It’s often said that alcoholics can’t begin to recover until they hit rock bottom. For Nick Mullikin, that moment came on April 13, 2015. With Erase the Night — premiering May 2–4, 2025, at TPAC’s Polk Theater as part of Nashville Ballet’s annual Attitude series — Mullikin, now Artistic Director and CEO of Nashville Ballet, has choreographed that very journey.
The 33-year-old former professional ballet dancer sat in his bedroom in Silver Spring, Maryland, overwhelmed by anxiety and stomach pains so severe he could no longer function. His ex-fiancée planned to leave him for good, and he was on the verge of losing yet another job. A decade earlier, he had dazzled audiences with athletic leaps in the great classical ballets of Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky. Now, he was teaching hip-hop to kindergartners.
“At that point, I finally just gave in and said somebody needs to take me to the hospital,” Mullikin tells The Nashvillian. “Thankfully, I was still living with my ex-fiancée, who still cared, and she drove me to the hospital. I met with the nurses, and they were unable to identify the root cause of my stomach pain. One of the nurses asked me if there was anything I’d like to tell them. And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m an alcoholic.’ That was the first time I had uttered those words in front of anybody. The nurse turned to me and said, ‘you’re not alone, let me go and get you some help.’”
Building a ballet from recovery
Fast forward 10 years. Mullikin sits inside a large rehearsal studio at the Martin Center for Nashville Ballet. Now the artistic director and CEO of Nashville Ballet, he watches company dancers Anneliese Guerin, Sarah Pierce, and Colette Tilinski rehearse a scene from his new work, Erase the Night.
Mullikin signals to Rehearsal Director Kate Linsley to start the pre-recorded soundtrack. Stark cello chords by composer Jordan Lehning reverberate through the space. Guerin, Pierce, and Tilinski move slowly backward, turn, and flow through a sequence of refined, elegant steps. One could almost believe they’re watching a lost scene from Swan Lake. Then, with a gesture never seen in the choreography of Marius Petipa, Tilinski’s hand begins to tremble uncontrollably, breaking the illusion.
A veteran choreographer with nearly a dozen original works for Nashville Ballet, Mullikin drew inspiration for this moment from his battle with alcohol. The tremors that appear in the choreography reflect his experience with withdrawal.
“People who’ve never tried to quit alcohol and experience these tremors don’t know how scary it can be,” Mullikin says. “In fact, I kept drinking for a long time because I was terrified of experiencing withdrawal tremors.”
Erase the Night is part of Nashville Ballet’s annual Attitude series, which also features new works by choreographers Jennifer Archibald and Penny Saunders.
May 2–4, 2025
TPAC’s Polk Theater
Purchase Tickets
Choreography as conversation
Still, Erase the Night isn’t a memoir in motion. Mullikin aimed to address addiction and isolation as universal experiences, while offering a message of recovery and hope. With support from an Our Town Creative Placemaking Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he got to work.
The 45-minute dance centers on a character named Sam — a gender-neutral name chosen to emphasize addiction’s indiscriminate reach. Sam’s life unravels. She loses her partner. In a heartbreaking moment, she spots him at a café and begs him to return. He refuses. Her descent hits bottom.
Read more: Nick Mullikin’s Abyss: A Digital Ballet on Mental Health
Stylistic departures from tradition
Erase the Night includes music by the composer and producer Jordan Lehning and singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews. The title comes from one of Andrews’ songs, which she performs live during the show — a longstanding feature of Nashville Ballet’s Attitude series. It reflects a common desire among alcoholics: to wake up and erase what happened the night before.
Stylistically, the work uses only flat shoes, distancing itself from classical ballet’s pointe work. Yet Mullikin uses the full range of his dancers’ abilities to move seamlessly from bare feet to balletic grace. The angularity, athleticism, and emotionalism of modern dance become more pronounced as the scenes become grittier.
Guerin, Pierce, and Tilinski meet the challenge. But even seasoned dancers like Tilinski, who has performed in Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, faced new demands. “Learning new choreography is of course always a challenge,” she says. “But in Erase the Night, I had to educate myself about alcoholism before I could dance the part.”
Pierce, who joined the Nashville Ballet in 2016 after a stint with the Boston Ballet, notes the difficulty of creating a character. “Nick built his characters around us, so we really had to invent these roles ourselves,” she says. “We couldn’t look at what other dancers had done before.”
Guerin, a Washington state native, concedes she didn’t expect to dance a piece about alcoholism and isolation. “But I’ve worked with Nick for a while, so I’m comfortable with his ideas,” she says. “This dance didn’t strike me as coming completely from out of left field.”
Until last year, Mullikin shared his past struggles with alcohol only with his closest circle of friends. But the 10th anniversary of his sobriety prompted reflection. Maybe telling his story could help others. It was time to start a conversation.
Beyond the stage
Nashville Ballet’s NEA grant included a vital outreach component. To raise awareness about addiction, Nashville Ballet collaborated with the State of Tennessee and the National Alliance on Mental Illness to host a series of community conversations. These gatherings have featured people sharing their own stories of addiction and isolation, health professionals discussing the science of addiction, and health care facilities providing information about different treatment options.
“Our goal at Nashville Ballet is to use our art to have a positive impact on the community,” Mullikin says. “This is how we live our mission — by reaching out and sharing valuable information, and by improving lives through the transformative power of art.”
A life in motion
Art has always been central to Mullikin’s life. Born in 1982 in Madison, Wisconsin, he began dancing at the age of two. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t a body in motion and recalls family members telling him he was a runner before a crawler.
Early on, he struggled with coordination, for which a doctor recommended creative movement classes. As luck would have it, his preschool had just introduced a dance session before nap time. Soon, teachers began telling his mother that her son wasn’t just coordinated — he was gifted. Formal dance lessons followed.
His mother first enrolled him in tap dance lessons, which, according to Mullikin, “One hundred percent did not take.” But ballet lessons worked out brilliantly. He enrolled in the Monona Academy of Dance in Wisconsin. Before long, he appeared in his first production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The role saw him emerging from Mother Ginger’s dress as one of those adorable little Bon Bons.
Finding a path
Although he thrived in dance, his homelife suffered. His mother battled alcoholism, and the disease would ultimately take her life. As a teen, he attended a summer program at the Virginia School of the Arts in Lynchburg. Mullikin recalls being truly inspired by the school’s dance faculty, and at age 16, he jumped at the chance to leave his stressful home and study in Virginia. One of his classmates was another 16-year-old dancer named Jon Upleger, who would later become well known in Music City as one of Nashville Ballet’s principal soloists.
At 19, Mullikin joined Houston Ballet as an apprentice. Within a year, he earned a spot with Ballet West in Salt Lake City. He danced with the company for four years until a shoulder injury ended his career. Three surgeries couldn’t fix it.
Addiction intervenes
Mullikin pivoted. He earned a government degree from the University of Texas at Austin, then worked in strategic consulting in Philadelphia. But the drinking worsened. A year later, he landed a job with the Washington Ballet as company manager. His addiction ended that, too.
Then, on April 13, 2015, Mullikin hit bottom. After completing inpatient detox, he heard from Upleger about a job opening in Nashville — a front desk position at the Nashville Ballet. Newly sober, he took the job and started over.
Paul Vasterling, then artistic director, saw potential. Mullikin quickly climbed the ranks, first as school director and then as director of NB2 (Nashville Ballet’s Second Company), where he commissioned over 20 new works. He later served as associate artistic director, eventually assuming the role when Vasterling retired in 2023.
Renewal
Now, ten years to the month after he hit bottom, Mullikin leads Nashville Ballet into its next chapter. And with Erase the Night, it begins by presenting a testimony of hope and renewal.
“I see Nashville Ballet creating something here that resonates on a global scale,” he says. “In producing new works like Erase the Night, I see us achieving a level of distinction on par with American Ballet Theater and the world’s great companies. That prominence comes not from size, but from original works you can’t see anywhere else.”