Sisters Olivia and Mary Thomas MacKinnon competed over the lead role in The Nutcracker at a special performance in Mobile, Alabama. Leotards on, hair up, they each embodied Clara in their own way—and they were ready to shine. Only, the stage curtain looked suspiciously like table linens. The ticket sellers resembled their three younger siblings. The dancer who played the Prince, just like their older brother. The audience? Their parents.
The rivalry mounted between the two girls—Mary Thomas and Olivia, then 10 and 6—until seconds before curtain call, when they came to an agreement: They’d share the role. The audience and ticket sellers went wild.
“The living room floor was our first stage,” Olivia, now 29, told me with a laugh.
These days, their stage is slightly bigger. The sisters both won roles in the vaunted New York City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, performing in a sold-out theater of 2,544 people each night. They play different parts, but always seem to stay connected. “When she’s out there, I almost feel like I’m out there too,” said Mary Thomas, now 25. “I’m also living the role.”
As Dewdrop in “Waltz of the Flowers,” Olivia spins her leg around herself in continuous pirouettes and weaves through fourteen dancers in pastel tutus who form a sort of ballerina bouquet. Mary Thomas is a member of the Corps de Ballet and can be spotted this Nutcracker season in the roles of Snowflake, Demi-Flower—and Hot Chocolate, which involves sets of tour jetés in a ten-pound brown velvet dress. “We try to make it look easy,” she told me.
The sisters are not only co-dancers, they are also roommates, sharing the same Upper West Side apartment. This time of year, however, Lincoln Center acts as their second home. The New York City Ballet serves up George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker 49 times from opening weekend on November 29 until after the new year. The show boasts 90 dancers, 62 musicians, 40 stagehands, and more than 125 children, in two alternating casts. More than 100,000 people attend the production annually.
Olivia and Mary Thomas have separate spaces backstage at Lincoln Center, but even those boundaries blur. “If I need to have a quick little cry or if I need some advice or if I’m upset after rehearsal, I go to her dressing room,” Mary Thomas said. Then she smiled and added: “Sometimes I just steal a snack bar.”
In past Nutcracker seasons, the MacKinnons performed together in “Waltz of the Snowflakes,” a dreamy dance to Tchaikovsky’s symphony underneath cascading confetti snow. This year, during fleeting moments in the finales of certain performances, the two sisters get to lock eyes as they each extend into an arabesque.
“There’s a calmness and peace in knowing we’re both onstage,” Olivia said.
Ballet is in the MacKinnon sisters’ blood. Their mother, Dana, practiced at the Classical Ballet of Mobile from age 3 to 16 before working in marketing at Ralph Lauren, marrying T. Bruce MacKinnon, and having six children. Olivia and Mary Thomas’s younger sister, Lily Grace, 20, dances and teaches ballet in Mobile in between semesters studying interior design at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Each of the MacKinnon girls started ballet at the age of 3. “Even when there wasn’t any music on, Olivia would just move,” Dana said. At 15, Olivia moved to New York City to become a full-time student at the School of American Ballet. Mary Thomas followed four years later.
“It was a big move for both of us. The only family we have here is each other,” Olivia said.
It paid off. At 17, while she was still in high school, Olivia earned a contract with New York City Ballet, and five years later, at the same age, Mary Thomas earned a coveted spot as well. During the pandemic they kept up their regimen at home in Alabama, converting an upstairs room into a little ballet studio and practicing together.
“There was really never any competition with any of them. To me, as a mother, that was the biggest blessing of it all,” Dana said.
“The living room floor was our first stage,” Olivia said.
Ballerinas are at once artists and athletes: dainty figures and muscular machines. The tulle and sparkly eye shadow belie brutal training. Mary Thomas, as a Corps dancer, performs in nearly every show of The Nutcracker. Olivia performs in three to five shows a week, while rehearsing five other ballets for the winter season when she’s not onstage. “There are so many shows,” Olivia said. “The end of seasons are challenging, as your body feels depleted after so many weeks of dancing without enough recovery time.”
The sisters said they rarely argue. “If anything, people find our fights really funny in the company because we are so brutally honest that it’s just hilarious to outsiders,” Mary Thomas said.
Their connection can help other dancers, the associate artistic director, Wendy Whelan, told me. “I think having multiple siblings within the group can help to reinforce the idea of camaraderie and ‘family’ within the overall company. They help stir up extra warmth and energy.”
Whelan pointed out that while the sisters have similarities, each has her own unique style. Olivia characterized her technique as precise, romantic, and peaceful. Mary Thomas described hers as spirited, dynamic, and athletic. “I enjoy sneaker ballets,” she said. “You can relax in a way that you can’t in a classical ballet.”
Both sisters want to help train the next generation of ballerinas. “We try to never take for granted the gift we’ve been given to follow this dream,” Olivia said. “Our priorities are definitely different than the average twentysomething, and our life is kind of different, but I wouldn’t change anything.”
