Tattoos in ballet were a taboo. That didn’t stop him

Marcus Morelli is the kind of dancer the eye has no choice but to be drawn to: all smouldering charisma and technical brilliance, alive to the humour or poetry of a role.

Inevitably, the eye is also drawn to his tattoos. Scattered across his body, they are a departure from the classical strictures of the art form: ballet dancers do not typically have body art, or if they do, it tends to be subtle, easy to hide. Morelli’s tattoos are the opposite of this. They adorn his torso and trail up and down both arms: a key, a dagger, a moth, a rose. The stylised wolf on his inner forearm was his first; it’s also one of the most prominent.

“I got it during the summer holidays, when I’d finished my second year with the company,” Morelli recalls. “On my first day back, the teacher taking class saw my arm and I think she had a mild aneurysm – her face went completely white.”

That was a decade ago. Today, the ballet world has changed: for some roles he’s danced, choreographers have specifically requested he doesn’t cover them up.

“Tattoos in ballet used to be taboo, but they’re not any more,” he says. “Sometimes you get a Facebook comment from some old, crusty person who doesn’t like them, but it’s like – whatever.”

His individualist streak emerged at a young age. He describes himself as being sporty yet accident-prone, the middle child sandwiched between two sisters. He played basketball, soccer, football – ballet existed on his periphery; something he got dragged along to watch because of his sisters’ involvement. Their school – the Jane Moore Academy of Ballet, located in Melbourne’s south-east – had barely any male students.

“Over the years, I kept being encouraged by the teacher and my sisters to give it a go,” says Morelli. At age 10, he enrolled for a term, mostly so they’d stop pestering him. “I remember feeling like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I was comfortable with movement and with mapping movement to music. After that first class, I just never stopped going back.”

It wasn’t a vocation at first. But at the end of that year, he participated in the school’s recital and experienced, for the first time, what it felt like to perform in front of an audience. The elation he felt was something that stayed with him: “It’s why we do what we do,” he says. “It’s the crux of why any ballet dancer is doing this job.”

By the time he was 14, he knew he wanted to pursue dance seriously. At the same time, he was attending Brighton Grammar, an all-boys private school. The fact he was athletically gifted wasn’t enough to protect him from the usual schoolyard bullying.

“I never got beaten up, but I was pretty ruthlessly picked on,” he says. There were assumptions made about him, taunts flung his way. Somehow, it never really got him down. He had the support of his friends and of the school administration (his alma mater now has a dance program and an award named in his honour, something he’s inordinately proud of).

Most importantly, his parents always supported him and his sisters in their chosen careers: “I had enough support around me and the right mindset to keep going on the path.”

When he sets his mind to something, he tends to follow it through. Now, elevated to the rank of Principal Artist, he’s preparing to perform in The Australian Ballet’s upcoming performance of Signature Works; at the same time, he’s working through 75 Hard, a particularly gruelling viral challenge billed as a “transformative mental toughness program”. That’s on top of his usual daily routine of ballet classes, strength-training, Pilates and running.

“I’ve always been someone who chases self-improvement,” he says by way of explanation. “The main purpose is to be a better version of me.”

Still, he tries to find balance through it all: “In the last year and a half, I’ve put a lot more effort into really taking care of myself: sleep is super important, nutrition is super important. As a dancer, you need to have the energy to cope with the demands.”

He describes Signature Works as “a tasting platter of things that the Australian Ballet is known for, and a celebration of what makes us unique in our identity”. In it, he’ll perform in the “super high-octane” Tarantella from the Australian Ballet’s archives, as well as Flames of Paris, a “fun little fireworks pas de deux set in the French Revolution” – both pieces that showcase his flair for gravity-defying jumps and tightly executed pirouettes.

When asked how his life has changed since becoming a Principal Artist, Morelli says that achieving his lifelong dream has only motivated him to keep setting more ambitious goals for himself.

“You spend all this time thinking about it and dreaming about it and pushing yourself to get there – but when you get there, it feels like you’ve barely even started,” he says. “The real work starts now.”

Signature Works is on at Regent Theatre from February 28 to March 1

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