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Join STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos for a showing and discussion around their forthcoming work, CIRCLES, which will exist as both a stage performance and dance film. Co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Joyce Theater (New York), and the National Performance Network, CIRCLES is a new evening-length dance performance highlighting Staycee Pearl’s unique perspective as a mid-career Black female choreographer. For this showing, the artists present a work in progress excerpt from the film version of CIRCLES, and included responses from invited speakers Melanie George, Bebe Miller, and Deesha Philyaw. CIRCLES will have its world premiere in October 2021 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, co-presented by KST. More details coming soon!
About the Artists
Staycee & Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl are the co-artistic directors of STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos (SPdp&SS) where they create artful experiences through dance-centered multimedia works. In 2009, the duo debuted SPdp&SS at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater where they served as resident dance company for 3 years. There they were afforded the resources to experiment and grow. The Pearls founded a dance organization and SPdp&SS parent organization, PearlArts, in 2012. They have produced several dance works including ..on being… and OCTAVIA, and are currently working on their National Dance Project supported work, CIRCLES. SPdp&SS made it to Creative Capital's radar for exploring identity with …on being… and earned New Sun Rising’s Vibrancy award in 2019. Previously, Staycee served as AD for Xpressions Dance. She began making solo work in NYC collaborating with musicians, poets and visual artists such as Saul Williams and Marcia Jones. Staycee recently choreographed a new work for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre that was set to premiere March 20, 2020 as part of Here + Now also featuring choreographers Dwight Rhoden and Kyle Abraham. This program was postponed due to COVID.
Herman is also the founder of Tuff Sound Recording, a Pittsburgh-based recording studio. His work has been featured in various independent films and documentaries. He has designed sound for numerous choreographers including Donald Byrd and Rennie Harris and produced for a variety of recording artists across genres including composer Matthew Rosenberg and Pop Artist Mac Miller.
The Pearls have initiated residency programs including Tuff Sound Apprenticeship Program and PearlDiving Movement Residency.
Bebe Miller, a native New Yorker, first performed her choreography at Dance Theater Workshop NYC in 1978. She formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985 to pursue her interest in finding a physical language for the human condition. She has collaborated with artists, composers, writers and designers along with the dancers who share her studio practice and from whom she has learned what dancing can reveal. The company has toured widely across the country and in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. Her choreography has been performed by Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M., Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, Boston Ballet, Philadanco, , the UK’s Phoenix Dance Company and PACT Dance Company of Johannesburg, South Africa. Over the last decade the Company has produced a variety of digital archive projects that share the company’s creative practice with artists and audiences. Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, she has received four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards, the David R. White Award from New York Live Arts, United States Artists and Guggenheim Fellowships, honorary doctorates from Ursinus College and Franklin & Marshall College, and a Doris Duke Artist Award. Bebe is a Professor Emerita in The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance and lives in Columbus, OH. bebemillercompany.org
Melanie George is a dance educator, choreographer, scholar, and dramaturg. She is the founder and director of Jazz Is… Dance Project and an Associate Curator and Scholar-In-Residence at Jacob’s Pillow. As a dramaturg, she has contributed to projects by David Neumann & Marcella Murray (on the Obie Award winning Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed), Raja Feather Kelly, Ephrat Asherie, Susan Marshall & Company, Machine Dazzle, Kimberly Bartosik/daela, and Urban Bush Women among others. A highly sought after teacher and choreographer of the neo-jazz aesthetic, Melanie is a featured in the documentary UpRooted: The Journey of Jazz, Dance. Melanie has presented her research on jazz improvisation and pedagogy throughout the U.S., in Canada and Scotland, and founded the global advocacy website jazzdancedirect.com. Publications include “Jazz Dance, Pop Culture, and the Music Video Era” in Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches (University Press of Florida) and “Imbed/In Bed: Two Perspectives on Dance and Collaboration” for Working Together in Qualitative Research (Sense Publishers). She is the former Dance Program Director at American University, and has guest lectured at Harvard University, the Yale School of Drama, and The Juilliard School, among others.
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for The Story Prize (2020/2021), and longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church. Deesha is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, dead housekeeping, Apogee Journal, Catapult, Harvard Review, ESPN’s The Undefeated, The Baltimore Review, TueNight, Ebony and Bitch magazines, and various anthologies. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and a past Pushcart Prize nominee for essay writing in Full Grown People.
CIRCLES is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Joyce Theater (New York), and NPN. More information: www.npnweb.org.
CIRCLES was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
