Five dancers in sweats roll into a modern dance with muscularity and grace.
“Can we do it like I was thinking – the drawn-out note?” Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl asks his wife, choreographer Staycee Pearl during a recent rehearsal for “INTERIM: Props Prompts Play.”
The multi-disciplinary collaborative show features works-in-progress and finished works by the Pearls and guest artists Marvin Touré, Barbara Weissberger, slowdanger, and Jil Stifel. It starts at 8 p.m. May 12 at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty. Tickets are $10-$25 at kelly-strayhorn.org.
The choreographer and her husband, a musician and sound designer, are collectively known as PearlArts, and “INTERIM” is one of four multimedia works-in-progress featuring dance, music and the visual arts.
“Let’s take it from the top,” Staycee, 56, says to the dancers as she looks up from her laptop.
Herman, 58, has his own laptop and sound-mixing equipment. Both sit in the corner of Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Alloy Studios in East Liberty.
The dancers’ movements follow Herman’s jazz mixes, distortions and reverbs, slowly swaying together one moment and somehow staying in sync with a series of jarring, independent movements the next.
“When you go to one of their performances, you feel like you are in a dance club,” said Joseph Hall, executive director of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater.
“They use popular music. Herman mixes vibrant soundtracks that move you in your seat.”
Both couple and collaborators, the Shadyside residents say they alternate in taking the lead.
“Herman’s sound is propelling us at this time,” Staycee said. “We choreographed it keeping his concept in mind.”
“I just do the dishes,” he joked.
Their stories
The Pearls are artists in residence at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater and perform at the August Wilson African American Culture Center in Downtown and other venues in New York, Colorado, Italy and beyond.
Herman, a Pittsburgh native and Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 graduate, created a recording studio in his parents' attic and his family owned the former Shady Skates indoor roller skating rink in Point Breeze.
He co-founded and managed the reggae band Chill Factor in the 1980s and co-founded another band, Soma Mestizo, with a Bjork and Grace Jones vibe. His sound art and engineering have shown up in television shows and he worked with the late Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller.
Staycee grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut but studied dance mostly in New York and Philadelphia. She said she was “green and starry-eyed” when she danced in New York and left for a dance company in Atlanta, then returned to New York and started choreographing with poets in the mid-1990s.
In the prime of her dancing career at age 34, she had to stop her life and come to Pittsburgh in 2000 for a kidney transplant. Afflicted with lifelong kidney disease, she arrived the year before her transplant to wait for an available organ.
“I had no intention of staying,” she said. “Then I met this guy…”
Staycee was staying with a housemate who was dating one of Herman’s friends. She needed dialysis three times a week.
“Herman was a good friend at a time when I wasn’t ready and he wasn’t ready and I was sick,” she said. “He was there and nice.”
A new life
The transplant with a cadaver kidney in 2001 was a success. Within a month, Staycee was dancing for Pittsburgh’s Squonk Opera and Attack Theatre, then directed the local dance company Xpressions Contemporary Dance Company.
After the transplant, Herman said his feelings for her grew stronger.
“Knowing she was going through this, it put me in a protection and nurture mode,” he said.
As she recovered, Staycee followed Herman’s band. “I would go and dance around like a fiend.”
She asked Herman to edit some music for her.
“When Staycee came into my orbit, she fitted into the scene,” he said.
In the 1980s and ’90s, Pittsburgh’s music and arts scene was “weird and small but still building,” he said. “It was podunk compared to New York, where the scene is so vibrant.”
But Staycee liked what she saw. She choreographed some shows for Herman and danced.
“The first thing was each of us was doing something on the other person’s projects,” she said. “It grew organically from there.”
They were locked in as a couple in 2001 and married in 2006.
Perfect marriage
Staycee has enthralled Pittsburgh audiences for more than two decades with contemporary dance at Pittsburgh Festival Opera, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Dance Alloy and others. She won the Pittsburgh Foundation’s Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award in 2021 and was named a Pittsburgh Cultural Treasure by the Heinz Endowments.
Over the years, she has worked with Kyle Abraham, the Pittsburgh native who founded A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham in New York City; dancer and choreographer Jasmine Hearn, a Point Park University graduate and a Rome Prize Fellow; and Pittsburgh native James Gilmer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
She and her husband have fought for their art and continued to collaborate with other artists. The Pearls are a perfect marriage of dance and sound, Hall said.
“At the end of the day, they are just a great pair and are extremely serious about the way their partnership engages with their work,” he said.
Though Pittsburgh’s dance scene is not as glamorous as New York’s, it suits Staycee.
“In Pittsburgh, I get to run my own company and practice my craft – that is huge,” she said. “The pool is full in New York.”
She also appreciates the artistic support.
“The community was so inviting and supportive. The foundations are here,” she said.
Another transplant
Staycee also credits Pittsburgh for helping her find a kidney for her second transplant in 2022. Doctors told her she needed a living donor with a specialized match. The Pearls issued a public plea for a live donor and many people responded.
Megan Rooney, a friend and founder of the Spanish Immersion school in Pittsburgh, arranged a three-way kidney exchange. Rooney gave one of her kidneys as an out-of-state donor gave one to Staycee.
“I wouldn’t have a kidney without her,” Staycee said. “That’s unconditional love.”
The Pearls have broadened their work to include visual arts. Staycee studied at the University of Pittsburgh studio art department and now presents immersive art including dance, music and visual arts.
In addition to stage collaborations and apprenticeships, the couple operate a program with teaching artists in public and charter schools. PearlArts has mentorship and professional development programs and they are working on a new space in Braddock with dance and recording studios.
Their work is supported by the Heinz Endowments, Pittsburgh Foundation’s Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh, Opportunity Fund awards, the Hillman Foundation and others.
Upcoming PearlArts performances include the Carnegie Museum of Art sculpture garden June 17 from noon-5 p.m. and Aug. 19 at 8 p.m. Soy Sos will perform his Sound Series at The Andy Warhol Museum on June 15, July 13 and Aug. 17 at 7:30 p.m.
To learn more about PearlArts and other upcoming programs and work, visit their website, www.pearlartsstudios.com.
Mary Ann Thomas: mthomas@post-gazette.com.
First Published: May 4, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
