A simple chalkboard and an unassuming black side door at 214 N. Lexington St. in Point Breeze mark the threshold to a dim, oddly configured foyer. Inside is a motorcycle, a bench and a door with a sign requesting to keep it closed at all times.
There’s also a shadowy staircase, barely illuminated by cyclical colored lights.
The voice of Jaka Pearl Porter, founding director of The Pillow Project, Pittsburgh’s only improvisational post-modern jazz dance company, provides a beacon leading up the memorabilia-lined stairway to The Space Upstairs, the city’s premiere multidisciplinary hot spot and The Pillow Project’s home.
Sunlight fills the huge, eclectically furnished loft above Construction Junction, noteworthy for its high ceiling, wooden floor and mirrored wall. Seventeen pairs of shoes are neatly arranged at the top of the stairs. A yoga class is in session.
Porter, clad in a generous black top and wide-legged burgundy pants, reigns over the proceedings, constantly in motion while dispensing words of encouragement along with instruction. “Stay focused when your mind wants to scatter,” “It gets hard really fast – don’t run away,” and “Be patient, handle yourself with grace.”
During a break between classes, the artist formerly known as Pearlann Porter sits on one of the numerous upholstered sofas and reflects on 20 years of The Pillow Project and the recent decision to come out as transgender.
Porter radiates with enthusiasm while sharing details about the upcoming anniversary celebration – The Long Dream – an evening-length program crafted to illustrate a through-line of personal artistic development, which now includes a personal rechristening. It’s slated for Sept. 6 and 7 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.
“That I’m sitting here, planning a 20th-anniversary show – I can’t imagine that not happening, but it’s also amazing at the same time,” Porter says.
Porter, who loves dance but early on discovered that dance did not reciprocate, is a self-made artist, deaf to “no,” who confidently pushed forward with attitude:
“I’m just going to do this, hell or high water. There is no alternative. Has it been hell? Yes! It’s been challenging on my own terms,” says Porter, who talks rapidly, laughs easily and often underscores speech with gestures and movement.
In 2004 – with more determination than money – Porter gathered an ensemble of dance students from Point Park University (where Porter was and is an adjunct), racked up $5,000 in personal credit card debt and launched the project-based troupe as an outlet for a predominantly nocturnal flow of ideas and an insatiable need to express them. The performances sold out.
The Pillow Project’s early works incorporated street, pedestrian, tap and modern dance. Porter was searching, driven to find a distinctive choreographic voice and create a professional-level entity apart from Pittsburgh’s dance establishment.
It was not until July 2010, four years after founding The Space Upstairs, as a performance venue, creative laboratory and outlet for independent initiatives that it “clicked.”
In rehearsal, Porter’s intention wasn’t translating onto the dancers’ bodies. A change of venue (to Porter’s living room) and a demonstration of how Porter listens to music and articulates movement affected the desired results.
“Suddenly, I saw someone doing what I’d been imagining in my head my whole life!” says Porter, retracting slightly, illustrating a gesture of surprise. “I’m not a choreographer. I’m a director!”
Porter has since followed the improvisational path and in partnership with co-director John Lambert has developed the Ellipsis Condition, a teachable improvisational methodology that is now the basis of subsequent works.
For Porter, postmodern jazz dance stands apart from the Broadway style (Porter flashes jazz hands) popularized in musicals and dancing school recitals. Instead, Porter is generating movement in the way that jazz musicians work.
“Live, in the moment, jazz music requires an investiture – that’s the quality I want to bring to my work,” explains Porter. “Improvisational jazz and improvisational dance were made for each other.”
Porter’s edgy concepts and non-dance-centric projects have wide appeal. Porter has experimented with dance-for-camera, lighting design and installation formats and has produced unconventional works in non-proscenium venues including the Hunt Armory and at Carrie Furnace.
Thought Pockets, which took performances to Pittsburgh, New York City and European sidewalks, garnered immediate feedback from spectators. One Strawberry Way performance stands out.
As Porter tells it, while sliding into character: “I remember this one guy,” Porter leans forward. “He was sitting on a curb, just staring, letting his cigarette burn down to ash,” Porter’s tattooed arm drops, two fingers splayed to hold an imaginary cigarette. “We were moving very slowly. He goes, ‘This is fascinating. I’ve never seen anything like this. Are you going to be here tomorrow?’ I answered, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘But I’ll be thinking about it,’” says Porter with an emphatic head movement.
The September showcase marks The Pillow Project’s first performances in a major Downtown Pittsburgh venue. For the occasion, Porter returns to structured choreography accompanied by (pre-recorded) orchestral music.
On tap are “Zzzz” (1997), a 12-minute romp spun from undergraduate insomnia and ample free time, and the world premiere of “Turmoil, Romance and Debauchery in D Minor,” shaped on the premise that the dancers are the music and respond under the baton of a conductor.
At the heart of the program is the title work, “The Long Dream,” an onstage improvisational collaboration among percussionist PJ Roduta, Lambert, who is a poet, and Porter.
“When you work improvisationally, there is a level of surrender. You don’t have to know what you’re gonna do. You have to know what you do,” says Porter, adding, “I won’t be explaining anything to the audience. I’m going to speak as authentically as I can.
“I’ll be introducing myself with a new name. I’m taking the ‘Pearl’ and putting it on the inside (as a middle name) and changing the shape of the oyster.
“I’ve already gone through some physical changes. Now I make more sense to myself and I’ll be presenting myself in a more dynamic way because I feel more comfortable with myself. It seems that I was already on the path for a long time and never recognized it. I’m recognizing it now.
“My work, I feel, is going to be the same. I’m not going to make work about it. My work is about other things,” says Porter for whom artistic satisfaction has always outweighed box office draw.
The only child, who grew up in Garfield, New Jersey, dancing in the living room to MTV music videos – whose freshman year at college was fraught with insomnia as visions of choreography danced on their pillow – who years later stood on the Paris balcony of the Swedish ambassador’s apartment overlooking the Louvre before performing before dignitaries – now asks, “Am I still dreaming?”
With aspirations to perform at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival topping the bucket list – indeed, Porter still is. Dreams do come true and with Porter’s steadfastness, this one will too.
The Pillow Project performs The Long Dream at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center (980 Liberty Ave.), Sept. 6 and 7. Tickets.
