It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but there was something about being in ballet class that attracted Michael Ann Mullikin ’04 right from the start.
“I thought I hated it, but – somehow – I always insisted on going back,” Mullikin remembers. “And, at the end of every year, I’d always say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it again.’ I always stuck with it.”
It was that persistence and dedication– requirements of any successful ballerina– that blossomed into a lifelong passion for dance. By the time the Maryland native reached high school, she was in the ballet studio six days a week.
“I loved the physicality of it,” she says. “I loved challenging my body.”
After high school, Mullikin mulled over the idea of “running away to New York to dance,” but, at the behest of her parents, she visited the College of Charleston, one of the few schools on the East Coast offering programs in both dance and arts management.
That distinctive feature was enticing to her, but it was a meeting with Robert Ivey, the College’s renowned dance professor, that solidified her decision to apply.
“He was so full of life and so welcoming. I could tell he would be a great mentor,” Mullikin recalls of the late educator and artistic director who also founded a ballet company in his name. “Robert Ivey is the primary reason I ended up at CofC. He had a big influence on my life.”
Throughout her years at the College, Mullikin danced with the Robert Ivey Ballet Company, performing at the Sottile Theatre and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. She also interned with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, where she learned the ins and outs of arts management.
“We took a lot of business classes with a focus on nonprofits and artistic endeavors,” Mullikin says. “We discussed building audiences, exposure, education and outreach.”
In the fall of 2004, after graduating with an arts management major and dance minor, Mullikin was an administrative intern at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. What started off as a three-month internship turned into eight years of employment, with Mullikin rising to manager of dance programming and general manager of the Kennedy Center’s dance company, Suzanne Farrell Ballet.
“I was starstruck seeing companies that I read about in dance magazines perform,” she says. “I’d peek in on the dancers working on a final piece, and it was like watching Picasso paint.”
The transition from dancing to behind-the-scenes management was natural for Mullikin, who had experience both on and off the stage. She kept up with trends in the business – soliciting performance opportunities, coordinating travel logistics and managing operating budgets.
“I loved solving those puzzles,” she says. “It let me be really creative and analytical.”
After eight years in D.C., Mullikin saw an opening for company manager at Pacific Northwest Ballet, which – with 46 full-time dancers – is one of the country’s largest ballet companies.
Mullikin joined the Seattle-based company in July 2012, serving as liaison between the company’s artistic director and executive director to help produce 12 weeks of ballet presentations each year, additional touring shows and more than 30 performances of The Nutcracker.
“I absolutely love it,” she says. “At the end of the day, I get to sit in on performances and know that, somewhere along the line, I helped to create that moment on stage.”
On any given day, Mullikin may find herself talking to presenters, negotiating tours, poring over contracts for licensing choreography, working with set designers or securing visas for foreign artists. No matter what her role, her passion for the art form is obvious.
“I love the expression of the music,” she observes. “I enjoy seeing how someone has chosen to interpret and convey the music to the audience.”
She’s also grateful for the opportunity to continue to work in the field.
“The career of a dancer is very short,” says Mullikin, “and I’m lucky I found a career that I can sustain. It’s almost like I want to say, ‘Pinch me.’”
After all, lasting love is what everyone is looking for – even if it doesn’t happen at first sight.
– Genevieve Peterson ’05
