Columbia has yet another homecoming blockbuster occurring in October. Brooklyn Mack, who is a native of Elgin, recently took top awards at three international ballet competitions. Now he is coming home to dance the lead in Columbia Classical Ballet’s production of La Bayadere.

Mack started his studies with Columbia Classical Ballet’s Radenko Pavlovich, a former member of the Atlanta City Ballet who came to the United States in 1979 from Yugoslavia. His mission in Columbia has been to bring ballet in its true art form to a level of quality that one can find on the stages of New York, Paris or London. It is apparent that he has done so in the training of the dynamic Brooklyn Mack. Over the summer Mack won the gold medal at the Boston International Ballet Competition, the Grand Prix at the Istanbul Ballet Competition, and the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria.

“It has been very rewarding to see how much Brooklyn has progressed throughout these years,” Pavlovich says. “He has not only grown as a dancer but as an artist.”

Mack began his ballet training at age 12, thinking that dance training would enhance his football skills. Three years later he was studying at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, D.C., on a prestigious scholarship. After graduating, Mack apprenticed with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago before studying at the American Ballet Theatre Studio, the Orlando Ballet, and now the Washington Ballet, where he has been since 2009. This is the first time that Mack will perform a principal role in a full-length ballet with this company, and those who know and remember him are trilling with excitement for his debut in the love story of a temple dance and warrior set in India.

“This will be the biggest thing I’ve done with the Columbia Classical Ballet,” says Mack, who is looking forward to the welcome and warmth that he feels when he visits his hometown. Audiences will also be thrilled to see him in this production both for the homecoming and because it will be the first time the Columbia Classical Ballet — or any South Carolina dance company — has staged La Bayadere.

The performance will take place at the Koger Center for the Arts in Columbia on Oct. 12 at 7:30 p.m. Individual tickets range from $5 to $32. For ticket information, click here or call (803) 251-2222.