Atlanta Dancer Xavier Logan is Out, Proud, and Juilliard-Bound
“You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying in sweat.”
Xavier Logan, 18, wasn’t even an idea in his parent's mind when the legendary Debbie Allen as Lydia Grant said the famous line to a studio of hungry dancers in the beloved 80s dance series “FAME.” But for nearly a decade, Logan, an Atlanta native and recent North Springs Charter High School of the Arts & Sciences graduate has arrived at this moment through nothing less than sweat and determination, and it all appears to be paying off.
Logan will be one of 24 dance students out of thousands of applicants entering The Juilliard School’s fall class, a dream he spoke into existence in the eighth grade, years before he graduated high school with a 4.0 GPA, or was accepted into 13 universities, or awarded 1.4 million in scholarships, and before he could name the thing that made him different from the other boys in his class. Besides navigating the stigma associated with being a Black male dancer in the South, Logan was also managing familial expectations regarding his sexuality.
“There was a lot of resistance from my family in the beginning,” says Logan. “There were a lot of people that were on the fence about letting me pursue dance. They thought that if I was a Black male dancer, then I automatically was gay.”
Although he knew he was different, Logan says he didn’t always have the language to describe his feelings, and dance provided an opportunity for him to “express different emotions without saying it publicly.” Until he did.
“Around my ninth-grade year, I had a sit down with my parents and my immediate family that live in my current household. And we had a very emotional talk about my expectations and how I wanted my high school life to go,” he says, which included being honest about his sexuality.
Logan enjoys the support of both his parents and his younger brother, Isaiah. His mother appeared in a video on his popular YouTube channel to answer subscriber questions about how she’s handling being the mother of a gay son. While she is in the running for PFLAG mother of the year, Logan and his mother admit that the patriarch of the family is having a harder time adjusting to having a gay son.
“It’s very hard for his dad,” she says in the YouTube video. “Lord Jesus, I pray for him daily. But he listens, and he tries to give advice. He’s doing a lot better.”
“I am comfortable talking to him about things now, but it’s just a little weird. I don’t know how to talk to my father about liking boys when he likes girls.”
“I am comfortable talking to him about things now, but it's just a little weird,” says Logan. “I don't know how to talk to my father about liking boys when he likes girls. So I go to my mother for stuff like that. But if I'm talking to someone seriously, I like to let my father know.”
Logan’s relationship with his younger brother Isaiah and his reaction to Logan’s coming out is perhaps the greatest example of shifting attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people across generations.
“Isaiah and I have been really close for a long time. I came out, and I explained that I like boys, and he was confused on why it was the topic of conversation. He was like, ‘oh, like, you like a person.’ And that's it.”
But at 18, Logan says he has yet to experience his first real relationship or major events that most teens his age experience because of his hectic dance schedule.
“I never really got to experience going to PRIDE or being in a relationship because I've always been super busy,” he says. “I can talk to people, but it never really goes past the talking stage because I have a career to think about. I have academics to think about. I have school to think about. And I have nationals to think about that I'm trying to win. I don't need anyone getting in the way.”
The Road To Juilliard
If there is one thing that Logan hates, it’s losing. A natural-born competitor, he trains at DanceMakers of Atlanta, a competitive studio in the Cascade area on the Southwest side of Atlanta.
“We are the best competitive all Black studio,” says Logan of DanceMakers. “When we go to these big competitions, like the Dance Awards or the New York City Dance Alliance competing against Canadians and people from Mexico and all across the world, we are the only all-Black studio there.”
Logan tells The Reckoning that training at DanceMakers was a part of a carefully crafted plan by his “dance mom” for him to gain the training he’d need to sweep dance competitions and to prepare for his dream of being accepted into Juilliard, which became a reality after a stressful virtual audition process because of the pandemic. In years past, dancers would ascend upon the New York City campus at Lincoln Center for in-person auditions, but COVID-19 forced all auditions to be held over Zoom with dancers learning audition combinations virtually.
“The whole video combination process was the most stressful part,” says Logan. “Because you have to learn the combination, then you have to do it, make sure you're wearing the right attire, and then you have to ask yourself if this is the best? Is it what they're looking for? You have to look at the video and figure out if there were other people in the room, would this be competitive?”
Logan was competitive. But while technology has improved our lives, he says it can also fail, even in the middle of one of the biggest auditions of your life.
“They have callbacks, and mind you, it's on Zoom. And you can barely see them,” he says. “Sometimes there are connection problems. And then you get in your head because there are all these people watching that you don't even know about because their screens are off and they're muted, but they're watching it. You don't know if they're even looking at you or not, you're just doing the combo. They teach it to you one time, and you see these other dancers on Zoom and you start getting in your head.”
“I think that is the most exciting thing and the thing that I hold differently from a lot of my peers that I’ll meet in the fall. I don’t want to limit myself to one thing.”
But the technical dancer that peers call the “ballet guru” understood the assignment, and after weeks of waiting, Logan received the phone call he claimed four years earlier.
“I have friends in New York and I saw the area code,” says Logan. “So, I was like, oh, it’s just one of my friends, so I answered, like, hey, girl! And then they were like, ‘This is Larry from The Juilliard School.’ And I'm like, no, this is a joke. This isn't happening. He said, ‘No, this is serious.’ I started screaming! I couldn’t even go to practice that day. I was super excited,” he says.
Logan’s excitement and acceptance into one of the most prestigious dance conservatories in the world is the culmination of years of hard work and sacrifices. From rising to start his day at 5:00 a.m. to take an hour bus ride to school, focusing on academics and dancing from 8:20 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., navigating Atlanta traffic to reach Dance Makers on the Southside of Atlanta after school from 5:30 to 10:00 p.m., and sometimes until midnight to prepare for a competition.
“I still have to come home. I still have to eat. I still have to take a shower. I still have to do homework,” he says. “And by the time all of that's done, it's like Xavier, your alarm is about to go off in an hour. So what are you going to do?”
“I want to do it all,” he says. “I think that is the most exciting thing and the thing that I hold differently from a lot of my peers that I'll meet in the fall. I don't want to limit myself to one thing.”
Logan is committed to giving his all, trusting his instincts, and freeing himself from the limitations often placed on Black male artists. Because as he says in all of his YouTube videos, “if you don’t give your all, you can’t do it all. Period.”
