Photo credit: Chad Wagner

By Steve Sears

If you peek at Adriana Pierce’s resume, your eyes dart from credential to credential, and with good reason. The former Verona now-New York City resident has accomplished much, and is innovatively stepping her way into other realms of the dance world.

“Passion. I hope that comes through right away,” Pierce says when asked what people will discover when meeting her initially. “And also, the importance of community; that I have a real passion for community. I think that definitely comes out in a lot of the projects that I’ve done.”

Without a doubt. In fact, the 32-year-old Pierce’s journey is escalating this year. Recently selected as a Dance Magazine “2022 25 to Watch” is apropos for the woman who has danced with the Miami City Ballet, performed in Carousel on Broadway in 2018, and will appear in the movie West Side Story. “All the things that I wanted to do, I’ve done,” she says. “But there’s also an element of letting fate kind of have its way when it comes your way.”

At the top of her resume now perhaps is “choreographer,” she the creator of the #QueerTheBallet. “It was the pandemic that really spurred me to get going,” Pierce says. “I think that with everything in New York City paused, and I’ve always wanted to choreograph – do things, say things, put my mark on ballet, do theater and do all these things. But I never would have thought it would have been in this way at this time. But it was the pandemic; it made me think about what I want my work to intend, and how I want to contribute, and what is important to me as a queer artist growing up in my field. A lot of the things that I’ve been working on the past year with #QueerTheBallet are things that I’ve said and things that have been important to me this whole time, but for some reason, now is the time where people are ready to hear it. I think that’s really exciting.”

Pierce started dancing when she was age 3 at a school in West Caldwell, and by the time she was four, she was attending the New Jersey School of Ballet. “I started taking it more seriously pretty early on,” she says. Pierce’s mom and dad are Director of the Music Ministry and Associate Director of Music respectively at West Caldwell’s First Presbyterian Church. “I grew up in the church,” Pierce says, reflecting on her early career path. “I’ve done all these things, and I really think it’s because of my time at the church and with my parents, and the music program there. They every year would do a big musical production with high schoolers, and when I was young, my mom would say, ‘Okay, choreograph this dance,’ or ‘teach this.’” The first piece she ever choreographed was as a 14-year-old confirmation candidate. “When I was in eighth grade, we had to write an essay or something, and I didn’t want to write that essay. That’s the honest truth,” she says with a laugh. Instead, she danced it. “It ended up being a really important moment for me because I made a solo for myself and performed it at the church for my confirmation. That was the first time I had to listen to the music and think about movement, and I loved it.”

Pierce then attended Verona High School for two years. “I only was there for four hours a day and then I left. I would leave at noon to go to the city to train at the School of American Ballet.” In her junior and senior years, she transferred permanently to the Professional Performing Arts School in New York City.

After completing her recent paired female presentation titled Animals & Angels at The Joyce Theater in New York City, Pierce is next tackling a project with the Carolina Ballet. “I started workshopping it with the New York Choreographic Institute in 2019,” she explains. “I was working with the dancers in New York City Ballet at that time, trying to work on an ensemble piece for the women in the company and trying to do something that felt really empowering. It also kind of planted the seeds for what I would end up doing in #QueerTheBallet. I was thinking about pointe shoes, and how traditionally gendered they are, and how that really changes partnering and changes movement, and how do we start thinking about pointe shoes as a skill and not as a gender marker or gender qualifier. The director from Carolina Ballet called me and wants to put that piece on their program and I’m really excited about working on that again.”

To learn more about Pierce and her work, visit www.adrianapierce.com.