine such a chaos as controversial. Mac leads as gracefully as she dances. She understands balance. Under her guidance, the Juilliard dance department seems like a happy place.
“Changing the atmosphere” was one of her core goals. “When you create a place where people can be themselves, people don’t feel judged for who they are, what they look like, what they want to do with their lives, whether it’s concert dance, Broadway, or commercial production.” she said. — “And create a place where they can learn and grow.”
“What is your dream and how can you get there? That’s what I mean,” she added.
This attitude is rooted in her own experience. Raised in Columbia, Maryland, when she joined her theater of dance in Harlem at the age of 17, she quickly rose to prominence as a tall, long-limbed, and very graceful ballerina. However, she eventually had to quit after three years due to injuries from rheumatic disease. She enrolled at Columbia University, and by the time she graduated with a degree in history, she had recovered enough to return to dance theater triumphantly, but a year later she was racked with debt. The theater has been discontinued.
After being told he was too tall by the American Ballet Theater and the New York City Ballet, Mack reinvented himself again and became a star of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to great success. expand her writing style From modern to contemporary to hip hop. When her symptoms worsened after three years, she returned to school and she earned a master’s degree in nonprofit management. She accepted an offer from the Airey Company, which squeezed her out for a few more years before she moved on to teach dance at the University of Washington and Webster College in St. Louis. Born the child of her professor, she found her “happy place” at her university and realized that helping serious students on the brink of their careers was what she wanted to do, she said. said.
By this time, she was married and had two small children. When Ailey’s former executive director and mentor, Sharon Lachman, told her about opening Juilliard, she assumed Lachman was eyeing her endorsement. But Gluckman wanted Mack to apply. “And thanks to her husband’s encouragement, I realized that everything I’d ever done was prepared for a moment like this,” Mack said.
Coincidentally, the man who hired her was himself a new employee and former dancer. It was Damien Utzel, the star of the New York City Ballet and the new president of Juilliard in 2018. He said that Mack draws on her diverse experience. He appeared to be “someone who embodies the tradition of Juilliard” and at the same time “someone who tries to push us forward,” a symbol of change that guides and inspires people. “Everyone stood up when they saw her walking down her hallway,” he said.
There are quite a few traditions to embody. The Juilliard Dance Division was founded in 1951 by Martha Hill, an early member of the Martha Graham Dance Company and a pioneer in dance education. Hill’s vision for Juilliard was groundbreaking, teaching both modern dance and ballet, which were seen as opposing camps at the time. She has collected the best of both terms, José Limón and Anthony Tudor, and has produced a steady stream of field-changing alumni like Paul Taylor, Pina Bausch, Ohad Naharin and Robert Battle. . For decades, technically versatile Juilliard students were in top dance companies.
Mac realizes that the dance world has changed. “Concert dance opportunities are shrinking,” she says, and her corporate jobs are dwindling. More broadly, the dance company system as a whole has become more volatile, making the once post-Juilliard trajectory less viable for students. “What this means is that you are developing graduates of extraordinary scope,” she said. “At the same time, I have an entrepreneurial spirit and I think of myself as a brand, so I create opportunities even when there is no job.”
Mac now takes two years to compose. “In my generation, we thought of ourselves as the choreographer’s tools, but students are expected to improvise, collaborate and create. We need to give them more tools.” The new media course she added in 2019 proved its worth when the pandemic hit the following year.
Mack’s vision, she said, is for Juilliard dance to be a role model for the professional world. We are the alumni who will be the leaders in making those decisions. They have lived here for four years so they know it is possible. “
It begins with an audition process that is tailored to promote diversity. “They don’t all look the same or want to do the same thing,” Mack said. “There’s something magical about Juilliard students, they’re curious, but they don’t do it like their neighbors do.”
Mac hasn’t let go of his Juilliard past. Her required dance history course was “a bit problematic” in terms of who was left out, she says, but now focuses on the history of Juilliard itself. The lineage they belong to now, why they take classes,” she said. She makes more connections.
Juilliard students still study the techniques of Graham, Limon, Merce Cunningham and Lester Horton. Thérèse Capsilli, former member and artistic director of the Graham Company, who has taught at Juilliard since 1999, said Mack “respects pedigree” and “takes great care in preserving the craft of the masters.” I paid,” he said.
Mack reordered the course, establishing the foundation in the first two years and then branching out and experimenting in the next two years to expose students to a variety of contemporary practitioners. “It’s the same material, but it’s approached a little differently,” she said, noting that students have more options in how they adapt the technique.
Some of these changes are in response to today’s students, whom Mack called “bad words.” It’s not a rights issue, she argued. It’s about engagement. “Students want to be seen and heard, and want to be more self-directed in how they learn. If you want to create ready students, you have to start with how to teach a dance class.”
Hailey Winegarden, this year’s graduate, remembered the moment Mac stopped the dancers during an audition for Juilliard School. youWeingarden says that attitude explains why she feels at home at school.
As an aspiring ballet career, Weingarden wanted to dispel the widespread notion that Juilliard did not take the ballet form seriously. “We take ballet class every day,” she said. What Juilliard gave her, she added, was her newfound passion and greater scope for her choreography. “Every move enhances your ballet training, not undermines it,” she said.
Isaiah Day will spend another year at Juilliard, during which time he will become the newest member of the Ailey Company. This is another change that Mac introduces that allows students to complete their education while accepting job offers and starting the life of their dreams.
“When you grow up in the world of dance, the question is always, do you get a degree or just stay in the company,” Day said. And there’s a stigma around both. I am truly grateful to be able to seize this opportunity without wasting three years of work. “
Day called Graf “our biggest cheerleader” and “a change agent.” He credited her leadership for the feeling that everyone was included, saying that “all kinds of body types and skin tones and different expressions of what they wear in class and what they are interested in are welcome.” you can see.”
He said that the thought of leaving that environment makes him a little uneasy. “In the real world, things like this don’t always happen.” But he also said he finds inspiration: We intend to standardize on a small blueprint here. “
