By Dov Kornits
“I’m in Sydney, yeah. I’m staying in the city right now,” US-born dancer and actress Juliet Doherty says over the phone to FilmInk. “I’ve just finished up some shows with Joel Burke. We did the Ballet International Gala, BIG, in Sydney and Melbourne, so I’ve just been hanging around, and tomorrow I go back to the States.”
Juliet Doherty is currently expertly walking the line between her two major skill sets and life passions: dance and acting. A dancer since childhood, Doherty has appeared in major productions around the world, and is a two-time gold medallist at the largest dance competition in the world, The Youth America Grand Prix. An obvious fit for the small but popular dance subset of the coming-of-age film, Doherty impressed in front of the camera as well, appearing in 2016’s High Strung: Free Dance, 2018’s Driven To Dance and 2019’s The Accompanist. Doherty gets her meatiest and most challenging role yet with the Australian dance drama The Red Shoes: Next Step, in which she appears opposite the aforementioned Joel Burke, one of this country’s leading young dancers.
“We crossed paths a few years back at The Victorian Dance Festival,” Doherty explains. “So that was officially the first time that we met. He then contacted me a few months later about BIG back in 2019. But the first thing we actually ended up working on was the film, because BIG was postponed through Covid, and the film went ahead. That was the first thing we ended up doing together. And then, just a few months later, we did the first round of BIG performances. When I landed in Australia to shoot the film, it was still during the quarantine period, so I’d spent two weeks in a hotel room staring at a brick wall. I eventually got out of quarantine, and flew to Brisbane. Joel was the first person I connected with. I met his mom, and his girlfriend at the time. We all became very close.”
A sparkling, effervescent but gutsy and thoughtful coming-of-age drama, The Red Shoes: Next Step follows Juliet Doherty’s talented young dancer, Sam, whose world crumbles after an unexpected life-changing event. Emotionally shattered, Sam walks away from dancing and ballet, but life eventually leads back to her old dance school. An old rival, a long-time crush, and her former dance teacher eventually begin to guide Sam back to what she loves most.
Directed by actress-turned-filmmaker Joanne Samuel (The Legend Of The Five) and her son Jesse A’Hern, The Red Shoes: Next Step is propelled by its stunning dance sequences, but also has a strong focus on character, with excellent supporting performances from Joel Burke (as Sam’s longtime crush) and Lauren Esposito (as Sam’s childhood friend, Eve).
Was it a fun set?
“It was really fun, but I had a lot to do during the film, so I didn’t get a lot of hangout time. Most of my time was on set. The material was quite involved too, with all of the dance stuff, and then the dialogue. My character’s going through a lot throughout the film. There aren’t many moments where I can just be joyful and super relaxed. I was always trying to keep myself in a space where I could protect my energy for work. But at the same time, absolutely, we had the best time. With the lockdowns happening as well, we all just became very close, and got closer and closer as the shoot went along.”
Was there a big difference between working in the States and working here in Australia?
“It just feels more like you’re working with your friends here. This felt like going in every single day, and seeing my friends, or my Aussie family which I had all of a sudden just acquired when I landed here. It was nice. I have Australian connections too. My dad is from Brisbane, and he has his brothers over here. I’ve also worked with an Australian dancewear company since I was fifteen, which is ten years now. I have dual citizenship too, so I’m able to come back and forth quite easily. But usually, I’m out here for work, because my dad lives in the States, and I grew up in the States where my mom is from.”
How did you get into dance?
“I’ll tell you. My great-grandparents on my mom’s side started a dance school in 1945 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So, I’m actually the fourth generation of dancers in my family. That’s pretty much what everyone does. After school, we come to the studio and it’s a little bit like free babysitting, but we all love it. It’s just a bunch of artists. My family is made up of musicians, and dancers, and actors. It’s a passion we all share. So that’s how I started. My mom was my teacher. She noticed that I naturally had an inclination towards ballet at a young age, so she started taking me to ballet competitions. I ended up winning a couple of awards at the world’s largest ballet competition, which is called The Youth America Grand Prix. That afforded me a scholarship to go and train at a pre-professional ballet school in San Francisco. That was kind of my path into doing it professionally.”
Did you ever push back? Did you have a rebellious streak?
“I always did. My mom and I always fight… maybe now not so much. But we just fought all the time. She would kick me out of class. She would kick me out of rehearsals. I would just always be pushing back, but I loved it. I could be very stubborn with her and I would always have something to say or a different opinion. But also, she would choreograph me for these competitions. And it was an amazing opportunity to work with her in that capacity. Even when I was ten-years-old, she was very welcoming of my ideas in the process. A lot of choreographers aren’t like that. That helped develop my confidence and artistic ability at a young age, and I felt like I had a voice in the process as well. I’m really grateful for that. But then, when it came to talking back, she’d be like, ‘All right…get out!’”
So, what about acting? How did that happen for you?
“I did some dancing and singing in children’s music videos when I was little with a woman named Susie Tallman. She was my voice coach, and she was making albums at the time. But when I first started acting, I was cast in this short indie film. I was just spotted on the street in New York. I was actually there for a ballet competition or an audition at the time. And someone came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m casting this film and you look like you would suit it, so let’s do some Skype auditions.’ I ended up coming back to New York to shoot that project, which was this indie, sci-fi short film called The Portal. I was fourteen at the time. That was my introduction into screen acting. I had a lot of fun, but I was still very much on the dance track at the time, trying to join a ballet company, and thinking about focusing on that. When I was eighteen, I was then approached by some other indie filmmakers to make a feature film, which had a dance narrative. They were really persistent about getting in touch, so I ended up making that with them. That’s when I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I want to do a bit more of both.’”
Can you just be an actor? Doing a role that doesn’t involve dance? How do you feel about all that? You’ve just scored a role in a big movie…
“I don’t have any issues with people being like, ‘Oh, she’s a dancer that acts.’ I don’t really mind. I would love to continue doing roles that let me express other modalities. Yes, I’ve just been cast in a new film in the John Wick franchise. It follows a female protagonist played by Ana De Armas, but it’s in the same universe. The movie is actually called Ballerina, so I do dance in the film. It’s an action film, and it’s the first time I’ve learned how to train with weapons. It’s just a completely different story from the usual scripts I’ve worked with.”
Do you practice acting in the same way that you practice dance?
“Yeah, I do. I’ve done many classes, and usually when I’m auditioning for things, I have a coach. I’ll bring my auditions to him, and we’ll talk through things, and talk through ideas before I tape something or go into the room. Or I’ll just go through periods of time where I’m touching base with a class, consistently, weekly. Or I’ll find acting coaches that I’ve heard great things about. I’ll see that they’re putting on a four-day workshop or something like that, and I’ll try and get into that either in person or via Zoom.”
How does the ballet of The Red Shoes connect to the film?
“I’m just going to riff on what my interpretation was, but I think the theme of The Red Shoes ballet runs in parallel to the film. It parallels to the journey that my character, Sam, is going through. In The Red Shoes ballet, the character is enticed by the shoes, which could be a metaphor for anything. And then, she puts them on. She’s made a mistake, obviously, because now she’s locked into her choice, and she has to dance to death. That could be, in Sam’s case, the choices that she made with her best friend, Eve, to go down a certain path. And now, she has to deal with those consequences. In the script, dance is used as a tool for healing.”
Is dance healing?
“I think so, yes. It’s a way of communicating that I really understand. I really understand people when I’m moving with them. When I need to process things or maybe take a break from thinking about a lot of stuff, it’s very healing to just put on music and move.”
