Braddock is the new home for another established Pittsburgh arts group.
This weekend, PearlArts Movement and Sound launches its new studios with the premiere of “sum of y’all,” a new dance work by its co-executive directors, choreographer Staycee Pearl and composer Herman Pearl. The high-ceilinged, 5,000-square-foot space, including two dance studios and two recording studios, occupies the third floor of a long-vacant building on Braddock Avenue near the historic Braddock Carnegie Library.
The hour-long “sum of y’all” is work for six dancers that reflects on “the impermanence of community and the erasure of historically Black spaces,” i.e., gentrification. It features an original sound design by Herman Pearl and will be performed twice, in a sold-out Fri., March 28, show and again Sat., March 29.
The Pearls, who are husband and wife, founded the troupe in 2010, and it has since occupied a variety of homes while producing work that’s been performed around the country and even overseas. Staycee Pearl’s credits include “SKIN + Saltwater,” the first work Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre ever commissioned from a Black woman.
PearlArts is also known for its long association with the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, where the troupe was a resident artists and where it staged works including tributes to jazz singer Abbey Lincoln and science-fiction author Octavia Butler.
The troupe’s most recent headquarters was rented space in a former warehouse in Point Breeze North. Herman Pearl said PearlArts has been casting about for a new permanent home for several years. The group was connected to Greg Kander, who owns the Braddock building, by barebones productions artistic director Patrick Jordan, whose own theater is right down the street.
Kander also owns the Ohringer Building, a landmark former furniture business he converted into affordable apartment units with a preference for artists.
Other developments in the neighborhood include the overhaul of the Braddock Carnegie Library.
In addition to a large and a smaller dance studio, and two recording studios to be run by Herman Pearl (who is also a sound engineer), the newly renamed Braddock Arts and Media Building will host artist residencies, community classes and more.
“It’s kind of like we’ve had the dream all this time to do this stuff, but in a way we were never able to do it all at once,” he said.
The build-out was funded in large part by $650,000 in grants from funders including the Heinz Endowments, the Hillman Foundation and the Allegheny Regional Asset District.
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