THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2009
Arts and Entertainment
At Home in the Studio, and Always on the Move
Janet Durrans for The New York Times
A TEACHER Peter Pucci with Jeanette Perk and other dance students at Manhattanville College, where he is the artist-in-residence. By SYLVIANE GOLD PETER PUCCI moves around a lot. And not just because he’s a choreographer. In any given week, he might spend a couple of days in a local studio working out a new ballet, then devise a few Broadway-style numbers for an out-of-town theater and afterward race back to Purchase to teach his modern dance class at Manhattanville College. The scenery varies, the dance vocabulary changes and so do the techniques of the dancers. During a recent break — a short one — from all the hopscotching, Mr. Pucci admitted that it can be trying. “But it’s also fun,” he said. “I’ve learned how to do it.” One of the things that helps him focus as he bounces from, say, the elite professionals of the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago to nondancers at Hartford Stage is his home base, the three-bedroom colonial on a hill in Mount Kisco that he shares with his wife, Ellen Sirot, a top hand model and a former dancer, and their 9-year-old daughter, Lana. And sometimes his travels take him around the county rather than the country. This past week, for example, his latest dance, “The Inevitability of Desire,” received its world premiere at Manhattanville’s spring dance concert (April 2
to 5). And on April 3, Mr. Pucci, named the Westchester Artist of the Year by ArtsWestchester, was to receive the award — the organization’s most prestigious — at a celebratory luncheon. Awards are not exactly a novelty for him. He started out as an athlete, aiming to teach physical education. But dance class in college changed his direction, and he became a dancer, most notably with the popular Pilobolus. In 1986, he founded his own company, Peter Pucci Plus Dancers, probably best known for flinging themselves across the stage along with Frisbees, basketballs, badminton rackets and other sporting goods in “Pucci: Sport,” which they have performed in theaters across the country and at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Pucci has garnered numerous awards for his choreography, which, whether all-out slapstick or gorgeously lyrical, is always readily accessible. And last year, he won a Lucille Lortel Award for the off-Broadway musical “Queens Boulevard.” The show’s characters reflected the borough’s diversity, and Mr. Pucci’s vivid choreography drew on dance vocabularies from India and Japan, disco and hip hop. He is equally eclectic when it comes to his musical inspirations, using Prince, k.d. lang and Vivaldi to score some of his work. For the Manhattanville concert, he
settled on a muscular percussion piece by Blue Man Group. Now in his second year as Manhattanville’s artist-in-residence, he noted that he especially relishes the “residence” part. “It’s the first time in 20 years that I’ve had an anchor for my schedule,” he said. And the best part is that the anchor is so close to home. A native of Baltimore, he came to New York in 1980 “with a duffel bag and $50,” and quickly got the Pilobolus gig. Moving to Westchester was never part of the plan. But then he saw Ms. Sirot performing and fell for her instantly. He had been living in the West Village; she had an apartment on the Upper West Side. When they began hankering for a weekend place, they decided to consolidate, selling her apartment and buying the house in Westchester from the woman who had lived in it since it was built in 1925. “She gave us a really good price,” he said, “because she liked us. She didn’t want to sell it to anybody else.” They slowly began to “morph,” he said, from being people who were in Westchester for the weekend to people who were “two minutes from the Kisco train station and 50 minutes from Grand Central.” After five years, they gave up the apartment in the Village and made the house their home, helped along by the example of their neighbors.
“Cynthia Anderson, who used to be with American Ballet Theater, lives right behind us,” he recalled. “Another dancer lived down the road. Four or five dancers from New York were all in this little community.” He met Iris Salomon, the former dancer who founded Barnspace, the nonprofit performance studio in Katonah; he met local musicians and began commissioning pieces for his company. “I started doing stuff locally,” he said, “and once people knew I was in the area, they started reeling me in to do other things.” More than anything, choreographers need warm bodies and a space to move them around in. Mr. Pucci found them readily available in Westchester. Instead of traveling into the city, hiring dancers and renting studio space, he could workshop a ballet with dance students at Purchase College, where he was a frequent guest teacher. “I started finding ways to make living in the area work,” he said. “For me, it’s been the best of both worlds. I’m close to the city. But then I can do a lot up here — I get free studio space at Barnspace whenever I need a place to go. If I get a ballet commission, I can go to Purchase and say, ‘I need six dancers for two or three days.’ “ Most Manhattanville students are not quite on the same pre-professional track as the ones at Purchase. But “The Inevitability of Desire,” a high-energy romp for nine women, is nonetheless a kind of homage to them. “It came out of the rehearsal process,” he said. “There are a couple of these young dancers who are just shining in it — desirous of dancing, and dancing well, and dancing full out. And there’s this underlying feeling of community among these girls, who’ve worked with each other and have become a very good ensemble.” Mr. Pucci, who doesn’t reveal his age in deference to his wife’s modeling career, said it reminded him of his own early days in dance, and of the connection he felt to the others coming up along with him. “Being in the business and dancing all the time,” he said, “you forget about those things. It’s nice to see these young dancers dancing with such confidence and strength.” Michael Posnick, director of the dance and theater department at Manhattanville, said that Mr. Pucci’s presence has something to do with that. “He’s raised the bar quite a bit,” he said. “I’m really happy that he wants to stay.”
National Choreographers Initiative • www.nchoreographers.org • July 12 - 30 , 2011