“Two Slow Dancers,” a film by Ellie Gravitte, “follows two lovers who, despite their dreaming, can’t seem to find their way back to one another,” says Gravitte. Her recent collaboration with choreographer Adriana Pierce, one of Dance Magazine’s 2022 “25 to Watch,” features American Ballet Theatre dancers Remy Young and Sierra Armstrong in a narrative of love and loss as they dance both apart and as partners oscillating between locations like Times Square and New York City parks.

During the artist talkback after #QueerTheBallet’s April 5th show, as part of the Joyce Theater’s season at the new Chelsea Factory, artistic director Adriana Pierce proposed a thought exercise: consider the gendered nature of the pointe shoe, particularly in reference to partnering. The person not on pointe is able to be more grounded, and that stability and connection to the floor necessarily confers agency to that dancer. That agency is then often utilized in an unequal relationship with the dancer in pointe shoes, who has less friction with the floor and is set up best to be manipulated (turned, lifted, swooped) by their more grounded partner. Regardless of narrative or stage direction, Pierce warned of the power dynamics embedded in the physics of ballet. She then posed a question: Are we comfortable with this person [without agency] always being a woman?

Adriana Pierce’s career thus far looks like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-many laundry list of dream gigs: dancing in Miami City Ballet, the 2018 Broadway revival of Carousel, FX’s “Fosse/Verdon” and the new West Side Story movie, plus choreographic opportunities that continue to grow in scale.

Led by the choreographer Adriana Pierce, #QueertheBallet is an initiative focussed on expanding the representation of queer women and nonbinary dancers in ballet. Pierce’s five-minute film “Animals & Angels”—which is available for free, June 21-July 18, on the Joyce Theatre’s Web site—is a velvet revolution, a gentle charmer of a kind that should be more common. To a folk-pop love song by Joy Oladokun, two Black queer ballerinas, the radiant Audrey Malek and Cortney Taylor Key, dressed in casual clothes and pointe shoes, dance the first steps of intimacy. It looks like the start of something good.

“Animals & Angels,” the new pas de deux by #QueertheBallet founder Adriana Pierce, is so pretty and easygoing you almost forget how radical it is. The piece is under five minutes long and features two women, Cortney Taylor Key and Audrey Malek, wafting joyfully around an airy white loft. They beam affectionately at each other as Joy Oladokun sings the opening line of her song, “Animals & Angels:” “Would you like some coffee with a side of cream?” Suitably, Key has a on a cream-colored shirt with latte brown high-waisted pants, Malek sports the inverse. It’s all so pleasant and tender; it seems like how these ladies take their coffee may be the only care they have in the world. But to anyone familiar with the realm of classical ballet, a romantic pas de deux for two women in pointe shoes is uncharted territory. The fact that it appears so natural makes it an unqualified success, as well as a perfect Pride Month offering from the Joyce Theater.

Ballet’s strict gender norms put pressure on women to conform. But dancers who don’t are finding they’re not alone.

As a queer woman in ballet, Adriana Pierce has often felt unseen and unrepresented, onstage and off. No wonder. The presence of queer women in ballet is rarely discussed and almost never explored in choreography. With her project #QueertheBallet, Pierce is trying to change that.

Today we chat with our friend and former Miami City Ballet dancer, Adriana Pierce. We last spoke with Adriana in episode 44 from May 2017. Since that episode, she has since left Miami City Ballet and is now a freelance dancer and choreographer in New York City. She tells us about some of the projects she has been a part of since moving, what the pandemic has been like as a freelance artist, and about her new project with two American Ballet Theatre dancers, #QueerTheBallet, recently featured in the Guardian.

Adriana Pierce is empowering queer female and non-binary performers whose relationships have been excluded from classical dance

Carolina Ballet is pleased to present a special evening of inspiration featuring Boléro! Audiences were blown away by Boléro when it premiered during Carolina Ballet’s 20th Anniversary Season. The program also features new works by emerging choreographers Mariana Oliveira, Adriana Pierce, and Carolina Ballet dancer, Jenny Palmer

“I Am Enough” is a dance film starring NYC Ballet Soloist Georgina Pazcoguin and Skye Mattox (from Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, Broadway’s On the Town and granddaughter of infamous jazz choreographer, Matt Mattox) choreographed by Adriana Pierce (New York Choreographer’s Institute Alumni) and directed by Victoria Duncan.
Mirroring the style of Sia’s Elastic Heart music video, I am Enough premiered on Daphne Willis’s Youtube page as her stunning track of the same name, accompanies the profound and moving video, which conveys a lesbian couple overcoming the mental health issues and homophobia that come between their relationship.

Former pod guest @adriprc has written a special blog post on our website, detailing her experiences of being a queer artist in the ballet world and what the art form can do to more meaningfully include queer people. As Pride month accelerates, we couldn’t think of a more opportune time to bring Adriana’s eloquent voice into this vital discussion”

FILM ALSO ANNOUNCES CASTING FOR THE SHARKS & THE JETS, WITH OVER 50 NEW CAST MEMBERS IN FEATURE DEBUTSCasting Director Cindy Tolan looked at more than 30,000 performers, making this Spielberg’s broadest casting search since Schindler’s List(1993). For over 50 new cast members, West Side Story will mark their feature film debuts.

There are more than a few familiar faces onstage, too. NYCB principal Amar Ramasar is cast as ne'er-do-well sailor Jigger Craigin, while NYCB soloist Brittany Pollack plays Louise, who dances Act II's famous "dream ballet." American Ballet Theatre soloist Craig Salstein took a leave of absence from the company to serve as the show's dance captain and to perform in the ensemble, where he's joined by recent Miami City Ballet transplants Adriana Pierce and Andrei Chagas (a Pointe 2015 Star of the Corps).

"Once Adriana Pierce caught the choreography bug as a teenager, dancemaking came naturally. More difficult was navigating the tricky situations that would arise when choreographing on classmates and friends. "If a rehearsal didn't go well, I'd worry that people didn't respect me or didn't like my work," says Pierce, who went on to participate in the School of American Ballet's Student Choreography Workshop twice, at 17 and 18. "I had a lot to learn: how not to take things personally, how to express what I wanted, when to push and when to back off.""

Broadway.com announces the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel." The production will play the Imperial Theatre, recent home of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Jack O'Brien will direct and Justin Peck will choreograph the revival that begins previews on February 28 and opens on April 12
"Also new to the cast are Alexander Gemignani as Enoch Snow and Margaret Colin as Mrs. Mullin. They will be joined by the previously announced Jessie Mueller as Julie Jordan, Joshua Henry as Billy Bigelow, Renée Fleming as Nettie Fowler, Amar Ramasar as Jigger and Brittany Pollack as Louise.

The ensemble of Carousel will feature Colin Anderson, Yesenia Ayala, Nicholas Belton, Colin Bradbury, Andrei Chagas, Leigh-Ann Esty, Laura Feig, David Michael Garry, Garett Hawe, Rosena M. Hill Jackson, Amy Justman, Jess LeProtto, Skye Mattox, Adriana Pierce, David Prottas, Craig Salstein, Ahmad Simmons, Antoine L. Smith, Corey John Snide, Erica Spyres, Ryan Steele, Sam Strasfeld, Ricky Ubeda, Scarlett Walker, Jacob Keith Watson and William Youmans. Additional cast members will be announced at a later date."

Pierce was already in flight as that still pretty rare bird: a woman ballet choreographer. The early demonstration of talent revealed a young artist whose knack for dance-making rides on thoughtfulness and diligence. And the months following “Dance at the Walls” have proven that Pierce knows how to stay on course, lofty and compass-right.

"Pierce is good at making dance relationships look persuasive and enticing, and she was helped here by the luminous Jeanette Delgado, one of MCB’s standout dancers, who took center stage in the “Chuppah” section with an ecstatic, joyful solo. The presentation, which began with “Romance,” (set to easy-listening Shostakovich from his ballet The Gadfly) centered on a couple, danced engagingly by Alaina Andersen and Eric Trope. The other dancers — Alex Manning, Luis Silva and Christina Spigner — were every bit as good, and indeed, this was a very effective choreographing of what was primarily and ensemble piece."

"La segunda parte de la tarde estuvo dedicada a una creación muy especial, The Jewish Bride, donde se combinaba una hermosa proyección en la pantalla del fondo, poemas en la voz de su creador, el poeta Mitchell Chefitz, danzas coreografiadas por Adriana Pierce, y a cargo de bailarines del Miami City Ballet, y los músicos mencionados. Aquí se unió al grupo la clarinetista Moran Katz, quien brilló al interpretar hermosas melodías judías."

"For the fifth year, Miami City Ballet’s Adriana Pierce contributes original choreographies to accompany the music for the festival finale. For Pierce, choreographing for something like “The Jewish Bride” has its own set of challenges.
“During ‘Tenayim’ the families pass a plate between them. We didn’t want to rely on pantomime but to use movements that expressed the emotions of the event,” said Pierce. “So how do they pass a plate that is not there? The dancers stand in a line and they hand off energy — like a ripple. Each dancer’s arms make a circle and first the energy passes low in front of them and then above them. Traditionally at the end of the ritual the plate is smashed. We don’t actually smash a real plate so in the performance the dancers toss the pantomimed plate into the air, and it will smash on the screen above their heads. This was a great way to fuse dance and visuals.”