PearlArts: Black Art Reinvented

Trailblazing artist uses performance to preserve Black dance and culture in Pittsburgh and beyond.

By Marcia Liggett

Staycee Pearl, artist and co-founder of PearlArts | Image by Brian Cook/Golden Sky Media

In 2011, the dance “OCTAVIA” premiered at Pittsburgh’s Kelly Strayhorn Theater. The performance was smoky and mystical, full of intriguing music and sharp choreography. It took the audience into the world of award-winning science-fiction writer Octavia Butler. Across the stage’s dark shadows, the performers explored Afro-futurism, racism, vampirism and other themes that Ms. Butler explored in her works.

“OCTAVIA,” a life’s story through dance, is a vivid representation of the master craft of choreographer Staycee Pearl, an innovative artist who’s been around Pittsburgh for more than two decades. She is the co-founder of PearlArts, a 10-year-old performance company that showcases Black culture.

The “OCTAVIA” presentation underscores how Ms. Pearl uses dance to transform music, paintings, artwork, poems and other literary works into live performances. Powerful still text is transformed from black and white words on a page into an explosion of color and dazzling dance works. Such works captivate audiences in Pittsburgh and around the world as they demonstrate the rich musical, dance, and storytelling legacy of African and Black American culture.

Ms. Pearl is living her dream.

That dream began when she was a 17-year-old at Centennial High School in Columbia, Md. There, Ms. Pearl discovered her love for dance in a workshop presented by Dance Dimension, a local performance studio.

“I had been studying gymnastics and doing a lot of sports,” she said, when she realized how exhilarated she was after experiencing dance for the first time.

“This is it! This is what I’ve been looking for! I realized that I was late to the game, but I believed I could do it!”

The experience launched her pursuit to become a professional dancer.

Ms. Pearl’s parents were serious about their desire that she and her siblings get a college education. So, she struck a compromise with them and attended the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, now known as Philadelphia University of the Arts.

“I was able to dance all day and still get my degree,” she recalled. “I did that for a couple of years, but it wasn’t enough. I had to get to New York.”

The road from Philadelphia to the Big Apple was not easy. Despite living with kidney disease, Ms. Pearl managed to study with a couple of companies in New York, including the famed Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

After receiving her certificate from the Ailey School, Ms. Pearl began her career, dancing with contemporary companies in New York, Atlanta, and Maryland, while teaching and sharing dance with young artists.

When the disease progressed, she relocated to Pittsburgh in December of 1999 in hopes of receiving a kidney transplant.

Moving to Pittsburgh was life changing. The transition was not one she looked forward to, but it was the most promising option. “I had very little energy or understanding of just how life-threatening my condition was at the time,” she said.

Ms. Pearl received a kidney transplant in 2001 and, later that year, became the artistic director of the Pittsburgh-based Xpressions Contemporary Dance Company. She stayed with the Black dance company for six years.

Staycee Pearl | Image by Brian Cook/Golden Sky Media

After her time with Xpressions, where she was granted access to ground-breaking artists such as Rennie Harris and Robert Battle, Ms. Pearl earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with honors and a minor in Africana studies from the University of Pittsburgh. She strongly felt that as a Black woman she should be an example to her students and community youth, demonstrating that there are creative opportunities for them, and that they have the freedom and fortitude to be all they want to be. Showing passion for a project and providing someone a road map to reaching their goals have an “impact that is larger than people realize,” she said.

Ms. Pearl, who became the first Black woman to choreograph for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, embraces this philosophy because she recognizes how many legendary artists, authors, choreographers, dancers, and musicians and their artistic works and culture have shaped how she transforms her vision into creative dances.

She’s inspired by dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Pina Bausch, as well as visual artists such as Romare Bearden and contemporary visual artists like Mickalene Thomas and Wangechi Mutu, from Kenya.

“Wangechi Mutu is a visual artist I discovered in my last year at [University of Pittsburgh]. She blew my mind,” Ms. Pearl said. “I was intrigued with how she presented numerous opportunities to experience her work, including collage, media and sculpture. It made me realize the freedom to cross-pollinate disciplines, and led me to a path of experimenting with forms familiar to me, such as painting, print making and video production becoming an integral part of my dance making.”

Equally influential has been the literary genius of Alice Walker and Ms. Butler, whose messages she also incorporated into her dances.

In 2012, Ms. Pearl’s educational, artistic, and professional endeavors led to the creation of PearlArts, which she co-founded with husband and sound engineer, Herman Pearl. The collaboration allows for “a space to build dance-centered performance works.”

PearlArts is also the creative parent organization for STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos, Tuff Sound Recording, and PearlArts Studio (the facility housing all that is the Pearls). It is a dance and sound-centered arts organization that partners with other Black-led groups to provide music and media arts programming to support the Black cultural community.

Over the years, support from multiple organizations has enabled PearlArts to expand its footprint in the Pittsburgh region. For example, the Kelly Strayhorn Theater has always been welcoming to Ms. Pearl.

“I walked in there before it was a presenting organization and thought, this feels like home.”

Twenty-two years later, the partnership between Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) and PearlArts remains strong. KST reopened the doors of its Alloy Studios, in the city’s East End, as part of the PearlArts at Kelly Strayhorn Theater Mutual Aid Residency (for 2021–2023). PearlArts helps to bring dance programming to the theater and, in return, KST provides PearlArts affordable studio and office space to continue programming as it works on a long-term solution for a permanent home base.

In addition, in 2016, Joseph Hall, executive director of KST, worked with PearlArts on the first PearlDiving Movement Residency. It’s a signature program that provides a month-long fellowship for a visiting artist. The residency includes housing, a workspace, and networking to meet other Pittsburgh cultural leaders and artists. At the residency’s end, the artwork the fellow creates is shared at a community showcase.

In working with Ms. Pearl on so many different ventures, Mr. Hall reflects on the irony of her remarkable journey: Pearl came to Pittsburgh to be healed, but through her incredible contributions to the arts and Black artists, she has provided her own special healing, of sorts, to help Pittsburgh thrive.

“Pittsburgh loves to brag on tech, eds, and meds,” said Mr. Hall. And Ms. Pearl’s story “is a perfect opportunity to say, ‘Yes, meds! But we require so much more to live full lives of wellness, expression, and purpose.”

PearlArts, he added, is helping us all to understand the true value of art and work.

The ever-deepening relationship and continuous support from KST, which began under the leadership of janera solomon in 2010, have allowed Staycee and Herman Pearl to expand PearlArts design and create innovative productions, while continuing to teach and develop young artists.

In 2019, the duo, in collaboration with acclaimed visual artist Barbara Weissberger created: sym, their second work inspired by the literary genius of Ms. Butler. The production used a multidisciplinary ensemble, exploring the author’s vampire-themed novel, “Fledgling,” while analyzing symbiosis, a recurring theme in her work.

Also debuting in 2019 was Sol. This dance performance of soul music and culture was presented at the Three Rivers Arts Festival and showcased the sensuality and depth of Black soul ballads of the late 1950s through mid-’70s.

Beyond Pittsburgh, PearlArts networks with organizations throughout the country to share Black culture. Charles Rice Gonzales, director of BAAD (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) in New York, recalls one of Pearl’s performances at his theater.

“Staycee Pearl is a dynamic choreographer. She uses house music, which is vibrant, energetic, beautiful music. It is music also that brings different people together, different cultures, different ages, different genders, and different sexualities at this point. A lot of those ideas and values are inside her work.”

Pearl’s husband, Herman, also has an apprenticeship program that teaches young artists who are interested in sound engineering. That program is supported by the Mac Miller Foundation.

Erin Perry, executive director of Pittsburgh’s Legacy Arts Project, said Ms. Pearl is a “visionary,” who has touched her life professionally and personally. “Staycee just imagines a different reality for Black people and Black women, where there’s liberation for us and our bodies, where we’re able to do things in creative ways. She inspires me to allow my imagination to go and not have constraints.”

As a rule, PearlArts is guided by the philosophies of “quality over quantity” and “prioritizing process and experience over product.”

“By focusing on the engagement and not numbers is how to measure success,” Ms. Pearl said. It’s a philosophy that means she works closely with her dancers throughout their careers and mentors them in the studio and in life. “I’ve been around long enough to see very young people become adults. They now have kids and real careers, some of which are in dance!”

Between teaching dance, mentoring, participating in educational art-based programming, hosting community and art-inspired workshops and events, PearlArts has provided creative resources and opportunities for hundreds of children, young adults, and professional artists. Countless audiences have viewed the performances globally.

One unique event the husband-and-wife duo created is “Synchronized: with Soy Sos,” a live-streamed production, where Mr. Pearl uses modular synthesizers, iPads, and other technology and encourages artists to come together for jam sessions that include the ensemble of dancers and audience members who are so moved to join in the fun.

Overall, 2022 has yielded both personal and creative new life for Ms. Pearl and PearlArts.

Earlier in the year, Ms. Pearl received a second kidney transplant from a live donor. And, on the business and artistic front, PearlArts was named one of 16 Pittsburgh’s Cultural Treasures and given a grant of $150,000 from The Heinz Endowments and the Ford Foundation. Ms. Pearl said it was “like winning the lottery!”

The funding will support programming and provide a cushion of savings that, until this award, the organization has not been allowed.

For the moment, PearlArts is between large projects and focusing on touring its current project, “CIRCLES: going in.” “CIRCLES” is a National Dance Project and National Performance Network-supported project, and will begin its national tour at Columbia College in Chicago, Feb. 10–11, 2023. In the interim, PearlArts is taking time to refresh, recover, and research after COVID-19 limitations and the culmination of an active creation period.

“We look forward to experimenting with collaborators including dancers, visual and sound artists local, national and international over the next season,” Ms. Pearl said.

In addition to being honored as a Pittsburgh Treasure, Ms. Pearl received the Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award as the Established Artist of 2022.

She is optimistic that PearlArts will continue to serve as a powerful conduit for preserving Black arts and culture, while creating an arts environment where Black artists can thrive.

Marcia Liggett is a freelance writer living in Beaver County, PA. Twitter: @marcialiggett

PearlArts: https://www.pearlartsstudios.com/; https://www.facebook.com/PearlArts; https://www.instagram.com/pearlartsstudios/