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For over 20 years, Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl and Staycee Pearl, the dynamic married duo behind PearlArts, have collaborated to blend sound design and dance. Under their visionary leadership, their organization has championed Black arts in Pittsburgh, producing and touring numerous works described as probing themes of “personal expression, race, freedom, and gender to immerse audiences in unforgettable experiences.”
In 2024, the pair started to usher PearlArts into a new era. To better unify the organization’s dance and sound components, they recently rebranded as PearlArts Movement & Sound. They also started work on a new studio in Braddock.
Although the organization creates space for everyone, uplifting Black femme artists, in particular, is always at the forefront. “It’s always a mission to be as universal with the story as possible, even though we’re telling our stories,” Stacyee tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “We’re not saying, ‘Oh, but this is our story,’ you know. It is our story, and you need to be part of it. It’s actually your story, too.”
Herman, a Pittsburgh-born creative, found his passion for sound at a young age with a tape recorder. Staycee, a native of New Haven, Conn., started as a young gymnast, but pivoted to dance. The two first met in New York, when Herman called Stacyee’s house looking for her then-boyfriend, who was also in the music scene. The call didn’t last long. The two then met through a mutual friend in Pittsburgh.
Herman describes his aesthetic as heavily influenced by Jamaican dub, deep jazz, and soul. “And I like noise. So all of that goes into everything I do,” he tells City Paper.
Stacyee, a dancer with a rich history of training at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem, integrates various styles of dance and movement to tell compelling stories on stage.
The pair tells the vibrant stories and history of Black culture through workshops, residencies, and original productions. Those productions include sum of y’all, the latest movement-based multimedia work from PearlArts, described as being focused on the “impermanence of community and the erasure of historically Black spaces over time.”
“We started thinking about relationships within our communities and how we expand and then come back together and then reach out in the world and how we reform in different spaces and what they look like and what they feel like and how much of that we retain,” Stacyee explains.
The work will play first for New York City audiences in January 2025, followed by a performance at Kelly Strayhorn Theater in spring 2026.
The new year will also see the grand opening of the new PearlArts studio in Braddock. The space, described in a release as being designed to “house a variety of artistic programs, from dance and music to multimedia experimentation,” will serve as a hub for local and touring artists, offering a platform for creative exploration and community engagement. It’s slated to open in spring 2025 which will coincide with the local premiere of Sum of Y’all.
“It’s like four individual cells that are all interconnected. There’s a main movement studio, there’s a secondary movement studio, and there’s a dual recording suite with two separate recording rooms,” Herman says.
PearlArts Movement & Sound is not just an organization but a culmination of Stacyee and Herman’s life’s work. Their joint venture reminds us of the power of art to connect, inspire, and transform.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2024 and Pittsburgh’s People of the Year (2024).
