Adam W. McKinney

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Barely four months into his tenure as the artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Adam W. McKinney is already implementing revolutionary ways to build on the company’s existing strengths with his gaze firmly set on its overall health a hundred years from now.

Adam has a remarkable resume as a ballet dancer, a choreographer, a professor, an activist and an arts leader. He danced with some of the world’s most renowned ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

He was the co-founder and co-director of DNAWORKS, an arts-and-service organization based in Fort Worth, TX, dedicated to dialogue and healing through the arts. Among DNAWORKS’ many projects is the interactive “Forth Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse.” Thanks to an app with augmented-reality features, the tour allows audiences — whether in person or virtually — to visit four sites in Fort Worth associated with the December 11, 1921 lynching of Mr. Rouse. DNAWORKS also produced “The Borders Project,” which uses a variety of creative performances and events to explore the histories of manmade borders and their effects on the human spirit and body. “The Borders Project” has so far worked on the U.S./Mexico and Israel/Palestine borders.

Adam was also awarded the NYU President’s Service Award for his dance work with populations who struggle with heroin addiction.

Before accepting his new post in Pittsburgh, he was the Associate Professor of Dance and Ballet at Texas Christian University, a tenured position he took on after having served as the inaugural Dance Department Chair at New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe.

In this interview he describes the core beliefs and practices he believes will make ballet a rigorous, sustainable contemporary artform accessible and welcoming to all for generations to come.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

• What’s been the steepest learning curve so far, and what’s come most naturally to you?
• You got your master’s at NYU where you studied not only dance but also race and trauma theory. How did you decided to pursue that line of research and how do those two lines of study inform each other?
• What is the clearest way you think that ballet can help people — dancers and non-dancers, individuals and communities — heal from current and past traumas?
• One thing you mentioned was about changing things technically ... Can you talk about that?
• What do you think was most instrumental in helping you develop your particular leadership style?
• You mentioned that you were leading today with your eye on what ballet will look like in 100 years. Can imagine what ballet will look like in 100 years?
• Thinking back on how you were trained to become a professional ballet dancer, do you think your current students need to be given different or additional tools to go out into the current artistic landscape?
• What do you think it’ll take to not only to bring audiences back post-pandemic but to also turn them into lifelong fans?
• In the world of ballet, what could be changed or reinvented so that your work of reinvention and moving the form forward would be significantly easier?
• What current or upcoming creative projects of yours, whether at Pittsburgh or elsewhere, are you excited about?

Pier Carlo Talenti: You have been on the job now for almost four months, is that right?

Adam McKinney: Not even four months. I think I’m into my fourth month.

Pier Carlo: How’s it going? What’s been the steepest learning curve so far, and what’s come most naturally to you?

Adam: I think all of what I’ve done in my life has certainly prepared me for this moment. Here at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, we are at a particular precipice of opportunity, and I’m really excited about the direction in which we are moving. I’m stepping into an organization that is fiscally sound, that is artistically rigorous, that is educationally robust and looking forward to taking the company to the next level.

Pier Carlo: Before we start talking about your present and upcoming work with Pittsburgh Ballet, I want to go back to your student days. I was interested to learn that when you got your master’s at NYU, you studied not only dance but also race and trauma theory, right?

Adam: Correct.

Pier Carlo: I’m curious about how you decided to pursue that line of research and also how those two lines of study, dance and trauma theory, inform each other.

Adam: Thanks for that question. I was born in 1976. My father, who passed away in 2021, was Black and Native heritage, and my mother is a White Ashkenazi Jew. They were married in 1965. Thus, my very existence was situated in the promise of possibility in terms of race, equality, social justice. I was brought up with a sense of, “If it is to be, it is up to me, and bring people along with you.”

Throughout my career, I’ve been very much interested in both the form of dance as well as the function of dance. What can dance and ballet specifically do in society to move us forward? What is the power of ballet and dance, and how can I be an initiator and instigator toward the proposed goal of what it means to get it right socially, social justice? 

Even before I retired from the stage, I was very much interested in this idea and began my master’s work at the Gallatin School for Individualized Study at New York University and began looking at the impact, the physical manifestations of racism. What does racism do to our individual bodies as well as our collective bodies? And how can dance be a healing catalyst from the traumatic experience of being racialized? It’s important to notice that we, in fact, have all been racialized, independent of our phenotype, our skin color and hair texture. Again, how can dance be a catalyst, a pathway toward healing from that hurt? 

The work was both theoretical but also practice- and project-based. I worked with people who struggle with heroin addiction on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and developed a dance curriculum for the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center as a result of this research. The work really propelled me in thinking about not only this community but all communities and from an educational perspective, what can be put in place for people to get to know one another better, to move in the direction of each other, to move through the racism, whether internalized or externalized, with dance at the center of that process. It has really informed my own direction as a performer, as a leader, as a director, as an educator, and really set me on my path in those directions.

Pier Carlo: This is a huge question to ask you to answer in just a few minutes, but what is the clearest way you think that ballet can help people — dancers and non-dancers, individuals and communities — heal from current and past traumas?

Adam: I think it happens in an embodied way, the performance of technique. 

Before I go on, I’d just like to offer this idea around ballet and its history, its historical implications on us now, for whom ballet was, for whom ballet was about, who was at the center, who was on the periphery, who was danced about, who was not danced about, in what ways people were danced about, in what ways people were not danced about, the racial and gender implications of that history. 

I ask this question, particularly in my leadership role now: What about ballet do we keep and what about ballet do we let go? What no longer makes sense for us now technically, physically, in terms of the stories that we tell, in terms of for whom we are performing and about whom we are performing? And asking these questions all the time as we continue to identify what we want ballet to look like moving forward. 

In terms of the way in which I lead, I’m leading for seven generations past us. In 100 years, what do we want ballet to look like, and what do we need to do now to move us in that direction?

In terms of the way in which I lead, I’m leading for seven generations past us. In 100 years, what do we want ballet to look like, and what do we need to do now to move us in that direction?

I think that there are pedagogical implications to ballet as a healing tool. How are we teaching ballet? Who are we teaching ballet to? And what are the technical implications around that? I think if any of us have heard us Black people talk about our Black bodies in ballet, you will know that our bodies have also been targets of racism in the ballet studio because of those histories, so I think that there are pedagogical implications. 

I think that there certainly are performance implications. What are we performing? What stories are we performing, and what does that mean in terms of representation? It’s important for people to see ourselves represented everywhere and onstage.

I was at the National Museum of African American History and Culture last summer, and I found myself in the exhibits, looking for myself. I’m from Milwaukee; you might be able to hear it in my accent. I was looking for the word Milwaukee; I was looking for ballet throughout the exhibits. Representation is a real thing. It’s important for people to see ourselves represented across the board. I think that is inherently healing when we see ourselves represented, seen and heard and valued.

Maybe this has everything to do with representation, but I also think that noticing that we are not alone … . For example, for European-heritage people to see non-European-heritage people onstage could be healing. Noticing that we are not alone, that we are breaking down hierarchies of race and class through the artform is a reflection of our commitments to inclusion, diversity, equity and access, which I think is a contradiction to those histories of exclusion and racism and classism and sexism in general.

Pier Carlo: Some of what you’re talking about can be achieved through programming, through the makeup of your company. One thing you mentioned, however, was about changing things technically, which surprised me because I always think of ballet as being so technically rigid. Can you talk about that?

Adam: I can. As we move forward, we continue to strive toward excellence. From my perspective, I’m walking into a company where several artists have major injuries. Creating opportunities for artists to recover as part of the workday is perhaps a departure from what we’ve done historically. The repetitive use of our bodies inevitably creates wear and tear. It’s not about necessarily changing the height of a leg, but it is about ensuring that our artists have access to understanding their bodies from an anatomical perspective and other perspectives to ensure the longevity of their careers.

I think that that’s different. Yes, we expect a grand battement above our ears, but from a technical perspective, in my position, I need to make sure that we are doing it anatomically correctly. I think that’s what I mean from a technical perspective.

Pier Carlo: How are you putting that idea into action at the company?

Adam: Well, as I move forward toward my fourth month, I have a goal of being a 100% injury-free company by 2025.

Pier Carlo: [Gasps] I bet those words have not been spoken by many ballet artistic directors. That seems revolutionary to me. Is it to you?

Adam: I’m excited by it. I haven’t heard many of my colleagues clarify a goal in the same way, and it’s something about which I’m really thrilled to think about. Some of the ways in which we’re moving toward that goal include strength and body-awareness classes before dancers go into the studio for company class in the morning; utilizing our Pilates studio in more nuanced ways to allow for access for the artists to engage in that work; scheduling in during the day Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis classes, for example; and instituting shorter Fridays, so working until 3 and calling it a day.

We have several parents in our company, so providing people with opportunities to pick up and connect with their young people after school; allowing people to schedule doctor’s appointments, things of that nature; building in time for recovery and for strength training during the day and also leaning into the relationships that I have with dance-medicine experts in the field to support us in moving toward that 100% injury-free by 2025 goal.

Pier Carlo: Are those relationships with the medical and physical specialist relationships that you’ve cultivated over the years?

Adam: Yes, as well as leaning into the relationships that we already have with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, physical therapists, athletic trainers and doctors, and basing the work in science. I think that we are particularly positioned to do that work here in the United States as ballet companies more broadly and certainly for PBT to start doing that work here.

Pier Carlo: That sounds beautiful. Your company must be thrilled about these changes, I imagine.

Adam: You know, no one tells the people at the top so much [he chuckles], though I do have an open-door policy. I meet with all of the artists regularly in individual meetings. I’m working to develop an objective-based assessment process for artists whereby they get to assess their work vis-à-vis the artistic team assessing their work. And similarly, I am welcoming the artists to assess my work as a director, leveling the playing field.

Pier Carlo: Wait, wait, hold on. How does that work, what you just said?

Adam: Welcoming the artist to assess my work?

Pier Carlo: Yes. That is not something one often hears instituted in a company, so tell me about that.

Adam: We want to ensure that we are the best ballet company we can be, and it’s important that we all create opportunities to reflect on our work. Oftentimes in a ballet class you don’t know that you’re sickling your right foot when you enveloper from a devant position to a derrière position or an à la seconde position, for example. You need somebody from the outside really providing you with that feedback. It’s important for me as a leader to understand the ways in which I am or am not hitting the mark.

So just as I am creating an objective assessment-and-evaluation process for the artists, I’m doing the same for myself vis-à-vis the work that I’m doing with the board and the work that I’m doing with the artists. It’s very hard for me not to take things personally, but in modeling these objective approaches to assessment, we get to identify how we get to improve individually and collectively. I think that’s the goal.

Pier Carlo: What do you think was most instrumental in helping you develop this particular leadership style of yours?

Adam: Thanks for asking that question. I think everything. I think having danced in ballet companies certainly, having danced in contemporary ballet and modern-dance companies, certainly as I look toward curation and identifying where we want to be as a ballet company. Having those experiences from a multi-genre approach has certainly informed my programming and curatorial work. Having been a tenured professor in ballet and the way in which I lead my arts administrative work and the way in which I lead my arts administration work is certainly informed by those experiences.

Having been a Culture Connect Envoy through the U.S. State Department and having worked with U.S. embassies around the world and meeting people where they are from a harm-reduction perspective, being a choreographer, having been a co-director of an arts and service organization … I think all of these positions have prepared me for this particular moment. A diamond is so beautiful because we get to look at and through it from 360 degrees. That’s really how I’m viewing PBT: Where and how can I bring my leadership acumen to these various areas of the organization to make it shine as bright as possible?

Pier Carlo: You mentioned that you were leading today with your eye on what ballet will look like in 100 years. I wonder if you can imagine for me out loud what ballet will look like in 100 years.

Adam: I’m closing my eyes and looking through my third eye into the future [laughs], into the possibility, and I see that our doors are wide and that our tables are longer, where we invite anyone in who wants to participate, that we understand our history and from where we come and we ensure that everyone knows that they belong in ballet. 

It means that the technique will shift over time as it has inevitably over this period; that ballet is centered in dance science; that our audiences are that much more literate; that when people come to the ballet, they understand and see themselves represented; that ballet is taken into communities; that ballet lives on the proscenium stage and lives elsewhere in our communities, outdoors and otherwise; that repertoire is diverse; that artists are versatile and feel at home inside that versatility; and that we are that much more connected as people and as ballet practitioners.

Pier Carlo: That’s a beautiful dream. May it happen sooner than 100 years.

Adam: Amen.

Pier Carlo: PBT also runs, as you mentioned, an important school. Thinking back on how you yourself were trained to become a professional ballet dancer, do you think your current students need to be given different or additional tools to go out into the current artistic landscape? And if so, what do you think those tools are?

Adam: Thanks for that question. I will say that Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School just hired our new dean of the school. His name is Raymond Rodriguez, who comes with decades of experience as a performer and leader in ballet, and we’re really thrilled that he’s here. I’d like to say that I’m still new here, but he is even newer than I am. This is his fourth week. 

As we peer toward the future in ballet, as ballet dancers become more versatile and more adept at the technical elements that are required, I invite them to also identify who they want to be as artists. Artistic training should be upheld as high as and simultaneous to technical training. That’s important. That’s a skill that I impart and welcome students to add to their toolkit. 

There’s a long history of abuse in ballet. I don’t know that I need to prove that to anyone. That certainly was part of my experience as a student. I think creating spaces and communities of care in ballet is a skill that I’m working toward imparting here at PBT and for students in PBT School.

I also think that students don’t always have an opportunity to cross-content areas with ballet, that in some ways ballet is this isolated form and is not often understood as being connected to agriculture, to architecture, to engineering, to computer science, to baking. If one’s trajectory is not solely in the direction of performance, how else can dance be connected and attributed to other content areas?

I often ask, “What is your dance And? Rather than having another fallback plan besides ballet, what can your dance And be? How else do you want to connect your ballet training to your life and to other content areas?”

I often ask, “What is your dance And? Rather than having another fallback plan besides ballet, what can your dance And be? How else do you want to connect your ballet training to your life and to other content areas?” I think critical analysis is an important skill, and that has everything to do with using our bodies, brains and voices. Centralizing that value from a pedagogical perspective at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School is something that I’m working toward as well.

Pier Carlo: We’ve spoken about healing bodies and healing trauma. I want to talk now about the performing arts in America today. 

This has been an upsetting week of news. The Mark Taper Forum, where I used to work, is shutting down for a year in L.A., and Tulsa Opera is shutting down for a year. The Public and BAM in New York are pausing several programs. As you know, post-pandemic, audiences really didn’t come back. You started the interview by saying that your company is on very solid ground, but I wonder if you can talk about what you think it’ll take not only to bring audiences back but to turn them into lifelong fans?

Adam: I think as arts organizations we are working toward creating new models and new approaches to producing work, and as we move forward post-pandemic it will behoove us to keep collaborating, to not be working in isolation. While it might be paring down in some areas, it also feels like it involves making more robust and more broad opportunities for those collaborations. 

I actually think that there’s power in slowing down. While it may be a result of COVID, I think that there is a silver lining toward reassessing and reevaluating who we are now. While we are financially stable as an organization — and I’m just praising the heavens that we are — there are still choices that I am having to make from a leadership perspective that would’ve been very different five years ago, programmatically and otherwise. I think that these are opportunities for us to look at the form that we work in and to continue to look at function and how to be efficient in and with our work. 

This is a moment of opportunity to tell new stories. I think that that is an expectation from our audiences that, “Yes, we are committed to tradition, but we expect something new now.” I think that we also get to continue to listen to our audiences who have been with us for many years and also peer through our third eye at who we want to be in 100 years and start creating programming to represent those new faces in our audiences.

Pier Carlo: Especially after the pandemic, which really bared a lot of systemic faults in the performing arts and visual arts, I always like to ask about systemic reinventions. In the world of ballet, what could be changed or reinvented so that your work of reinvention and moving the form forward would be significantly easier?

Adam: Well, the board just passed our ’23-’24 budget, and … keeping costs down. Things are really expensive. If we want to continue producing high-caliber work, I think therein lies an opportunity to collaborate among arts institutions and ballet companies more specifically on perhaps co-producing new ballets and to share in those costs.

Pier Carlo: That doesn’t happen very often currently?

Adam: It does happen, but I don’t know that it is a regular practice.

Pier Carlo: Why not?

Adam: I don’t know that I can answer that question, but I do know that there’s an opportunity there to be more overt in that practice of sharing costs. I think that it might have something to do with being the first, being out in front. “We want to premiere; we want to be the first ones who are doing this thing.” There might be some competition there. I’m not quite sure. Certainly that lines up with historical perspectives.

Pier Carlo: I know it was certainly true in the theater. We used to call it premiere-itis. The thing is it’s something that institutions treasure and that audiences actually don’t care about at all.

Adam: They want to see good work.

Pier Carlo: Exactly. And if anything, they’re mistrustful of a world premiere.

Adam: Right, right, it hasn’t had time to settle in and get all the kinks out. That’s interesting.

Pier Carlo: Finally, I’m wondering what current or upcoming creative projects of yours, whether at Pittsburgh or elsewhere, you’re really particularly excited about?

Adam: Thanks so much for that question. I spoke to the goal of artists being versatile, and next season I have the great pleasure of bringing in Barak Marshall of Los Angeles. We are performing one of his works. It’s a contemporary dance-theater work that I’m really excited about bringing to Pittsburgh, both for our audiences — and I’ll speak to that shortly — but also for the artists of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre to really start challenging them to move in different ways and to add more styles to their personal repertoire. 

I’m bringing in Barak for a program called “Light in the Dark” that will premiere on October 27th of 2023, which is the fifth anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre. You may know that the Tree of Life massacre was the largest and deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the United States. As an organization, we are responding to that history and centering Jewish voices and the experiences of Jews onstage. I am a Jew; I’m of Jewish heritage. 

And alongside Barak’s work, we are premiering, speaking of premieres, a new work by Jennifer Archibald about the story of Florence Warren, who was a dancer during World War II and fought in the French Resistance during the Holocaust.

I’m excited about not only diversifying the repertoire and connecting social-justice issues to ballet but I’m also interested in ballet and technology. I’ve had the pleasure of working on two augmented-reality apps. Situating the organization at the intersection of ballet and technology is something that I’m thrilled and excited about, and we’re starting to move toward that direction.

Lastly, our marketing campaign for the '23-'24 season is “Come Dance with Us,” so we’re creating opportunities for audiences to do just that. Rather than sitting and watching ballet, how can we as an arts institution ensure that people know that they belong here by creating opportunities for them to dance alongside us? That’s something I’m also looking forward to here.