Speakeasy with John Michael Schert
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Given labels such as “Ballet Mavericks” in the press, the Trey McIntyre Project uses ballet technique as the jumping off point for emotionally charged dance performances. Trey McIntyre of the North Carolina School of Arts, the Houston Ballet Company and the New York City Ballet founded the company in 2004. Executive director John Michael Schert describes the Trey McIntyre Project’s approach to ballet and pop music in anticipation of his performance with the company at Georgia State University’s Rialto Center for the Arts on March 14.
I heard someone on the radio say the Trey McIntyre Project “turns ballet on its head.” How would you describe the company’s work?
What the Trey McIntyre Project is trying to put onstage is as authentic as possible. If we were in the theater, we’d be method actors. The dancer really has to feel and express the emotions of a piece. Trey sets a lot of his work to pop music: There’s Beethoven, but also Beatles, Etta James, Beck, bluegrass musicians like Ralph Stanley. This show is being billed as Peter, Paul and Mary or Beatles music, but Trey treats it as a classical score, which has just as much import as a Ravel composition. I believe what Trey’s doing is the next evolution of an art form. We’re classified as a “contemporary ballet company,” but labels tend to come from outsiders and are applied after the fact. What Trey’s doing isn’t contemporary ballet — that happened in the 1980s. It’s something that doesn’t have a quote-unquote style attached to it. It is ballet-based, but ballet’s really a technique. Every dancer takes ballet — ballet training is like your daily dose of medicine.
