Julian MacKay is a young ballet dancer famous not only by his ballet talent, technique and standing ovations in the main theatres around the world but also for being a person who promotes the classical art form in the reality of modern life.
01. Julian was born in "Big Sky Country" and "The Treasure State", Montana, the USA, the land of amazing nature and a lots of places to visit. And he is the first American, who graduated from both the upper and lower academies of the Bolshoi Ballet Academy (2015).
02. He is very close with his family. His sisters Maria Sascha and Nadia Khan are also ballet dancers and his younger brother Nicholas is a photographer, director and a classically Russian trained ballet dancer.
03. Julian won prestigious Prix de Lausanne 2015 and then he was a Prix de Lausanne apprentice with The Royal Ballet during the 2015/16 Season. He went on to join the Mikhailovsky Ballet Company (where he was working from 2016 to 2019).
04. His passionate and emotional way of dancing is based on the great technical basis, given by Russian ballet education and Julian's never ending practicing during all his career. He dances both classical and modern repertoire being fully involved in each piece or role he performs on the stage.
There you can see the photos of Julian and Ekaterina Chebykina by Nicholas MacKay taken during the rehearsing process and the premiere of "Molly Sweeney" ballet (by Alexey Kononov ) based on the play by Brian Friel in December 2019.
05. Julian speaks Russian fluently and loves Russian culture, for example he directed two ballets based on the Russian cultural legacy “The Little Humpbacked Horse” and the “Warrior of Light” (a ballet on the life of Nicholas Roerich, Russian painter & philosopher).
06. Being a creative person, Julian is interested in acting and fashion. He has a modeling experience (working with IMG Models) and considered as one of the most stylish people ballet world.
07. Julian is active in social media and his Instagram account has more than 130K followers around the world. He uses it not only for posting some photos (he is very handsome and could be popular just doing it!), but for communicating with people and creating a lot of interesting ballet and artistic content.
08. In 2019 Julian an Nicholas MacKay founded the MacKay Productions with the motto “CREATIVITY IS CONTAGIOUS PASS IT ON” which perfectly shows the main idea and goal of this Worldwide Production Company.
09. MacKay Productions and Julian himself support not only ballet dancers in their creative process but also art in general. Last year GM Art Foundation in collaboration with MacKay Productions organized the exhibitions in Art gallery named by Georgy Mikhailov, whose collection of art by Soviet and Russian painters who were “underground” ones their time, was a base of these very interesting for art lovers events in the end of 2019.
10. Now, during the difficult period of COVID-19 pandemy for all the world, when we all don't know when we will have an opportunity to see ballet in the big beautiful auditoriums, or in open air stages, Julian and Nicholas are continuing pass the creativity on by all the possible ways: videos, photo projects, live sessions in Instagram, etc. So, let's know and follow these young talented and creative people.
Text and sketch: Julia Sumzina (@js_artsreview )
Photos: Nicholas MacKay (@niczeusmackay )
We are also grateful to Alexey Kononov for the consultation and support.