Photography by Billie Winter
If you’ve been to Pacific Northwest Ballet any time in the last 20 years, you’ve likely seen Lucien Postlewaite. He’s now in his 18th year with the company, and his 13th as a principle dancer—among the longest tenure for a male principal dancer—and he’s still seemingly everywhere: dancing Cinderella on opening night in a generous partnership with fellow principal Leta Biasucci, emblazoning promotional billboards throughout the city, taking a memorable turn as a heartbroken teenager in Romeo et Juliette, and dancing with the spiky energy required of contemporary fare like Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels.
Not every ballet dancer can manage this kind of range—or maintain it for as many years as he has—but whether partnering with ballerinas as a go-to story ballet prince or embracing the animalistic verve of Crystal Pite’s Emergence, Postlewaite makes it look easy. His expression is always legible from the cheap seats, his smile magnetic, and when he retires at the end of the company’s current season, he’ll leave a prince-sized hole in his wake.
He’s ready, though, he says, sitting in PNB’s library, flanked by his little red-and-white King Charles Spaniel, Dudley. Postlewaite is originally from California, and attended New York City Ballet’s feeder program the School of American Ballet. Peter Boal, artistic director at PNB, met Postlewaite on the first day of a summer course there, when the dancer was a 13-year-old student. “One of us knew what tremendous potential this young dancer possessed,” said Boal in a statement announcing Postlewaite’s retirement. During a summer course at PNB, Postlewaite’s talent also caught the eye of then–artistic directors Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, who offered him an apprenticeship. But Postlewaite was holding out for City Ballet, so he turned Russell and Stowell down.
When the New York company came through with the offer of an apprenticeship, he was elated. He was 17, and went out drinking to celebrate. But when he got back to the dorms, he got caught. “I lost my apprenticeship and was sent home: the poster child for the school’s new drugs and alcohol program,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2008. The ballet world rarely gives young dancers second chances for being normal teenagers.
“I got so depressed I lost my confidence and will to dance. I was out for five months. I didn’t have a job or any place to go,” he told the PI. But Postlewaite reconnected with Russell and Stowell. They didn’t have a spot for him at the time, but suggested that he join the school for another year. He joined the company as an apprentice in 2003.
He’s the last dancer still in the company to have been hired by Stowell and Russell—and has had the one of the longest careers among the company’s male principal dancers.
Postlewaite had an unusually quick trajectory up the company’s ranks, with promotions to corps de ballet in 2004, soloist in 2007, and principal in 2008. While his repertoire at NYCB would likely have been limited by that company’s pure focus on the artistic legacy of George Balanchine, dancing with PNB, punctuated by a formative, years-long stint with Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, allowed Postlewaite greater creative freedom and a broader range of roles. He’s danced plenty of Balanchine ballets—the title role in Prodigal Son was a pivotal one for a young Postlewaite—but he’s also had the chance to work closely with choreographers like Czech contemporary dance-maker Jiří Kylián (“He changed the way I thought about performance”) and Jean-Christophe Maillot, who created roles for Postlewaite while he danced in Monaco.
While many ballet dancers are queer, their professional world doesn’t always reflect the spectrum of gender and sexuality of its performers. And more so than other dance forms, ballet is bound by strict gender roles. As a young dancer, says Postlewaite, “I had people say, ‘Make sure you don’t dance too gay,’ or ‘You’re too effeminate.’”
“I’ve always had to filter myself through the lens of a role,” says Postlewaite. “There isn’t really queer representation in ballet [roles], and so that part of me, that facet of me, which is a big part of me, doesn’t come on to stage.”
This rigidity is slowly, belatedly changing, as PNB and other dance companies—though not nearly enough of them—begin to evolve beyond some of the art form’s most damaging strictures. And some roles have allowed for greater integration of his queerness, recalls Postlewaite, including in Edwaard Liang’s The Veil Between Worlds, which explores themes of immigration, departure, and grief. “It’s not a story ballet, but the choreographer invited me to bring all of myself into the role,” Postlewaite says. After a performance at the Kennedy Center, Postlewaite came offstage with tears in his eyes. “That role feels like it integrates so fully who I am… I felt so seen and so full,” he says. And even some more traditional roles have afforded a greater feeling of alignment and freedom. Playing Romeo in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Romeo et Juliette allowed Postlewaite to draw on his own experiences to bring the character’s emotional experience to life. “It allowed me to share such a multitude of the range, the range of human experience,” he says.
This is one of the joys of seeing a dancer get older: When life experience can inform expression, it becomes legible from the audience in a new way. It’s a culmination of decades of creative growth and exploration—something possible only with longevity few ballet dancers get to experience. Ballet careers are short. Margot Fonteyn famously retired at age 60, but she’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s rare to see dancers continue to perform into their forties, something Postlewaite is acutely aware of. Some of his fellow company members are half his age. On a coworker’s 22nd birthday, he remembers, “That same week, I was turning 42, and I was like, ‘Dude, I am double your age.’ And that was wild to see an embodiment of what 21 years looks like. And then think, I’ve had two of those.
“Something that I’m proud of in my work is that all of these moments, the highs and the lows, I consider them part of my artistry,” says Postlewaite of what it’s like to dance with the inevitable life experience, both good and bad, that comes with being a person in their forties. “It’s part of my palette, my artistic range.”
Postlewaite will take his final bow on June 7, and in the months between now and then, he’ll dance in Red Angels, Giselle (the most goth ballet of all time, and probably a better adaptation of Wuthering Heights than “Wuthering Heights”), and Jessica Lang’s Ghost Variations.
There’s an old saying that dancers die twice: once when they shuffle off this mortal coil, and once when they stop dancing. But Postlewaite no longer sees it that way. “I remember thinking that this was the pinnacle of my life, and how special, how wonderful, but that, from there, I would just sort of wither, and if that’s all, I would be happy and grateful,” he says of ballet. “And now I’m in a place where I’m like, but this is the launch pad.” He’s looking forward to what’s next, and glad for where he’s been. “I guess I would just like to share some gratitude,” he says. “Gratitude for the audience, for this life that has given me so much.”
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Postlewaite was the longest-running male principle dancer with PNB. He is among the longest. We regret the error.