Alicia Graf Mack

Alicia Graf Mack (née Alicia J. Graf, In November 2024, it was announced that Mack would leave Juilliard in 2025 to become artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Early life Graf Mack was born in San Jose, California, and grew up in Columbia, Maryland to a white father and Black mother who was a professor at Howard University. Graf Mack stated she is distantly related to Russian painter and designer Léon Bakst, who had designed costumes and sets for Ballets Russes. She started dancing at age 3, and competitively at age 12. She studied at a public high school and trained at Ballet Royale Academy, and attended summer intensives at American Ballet Theatre and School of American Ballet.

Career

While a senior in high school, Graf Mack took class with Dance Theatre of Harlem, a predominantly African-American ballet company, and was offered an apprenticeship by the company's founder Arthur Mitchell. She relocated to New York to join the company at age 17 In 2008, she left due to an injury. She moved to St. Louis, Missouri to study an MA in nonprofit management at Washington University in St. Louis, while teaching ballet and modern dance at Webster University. After she graduated, she joined Webster University as full-time faculty.

In 2011, Graf Mack rejoined the Ailey company, and danced the company premiere of Wayne McGregor's Chroma in 2013. She retired from the company in 2014.

Graf Mack formed a dance collective, D(n)A Arts Collective, with her sister Daisha Graf, a commercial dancer. As a guest dancer, she had danced with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and for Beyoncé, John Legend, Andre 3000 and Alicia Keys. She is also a contributor of Pointe Magazine, including the 2014 June/July cover story, which featured Ashley Murphy, Ebony Williams and Misty Copeland, all of whom are African-American ballet dancer.

In 2018, it was announced that Graf Mack would take over as the Director of Dance Division at Juilliard School.

Beginning July 1, 2025, Mack became artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the largest modern dance company in the United States. She credits her earlier experience as a dancer at Ailey, "the idea that your identity, body type and uniqueness are seen as an asset" as motivating one of her her goals as artistic director. "We have dancers of color, dancers who represent the beauty of the world in our company, in our schools — extremely diverse, and we always want to amplify and honor that to be an example for the rest of the field and the rest of the world."