By Ally Tayag Ricarte
PearlArts Studios
Following PLAYGROUND, Staycee and Herman Pearl rekindled their love for House culture in the production of FLOWERZ. FLOWERZ bottles the relentless and ecstatic energy of the house music scene, pulling from memories of Staycee’s experiences in dance clubs and Herman’s discoveries as a music producer during the time. STAYCEE PEARL dance project dancers also investigated the House movement aesthetic to bring the party scene to the stage. This week, we circled back to Staycee and Herman Pearl on the importance of creating FLOWERZ and performing it in 2016.
“FLOWERZ is joyous. It’s big and loud and like a party.”
Could you elaborate on the beginnings of this investigation into the house and club scene and describe your movement and sound discoveries? Were there other outside sources you investigated in the development of the piece?
STAYCEE: Well, we have always been inspired by this particular time in both of our lives and this was the first project where we specifically wanted to take a very personal look into the scene, and I would venture to say that it’s very much from the perspective of the dance floor, coming from my experience dancing hours on end. We also intended for dancers to take personal stake into the work and asked them to consider party times in their own lives. It was interesting to see what they came up with, as they were all half our age and some still spending many a weekend in the clubs. We also became very aware of how different the clubs had become since our days at Shelter (New York City) and Earwax (Atlanta, GA).
“Body & SOUL was brought to life in 1996 by François K. and John Davis, it started as the Sunday afternoon party that took place at Club Vinyl in Manhattan’s Tribeca area. It soon became one of New York City’s most revered weekly parties.”
HERMAN: I came to the house scene as a producer creating house music in Pittsburgh and New York in the late 90's to early 2000's. Our productions were centered around a famous party called Body and Soul (Shelter, NYC.) Staycee and I had been talking about how we were circling around the same scene before we knew each other. I was only really referencing my personal and professional experiences as sources.
SPdp dancer Chandra Blount & Guest Artist Gierre Godley perform FLOWERZ at Ace Hotel Pittsburgh in 2016.
FLOWERZ premiered around the same time we received news of the 2016 presidential election results and the shooting in the Orlando nightclub. What was it like to choreograph and compose this piece and perform this piece during these huge shifts in our world?
STAYCEE: We were dealing with a lot of loss. In addition to the above mentioned world events, Herman’s mother passed away just days before our opening of FLOWERZ. Joyce Pearl was a mother to me when my mother had passed years before. She and Herman’s father Ernie Pearl warmly accepted me into the family and always supported our artful endeavors. It was hard not having her front-row-center as she had always been. FLOWERZ was a love performance for her and for our families.
HERMAN: Yup, it was crazy. We hoped not, but feared the worst about the elections and obviously it came to be. To make matters worse my mother had just died on October 27th. So the whole time during development and last weeks of production, that was hanging over our heads. It was a very emotional time and the show itself was a sort of catharsis.
Ethan Gwynn performing FLOWERZ at Ace Hotel Pittsburgh in 2016.
This production premiered in the gym at Ace Hotel Pittsburgh, formerly the YMCA Pittsburgh, as opposed to a classic proscenium theatre. What was it like to host FLOWERZ in this context with SPdp? How is space & location important to a movement and sound artist?
STAYCEE: The ACE was too much fun and the gym was the perfect setting for the vibe that we were going for. The high ceilings and rugged old-school gym feel only fed the nostalgia. We also had the freedom to set up the space in any configuration we wanted.
HERMAN: Doing FLOWERZ at the Ace was a breath of fresh air and very freeing in certain respects. The staff there were very accommodating and excited about doing something different. Our lighting designer Scott Nelson also lit the whole show with only 6 moving fixtures as there was no conventional lighting plot. For sound I was able to position the sound the way I wanted and further experiment with multi channel speaker set ups.
STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos is celebrating its 10th anniversary and the birthday of our cofounder/choreographer Staycee Pearl all of May with a month-long retrospective to honor the company’s history of innovative dance, multimedia experiences, and meaningful collaborations. In honor of our 10th anniversary, we’ll be sharing a series of blog posts dedicated to giving you an inside look at our productions through the decade.
If you’re just tuning into our anniversary series, be sure to check out our Anniversary retrospective series here: