High-Flying Trey McIntyre Houston Ballet’s boy wonder grows up and creates his first full-length ballet: Peter Pan by D.L. Groover

Gay choreographer Trey McIntyre is soaring. Zooming, actually. Since his January arrival in Houston, he’s been going nonstop creating his world premiere three-act Peter Pan for Houston Ballet. Although he’s single, he hasn’t even partaken of Montrose nightlife, wanting to stay focused and not be distracted from his work. Even Monday, the dancer’s day off, finds him across town at Houston Ballet’s new high-tech design production warehouse checking out set designer Tom Boyd’s prototype for the lost boys’ little ship. With wheels and pivots on their skateboard-like vessel, Peter Pan’s band of wild pre-teens will be able to careen around the stage like marauding mosquitoes, infuriating the nasty pirates on board Captain Hook’s lumbering galleon, which Boyd has crafted from bones.

"The ships are so cool," McIntyre later said laughing. "The lost boys have a miniature jet ski. I rode on it back and forth, spinning and sliding–I had so much fun."

You’d think McIntyre would be stressed: a world premiere, his first full-length production, and the opening less than a month away, March 14. But McIntyre takes it all in stride. Big ones, since he’s 6’5". He’s stoked, in his words.

"I thought it would be like the equivalent of three one-act ballets, but it’s really not. It’s more the equivalent of 10 one-act ballets. There’s so much that goes into it. Especially during the rehearsal process. Because I can’t work straight through, I have to work in sections, so I’m constantly trying to keep what section works with this section, how does that relate to the first act, how does it all work together? There are so many things to balance at once. All those elements, keeping them all wrangled.

"My biggest goal, more than anything, is to be a fine storyteller. I really want people to be able to sit through it and not have to struggle with what’s going on. And that really takes keeping a sense of the entire project–almost two hours worth of choreography–all the time, always, constantly keeping that in my head. And that requires 10 times more preparation before going in the studio."

Three years ago, when McIntyre was resident choreographer at Oregon Ballet Theatre, the idea of a full-length Peter Pan was suggested, and the young choreographer immediately saw all the inherent dance and visual possibilities. He began work, collaborating with Broadway costume designer Jeanne Button, set designer Boyd (Houston Ballet’s production designer responsible for Ben Stevenson’s atmospheric Dracula and Cleopatra), and musical arranger Neil DePonte on a score comprised from the works of Sir Edward Elgar. But then Oregon downsized its company to less than 20, and McIntyre’s proposed libretto already called for 14 Indians. That wasn’t even counting pirates, mermaids, fairies, lost boys, the Darling family, flying fish puppets, and a crocodile. He realized Pan would never premiere in Portland. He kept working on it, experimenting with the Flying by Foy rigs by adding a bungee cord to the wire, and refining his libretto–but Pan was a ballet without a company.

As choreographic associate for Houston Ballet since 1995, he asked artistic director Ben Stevenson for his help.

"Look at the libretto and let me know what you think. He said, ‘Why don’t you do it for us?’"

Peter Pan found a home. This is McIntyre’s sixth piece for Houston, following extraordinary successes with the one-acts Touched (1994), Second Before the Ground (1996), and Bound (2000). His tenure with Houston Ballet spans his entire career–both as dancer and choreographer. McIntyre moved to Houston in 1987 to study at the Houston Ballet Academy after graduating from the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts. His musicality and dramatic instincts drew him to choreography; his talents caught Stevenson’s attention, and in 1989, at the tender age of 19, McIntyre was named choreographic apprentice. He joined the company a year later as a corps member. Although extraordinarily tall for a classical dancer, his theatrical flair made for striking appearances in Houston Ballet productions, such as the title role in Don Quixote (his favorite part because of all the stunt work) and the phosphorescent-eyed Inquisitor in Christopher Bruce’s Cruel Garden. Although he moved to Portland in 1998, his alliance with Houston Ballet continues strong.

"There’s no other company like it in the U.S.," he says with a wide smile. "It’s all in the details. It’s really pure, clean placement and not affectation. It’s all from Ben. Honestly, I’ve learned so much from him. I see that more and more as time goes on."

At 32, McIntyre has joined that rarefied club of hot young international choreographers who include Stanton Welch, Christopher Wheeldon, and Natalie Weir, who in turn follow in the choreographic footprints of Jiri Kilian, William Forsythe, and Nacho Duato.

After Peter Pan opens, McIntyre, who never seems to stay put in his Portland home longer than a variation, creates a new work for Philadanco, Philadelphia’s modern dance company. For next year, his schedule includes world premieres at the National Ballet of Cuba and another at Washington Ballet using music from the independent neo-rock band the Shins.

McIntyre works in the studio just as fast as his upward career trajectory and, except for some complicated corps dancing, creates the actual steps on the dancers only after he enters the rehearsal room. That innate ability to create on his feet, to convey what he wants without wasting anyone’s time, to know just the right dance gesture to convey thought, is evidence of his maturity as a choreographer.

"I just always go fast," McIntyre says. "Slow is boring to me. You get more out of the dancers that way if they stay engaged and stay challenged. Stylistically, it’s certainly a collaboration. Just getting to know them, how they move, what looks best on them, will affect what I’ll come up with later."

And forget Disney. McIntyre’s version of Peter Pan is heavily influenced by Sir James Barrie’s original with its sinister overtones of Never Land and an untamed Pan with leaves in his hair and dirt on his face. "If you put your ear to the ground now, you would hear the whole island seething with life–all wanted blood…. Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true."

 "I love his writing," McIntyre says. "When I approach a brand-new scene, I go back and read that section, and it’ll affect the details. Tomorrow, I’m working on the battle scene with the two ships. Talk about a beautiful phrase. It’s Pan’s first fight with Captain Hook and Hook bites him. And Barrie talks about how there’s a moment in every child’s life where something that’s not fair happens for the first time. And if you’re the adult that inflicts that, they’ll forgive you and go on, but really the child will never be the same again. And Peter, who’s eternally a child, has forgotten everything that’s happened before except for the moment right then. So it’s little details like that I will at least keep in my toy box to work with in the studio."

With unabashed theatricality and full of imaginative quicksilver movement, McIntyre’s works always surprise. Now he’s working on Wendy’s solo from Act III with Houston Ballet soloist Sara Webb. The scene occurs before the final pas de deux between Wendy and Peter, where Wendy, firmly on the ground, dances with Peter flying above her. The Darling family has been reunited. A large frame will descend from the flies to enclose the family, but Wendy steps out of the picture to observe them. She is leaving childhood behind. It’s a rapturous solo replete with movement and pointe work that sighs of budding adulthood. At one point, McIntyre softly directs her–he never raises his voice in rehearsals, or outside, either–"Do something they won’t expect."

The Houston Ballet presents Peter Pan, March 14—24, at the Wortham Theater, 500 Texas, 713-227-ARTS. Tickets from $11.50.