Terrence S. Orr credits his predecessor Patricia Wilde for piquing his interest in the artistic director position at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. But it was the city, its people and their appreciation for the arts that made him want to stay.
“I always felt like I really wanted to put my roots here,” he says. “I wanted to do quality work, be able to live with good people and I feel like that’s what Pittsburgh is all about.”
After more than 23 years at the helm of the company, Mr. Orr, 77, will retire from the role at the end of June.
PBT announced in April that Susan Jaffe will be the seventh artistic director in PBT’s 50-year history.
The final months of Mr. Orr’s tenure as artistic director didn’t unfold as predicted due to COVID-19. PBT halted its season in March and canceled an engagement in April at The Joyce Theater in New York City. In recent months, dancers have trained at home on special floors PBT provided, communicating through video conferencing platforms and by telephone.
“It is definitely a challenging time,” he says. “It’s not like you look at a road map and say, ‘This is what you do in this kind of pandemic.’ We’re learning, and we have to be creative.”
An unexpected path
When to step down was a decision Mr. Orr has contemplated for years and wasn’t an easy one to make.
“It’s definitely bittersweet. I love the job,” says Mr. Orr, who resides in Sewickley with his wife, PBT’s ballet mistress Marianna Tcherkassky. “I love what I’m doing, and it’s probably one reason why I’m 77 and still doing it.”
It wasn’t a job, though, that this self-described “country boy” from Concord, California, imagined ever having. He came across ballet “completely by accident,” he says, and began his dance career at San Francisco Ballet, where he became a principal by 17. From there, he rose through the ranks at American Ballet Theatre in New York City. He continued with the company as ballet master from 1978 to 1997, when he joined PBT, with a push from Ms. Wilde.
“She called me and thought I had the right kind of credentials. She actually had to call me three or four times to get me to apply,” he recalls. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I was busy and I’d forget about it. Who wants me as an artistic director?”
When he finally put his ideas for PBT on paper — plans for performances, dream choreographers, ways to grow, etc. — he felt like he was up for the task.
“I thought PBT should be the ambassador to talk about the city and how wonderful this city really is,” Mr. Orr says.
Thinking big
Mr. Orr’s vision included growth for the entire organization. Ticket sales, PBT School enrollment and the organization’s physical footprint in the Strip District all increased while he was artistic director.
“He’s been able to see his long-term goals and dreams for the company come true,” says principal Alexandra Kochis, who joined PBT 14 years ago. “He also really challenged the audiences, too, in a lot of his programming and had faith in them that Pittsburgh would welcome these groundbreaking ballets that just really challenged what ballet is.”
Mr. Orr introduced John Neumeier’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” fresh takes on classic story ballets and programs packed with works by modern masters such as Jerome Robbins and Jiri Kylian to PBT’s repertoire. He considers PBT’s 2015 production of “La Bayadere” among his proudest achievements “because it’s such a mammoth pillar of classical ballet” and one of his favorites.
“That was really exciting to see those works,” says Bob Vickrey, PBT’s longtime artistic administrator and assistant to the artistic director. (He and Mr. Orr also danced together during their days in San Francisco.)
Prior to Mr. Orr’s appointment, Ms. Wilde’s programs were steeped in the Balanchine tradition, influenced by her professional career with New York City Ballet.
Mr. Orr brought “a new approach and a new look for the company,” Mr. Vickrey says.
His yearly “Nutcracker,” spiced up with Pittsburgh references and landmarks, has become part of the city’s holiday cultural traditions since Mr. Orr debuted it in 2002. It’s been performed at Downtown’s Benedum Center every year since.
“One of the most important things for me here was the creative process because the art form will not stay alive unless it’s creative,” Mr. Orr says. “You can’t just live like you’re in a museum and do old works. You need to be able to do fresh works.”
That meant encouraging company dancers to develop their own choreographic chops.
In 2016, he tapped principal Yoshiaki Nakano to create an original work for a main stage performance — a first at the time in Mr. Orr’s tenure.
“I feel like Terry was seeing my potential,” Mr. Nakano recalls. “When he gave me the opportunity to choreograph for the ballet company, I was a bit surprised because, oh my gosh, that’s an amazing opportunity.”
In 2018, he enlisted seven company dancers to choreograph pieces for the mixed repertory program “PBT: New Works” at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.
“Nurturing is a good word for it, definitely,” says soloist JoAnna Schmidt. She was commissioned to choreograph her first ballet, “Lightworks,” for that program. “He always makes me feel like I had the freedom to create whatever I wanted to create. Every time I made a piece, he’s been completely encouraging about it.”
While dancers were in quarantine this spring, Mr. Orr tasked several of them with choreographing works at home that could be filmed and shared online.
Embracing life
Those who worked with him in the studio say Mr. Orr not only gave them chances to try new things but also the encouragement to rise to the occasion.
“He has just this kind of unshakable faith in his dancers, sometimes more so than I had in myself,” Ms. Kochis says.
He entertained and inspired them with tales from his own career, too.
“He’d tell us stories about Baryshnikov and legendary dancers. It was fascinating hearing he was there in the same time,” Mr. Nakano says. “I watched all of those VHS tapes when I was young. Terry was one of them.”
A company with a supportive, family-like feel developed under Mr. Orr’s leadership, with many dancers dating or even getting married. He and his wife, Ms. Tcherkassky, often opened their home to dancers for Super Bowl parties, poker nights, barbecues and baby showers.
“In my process of getting to know dancers, it’s not that they just have beautiful feet and beautiful legs and how high they can jump but what kind of person they are,” Mr. Orr says. “I wanted them to know they’re able to have a family if they want to have a family, they can buy a house, they can feel secure.”
This philosophy is part of what attracted Ms. Kochis and her husband, former principal Christopher Budzynski, to come to PBT after time with Boston Ballet.
“He saw us as individuals and nurtured our own individual strengths and talents,” she says. Outside the studio, he was open to learning from them, too.
“We actually ended up teaching Terry how to white water kayak,” she says.
Mr. Orr enjoys gardening, classic cars and spending time with his wife. He hopes the future holds more of all of those things, plus some adventures he hasn’t even discovered yet.
“I just want to see what bubbles up to the surface and makes sense,” he says. “There’s always been someone who came along and said, ‘Hey, you. Want to try this?’ We’ll see who comes along and what they ask me to try next.”
Sara Bauknecht: sbauknecht@post-gazette.com or on Twitter and Instagram @SaraB_PG.
First Published: June 29, 2020, 11:00 a.m.
