Artist Spotlight
 | | | Julianne Kepley |
Soloist Julianne Kepley
9/26/2007
Julianne Kepley recently joined San Francisco Ballet as a soloist. Raised in Atlanta, she began her career at Atlanta Ballet. After eight years of performing a repertory rich in Balanchine and new works, she danced for the Joffrey Ballet for five years. In the following Artist Spotlight, Kepley discusses her early influences and her reasons for joining San Francisco Ballet.
Listen to a podcast of this interview.
Backstage: What are your first memories of dance?
I used to jump around the house a lot. My mom and dad always had music playing in the house, and I was the youngest of three kids and quite free to do what I wanted. I felt that I was always moving around. My mom thought that taking me to the local recreation center for ballet and tap classes might be a good idea. The tap class was okay, but after a half-hour, when the teacher told everyone to put on their ballet slippers, I don’t know why, but I was so excited. The teacher told my mother that she needed to take me to a real ballet school.
Also, the first time I saw [Balanchine’s] Serenade I was about eight years old. The music was so beautiful, and the curtain went up and that first vision of Serenade—all those women standing there and the light coming from the side of the stage. I remember everything about it: what I was wearing, where we sat, how my mom had fixed my hair. I think I held my breath. I knew from that moment that dancing ballet is what I wanted to do with my life.
So you knew that young?
Oh yes, definitely, definitely.
What kind of music did your parents listen to?
My dad loved Johnny Mathis and Neil Diamond. My mother loved all kinds of music. And we listened to music on the radio.
Are there other dancers in your family?
No, not a one! My mom was an Army brat, so moving around a lot she had the opportunity to take Japanese dance when she lived in Japan, and she lived in Hawaii when she was a teenager so she took Hawaiian dance. She has a program from the Ballet Russe from when she was very young. I think she would have liked to dance. She’s very graceful. But other than that, there aren’t any other dancers in my family.
You began your career at Atlanta Ballet and danced there from 1994 to 2002. Tell us more about that company, its repertory, and some of the roles that stand out for you there.
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| Julianne Kepley rehearses Balanchine's
Divertimento at
Stern Grove. © Erik Tomasson |
When I was growing up, it was directed by Robert Barnett, who danced at New York City Ballet at the same time Helgi Tomasson danced there. There was a lot of Balanchine in the repertory. That’s the Nutcracker I grew up doing [at Atlanta Ballet School]. I also danced Four Temperaments, Allegro Brillante, Stars and Stripes—all that good, solid Balanchine.
In 1994, John McFall took over the company right after I joined, and the repertory became much more eclectic. He brought in more modern choreographers such as Lila York, David Parsons, Danny Ezero, Stanton Welch. I worked with Stanton twice while I was there.
[Atlanta Ballet] is a very small company—only 21 dancers, plus apprentices and students. Nearly everyone in that company was of soloist or principal caliber, because you had to be. We all danced important roles all the time. The workload was quite heavy. I was rehearsing six hours a day all the time. It was also much more of a tight little family. And my whole family lives in Atlanta, so that’s home for me. It’s a much different way of life than living here.
In 2002 you joined the Joffrey. How did that opportunity come about, and why did you decide to leave Atlanta, where you had grown up?
I left home because I got itchy to see if I could have the same success that I’d had in Atlanta. I did a lot of principal roles there. After I’d been there for so long, I got itchy to see if I could do the same the same kind of things where no one knew me. Right around the time I was thinking about leaving Atlanta, a friend who had danced with the Joffrey mentioned that they were looking for a strong principal woman within my height range. So I auditioned, and they accepted me. So I sold my house, my husband quit his job, and we moved to Chicago.
How would you compare the atmospheres of Atlanta Ballet and the Joffrey?
Joffrey’s repertory is an animal of its own being. There are a number of works that no other company does, and there are also a lot of older pieces that are rarely performed today—Massine’s Parade, Rite of Spring, those kinds of ballets. There were also a number of [Sir Frederick] Ashton pieces that aren’t performed. Two seasons ago we did the first production of Ashton’s Cinderella outside of Europe.
There aren’t as many new works at the Joffrey. So that was much different—to do established, much older works in contrast to Atlanta, where we did many more world premieres.
While at the Joffrey you participated in Robert Altman’s feature-length film, The Company. Can you describe that experience?
Filming began right after I arrived at the Joffrey. We had a lot of fun doing it. It’s a crazy process trying to film dance the way that they do. Movies are sort of "hurry up and wait." You get ready at 7am in the morning and then sit around until 2pm waiting to be filmed. So we were having class at 7am in the morning, which is horrible on your body. . . .
Altman was a great guy—a lot of fun to work with. He’s a real genius and such an artist. He had a singular vision of the way he wanted the film to be. Almost his whole crew had worked with him many times before. It’s very difficult to fit dance into that process—sometimes quite tortuous.
The movie has its cheesy elements, but compared with other dance movies it does a good job of showing what life is like in the studio.
So how did the move to San Francisco Ballet come about?
That was another itch! I decided that five years in Chicago was long enough. When I started thinking about companies to audition for, I thought, if I’m going to go bigger and better, where do you go after the Joffrey? I wanted to be in the company that had the best repertory in the nation, and [San Francisco Ballet] is definitely it. So San Francisco was at the top of my list. I got together my resume, and my husband put together a lovely performance dvd, and I sent it out to about five different dance companies. San Francisco Ballet was the first company to contact me. I received an email telling me that Mr. Tomasson was interested in seeing me, and I just about fell off my kitchen stool when I saw that!
What are your impressions of the Company?
It’s an amazing, talented company of people all working hard. Strangely down to earth. Usually places that are so competitive aren’t so down to earth, but everyone has been wonderful. It’s a great surprise. That has to translate to the stage, which is one reason the company is so magnetic. I got to see the company perform Divertimento and Artifact Suite. It made me want to run up on stage and be part of it.