For Choreographer Staycee Pearl, The Future Is Now

Source: iOne Digital Creative Services

Staycee Pearl, co-artistic director of PearlArts, a dance-based arts non-profit, is relaxing in a black t-shirt and oversized, cat eye frames. Her hair is pulled into a loose bun that hangs in braided, ombré curls. She’s been alive for nearly 60 years, and her wisdom is captured in her artistic vision, though not in her youthful face or energetic smile. Pearl beams as she looks into the future of her dream come true: the new 5,000 square foot home of PearlArts in Braddock, Pennsylvania, which is underway, and a wellness residency that centers self-care and healing as the cornerstone of her artistic practice.

“This [wellness residency] is shifting me back to me,” Pearl says. “And the company’s art will be stronger for everyone, including me.”

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Likewise, the space in Braddock signals a new day for PearlArts and the surrounding community. Both the space and the wellness venture capture Pearl’s resolve that there is no separation between art and health, or between creativity and rest. Likewise, there is no separation between caring for her own body and spirit and caring for the dancers, artists and community that PearlArts calls home.

Source: Courtesy of Staycee Pearl

Pearl, whose career spans over 25 years, started PearlArts with her husband, Herman Pearl, in 2012. Before that, she already had a long, storied career in dance having trained at UARTS Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and been an artistic director, choreographer and dancer in New York and Atlanta. In Pittsburgh, she’s danced at the Pittsburgh Festival Opera, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and Dance Alloy among others.

An accomplished visual artist, Pearl won the Pittsburgh Foundation’s Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award in 2021 and was named a Pittsburgh Cultural Treasure by the Heinz Endowments that same year.

In PearlArts’ new home, Pearl envisions alliances, collaborations, and infinite possibilities with the Braddock community. When she speaks of the new space, there is the trace of tangible magic in her voice. For Pearl, the move is more than the expansion of her company. It’s also a blueprint for the future of how arts spaces can function in service to and collaboration with community.

The Braddock space will hold two sound studios, two dance studios, administrative offices, and a communal area for workshops, and extra workspace to lounge. “The space is twice what we had before,” Pearl emphasizes, “which means double capacity for more creativity and more sharing–period, as the young folks say.”

Pearl’s fingers move like a maestro’s as she talks about her new artistic home.

“I want to see the community honored,” she says. “How do we shepherd in a new era for this community that includes the [it] in a way we haven’t seen in a lot of areas? For us, it has to mean being who we are and having safe, shared space with the community and being open to learn about the community.”

Third and fourth right: Herman and Staycee Pearl, founders of PearlArts. | Source: Njaimeh Njie

The new home for PearlArts is supported by its own Pittsburgh-based philanthropy. Part of the freedom to explore the intersection of innovative art with community collaboration is the length of time PearlArts will be housed in the new location.

“It’s almost like we own it. We have a very long lease,” Pearl says. She adds, “Who knows if Herman and I will be around in 30 years? It’s crazy to think about life like that. But getting real about life has been a huge part of this process for me. It makes me think about how I will spend the rest of my time on earth. When I was 20, I had no consideration for that.”

Pearl’s work as part of the Nefertiti Alliance, a cohort of Black women who recognized the need to rest, pause, reflect, and support Black women as working mothers, inspired her to think strategically about time, life span, and artmaking.

Source: Joshua Franzos

In 2015, the Alliance, which also focuses on protecting the cultural capital of Black women in the arts, was granted funding for its self-care work. Pearl saw firsthand the impact self-care had on the group and decided to prioritize her wellness when she applied for the 2023 cycle of the Advancing the Black Arts in Pittsburgh Initiative. At the time, her thinking was clearly focused on healing from the trauma and uncertainty of COVID.

“It encourages us to recall what two years of quarantine did to us as a society–how crazed, discombobulated, fearful, and unsettled we were,” she says.

Pearl recognizes that we cannot return to 2020 and take back the time nor the lives we lost, but we can recover, as a necessity to live, thrive, and do the precise work we were put on earth to do.

The self-designed, self-care residency includes a budget for a daily yoga class, daily private Pilates, daily strength training, weekly massage, and one to three hours of infrared sauna per week. Pearl also factored in time for “no cost activities,” like “journaling, drawing, dance, morning stretch, and morning walks/cardio.” She also outlined alone time in her dance studio, which prior to the grant, she rarely had time for.

“[It] feels like a stamp of approval and support that says, We see you,” Pearl says of the award/residency.

Outside the new home for PearlArts Studio. | Source: Njaimeh Njie

Today, conversations about the overwhelm Black women face in the workplace are arguably at an all-time high. They include celebrities like Beyoncé, Naomi Osaka, and India Arie—who has taken to social media to plainly state, “I need healing, too.”

Pearl’s work and praxis are part of the Afrofuturistic now: where a Black woman artist’s self-care is a revolutionary act. Healing from pandemic and life trauma is neither optional nor “extra,” but necessary. In this moment, she is claiming her right to a long life of art, creativity, and community engagement that invigorates and revives the soul.

Says Pearl: “I want to do as much as I can as long as I’m here.”

Tameka Cage Conley is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and librettos. The opera for which she wrote the libretto, A Gathering of Sons, was awarded the Bronze Medal in the Society and Social Issues category of the New York Festivals TV and Film Awards.

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