ADRIANA
PIERCE
 dancer + performer + choreographer

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”
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The Jets chorus will also include Brianna Abruzzo, Kyle Allen, Kyle Coffman, Ben Cook, Harrison Coll, Kevin Csolak, Kellie Drobnick, Julian Elia, Myles Erlick, Leigh-Ann Esty, Sara Esty, John Michael Fiumara, Paloma Garcia-Lee, Garett Hawe, Patrick Higgins, Sean Harrison Jones, Eloise Kropp, Lauren Leach, Jess LeProtto, Skye Mattox, Ezra Menas, Adriana Pierce, Brittany Pollack, Daniel Patrick Russell, Talia Ryder, Jonalyn Saxer and Halli Toland.

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 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."

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"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.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/article157368379.html#storylink=cpy"

"Today we speak with Adriana about her choreography, launching a choreographic career, the challenges women in choreography are facing, and the recent New York Times article on the subject."

"MIAMI, FL – March 14, 2017 – For its 11th season, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County has planned a spectacular evening to celebrate women in the arts. The Adrienne Arsht Center’s 11th Annual Gala on Thursday, March 30, 2017 will feature star- studded performances by Denyce Graves, Storm Large, Alicia Hall Moran, Rita Moreno, Melissa Schott, Bria Skonberg, Vanessa Williams and Miami Chamber Music Society with Amy Beach, composer; Adriana Pierce, choreographer; Marina Radiushina, pianist; and Miami City Ballet dancers Ashley Knox and Emily Bromberg. Special appearances from legendary artists include Gloria Estefan, Judith Jamison, Tig Notaro, Michelle Ortiz and Chita Rivera.  "

"The new short film I Wish is a collaboration between Miami City Ballet corps dancers Adriana Pierce and Eric Trope, who both choreographed the movement, and Miami-based filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalvez. They filmed in various locations around Miami, including the MCB studios, and used music by local band My Deer. The result reads as both an intimate pas de deux and a love letter to the city itself."

"The professional ballet sphere can often feel isolating, but collaborating with Miami’s vibrant music scene was a wonderful way to broaden our world and forge a connection with local artists. Different shots of film were taken in locations which we felt were truly representative of our lives in this city, and we discovered the ways in which Miami’s color and passion parallel our own."

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.

"As dancer Adriana Pierce says in the video, "Right before the curtain goes up, there’s this moment of truth — you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just you and the music and the audience, and it’s just ... magic."

"Pierce is interested in the physical vocabulary of couples, and she laid out her scenario with clear touches, such as Trope and Knox going upstage, backs turned to Chagas and Bromberg, heads resting on each other as they stood still. Now there’s a happy pair, the choreography said, while downstage Bromberg and Chagas danced without a resolution. Pierce knows how to design intimate moves with a classical ballet rather than a modern dance orientation, and it gave the scenes something pretty and sophisticated, with fluid, graceful pairings amid a cool emotional temperature until the very end."

"Schoenfield’s music is a clever pastiche of older musical styles, particulary early jazz, and Pierce’s choreography reflected in its dance vocabulary the same kind of stylistic multitasking. The subject of the ballet is romance, and the second movement (Andante moderato), a sweet, melancholy song, was a pas de deux for Bromberg and Cerdeiro. This was a surpassingly lovely piece of dance, with Bromberg essentially playing hard to get and Cerdeiro the lovelorn swain. But it had more honesty than that description of a well-worn trope would suggest: the movements were athletic and intimate, with the two dancers repeatedly facing each other very closely as the erotic tension mounted."

"Astor Piazzolla’s scheduled closing piece was replaced by a ballet premiere, set to Paul Schoenfield’s jazz-inspired Café Music, and choreographed by Miami City Ballet’s Adriana Pierce. The loosened-up trio brought liberal portamento and swing to the thick counterpoint of Schoenfield’s tin pan alley lines. Equally layered choreography matched the music, with intricate, flirtatious lines made corporeal by six Miami City Ballet dancers. With the playful solos, duos and trios of the Allegro, sultry romance of the Rubato, Andante Moderato, and the manic frenzy of the Presto, both ensembles left the audience on their feet."