Full Circle for Trey McIntyre Project
At Jacob’s Pillow this week, the Trey McIntyre Project will go out with a bang. They’ve visited the Pillow often since 2005, including the summer of 2008 when they announced the launch of a full-time company. The group is a hit with the Pillow audience, as it is with spectators all over the country. The secret? McIntyre chooses irresistible music—sometimes popular music, always pleasurable music—and he matches it with exuberant, witty, fast-moving choreography. One can always glean, in McIntyre’s dances, the reckless child as well as the savvy adult. His choreography is alert-making, and people walk out smiling.
His dancers commit to the movement with body and soul, and that shows in the performances. As writer Martha Ullman West said in her 2011 cover story, “Because of that commitment, it’s obvious that if he asked them to do tour jetés on Mars for an audience of rocks, they’d perform with the same energy and purpose as in the Mahalia Jackson Theater in New Orleans, where Sweeter End premiered last February.”
When it was announced
in January that this season at the Pillow would be its last, the company stated that McIntyre wanted to delve into some of his other artistic interests. The end of TMP is definitely a loss for the dance world, but many other companies (The Washington Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, to name a few) have his works in their reps, and we’re curious to see what Trey will do in the future.
For its last hurrah, TMP will dance to music by the rock band Queen in the East Coast premiere of Mercury Half-Life. And then, for a more visually inspired piece, they are performing The Vinegar Works: Four Dances of Moral Instruction, based on the work of writer/illustrator Edward Gorey, with puppets and props designed by Dan Luce and Michael Curry. For tickets and more info, click here.
