Music Credits: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

 “The Schuyler Sisters,” “Non-Stop,” Cabinet Battle 1” all written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and excerpted from the play, Hamilton, 

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  What I recognized in Hamilton, which connected me to the genre of hip-hop and the hip-hop culture, but also just felt personal to me, was his relentlessness. I mean, this is a kid who never stopped.  And I think that relentlessness-- I recognize that. I recognize that in people I know. Not only in my father who came here at age 18 to get his education and never went back home, just like Hamilton, but also so many immigrant stories I know, and friends I know who come here from another country. And they just know they have to work twice as hard to get half as far. That's just "The Deal". That's the price of admission to our country.

Jo Reed: You just heard Lin-Manuel Miranda creator and star of Hamilton and we’re marking the 4th of July holiday by revisiting my 2016 interview with the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner. Even though Lin and I spoke soon after Hamilton first opened on Broadway almost a decade ago—the play—with its 11 Tony Awards-- is still going strong—continuing to resonate with audiences. In fact, the Grammy-winning cast album is still the most popular Broadway musical on Spotify.  And its little wonder that the play continues to speak to us. The play tells the story of Alexander Hamilton’s life and death. But Miranda focuses on Hamilton as an immigrant, and he tells that story with a multi-racial cast and through hip-hop infused music, that nonetheless has some serious Broadway musical chops. The result remains a riveting, immediate piece of theater that makes the founding of the country and the virulent arguments around its direction as current as today’s news. 

In this interview, Lin-Manuel offers an insider's look at the creation of this cultural phenomenon. He discusses the challenges and exhilaration of finalizing the musical's lines and lyrics, often working up until the last possible moment and how the show evolved through collaboration with the cast and creative team. He also points out how the diversity on the stage of "Hamilton" casts a new light on the Founding, highlighting who was left out and refused to stay out, but still emphasizing the resilience, innovation, and sheer excitement and optimism of the “American Experiment.” 

Hamilton itself was six years in the making before it opened off-Broadway at the Public Theater to rapturous reviews. But before it opened on Broadway Lin insisted on taking two months to cut and polish the script and the score. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton had like, a good six month run where I was in it and could feel the reactions. To an off-Broadway Hamilton, I’d list 25 things with Tommy. Some of them were a line, some of them were a whole song we needed to address. But it was my list of 25 things and we just set about knocking them out. And yeah, we had a lot of fun. 

Jo Reed: Good. Because when I was in the theater last night watching the play, I thought “God, I hope he’s having fun.” Because I was having so much fun watching it. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  Oh, yeah! I mean, that's the thing about-- well, here's the thing. You know, I get made fun of a lot because I'm on Twitter all the time. But I think of it as the opposing muscle group of writing a musical. Where I spent a year writing "My Shot." I spent a year writing every word that is in that song, and every note. So you know what, I'm gonna fire off some jokes on Twitter. Because that's the tricep to the bicep that is writing the musical. And the fun of it really is in trying to top each other for best idea, which begins with your creative team and then grows outward towards the larger creative team, and that extends to your actors who then get to play with this material and wear it and find new things. Some of the changes came out of that collaboration. You know, "The Schuyler Sisters" was like, we totally rearranged the music for that. It was very like, disco-y, off-Broadway. And I'd always pictured that song as a Destiny's Child tune. And I was like, "Well, we never chase that orally. So let's like, really go after that." And we have three actresses who loved harmonizing. I was in the dressing room next to them and I'd hear them harmonizing all the time. So I was just like, "Let's just build more for them to harmonize to. And build that into the song as well, because they love doing it, and they sound fantastic." <music> So there's stuff like that. You realize what you have and you write to it. Certainly Daveed Diggs, who plays Jefferson, is one of the best technical rappers alive, period. I know I can throw whatever at him, if it's well-constructed, he can spit it at any speed necessary. And so that became enormous fun. I think the last line I wrote that went into the show was, "I mean, you gotta put some thought into the letter, but the sooner the better to get your right hand man back!" You know, like just to put one more fast rap for Daveed, because I had a bar where I could squeeze it in. So that's the fun of it, is in building it, finding the people who can do it, and then once you see what they can do, adding another layer for them to shine.

Jo Reed:  Did you know, the minute you read Hamilton, and you thought of it as a musical, did hip-hop immediately-- 

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  Yes, that was the actual impetus. It was, "This is a guy who writes his way everywhere." He writes his way out of poverty. He writes his way into the war through just, war of ideas. He writes his way into Washington's good graces. He makes himself useful to Washington as a writer. He was not his Chief Military Strategist. He was his Secretary. <laughs> He then also writes his way into trouble at every step of the way when cooler heads are not around him to prevail. So I immediately made the leap to a hip-hop artist, writing about his circumstances and transcending them. There’s also that self-destructive-- so you see rappers who have billions of dollars getting into wars of words with other rappers. It's a part of that verbal "one-upsmanship" gone corporate. And Hamilton is no different than that. He's the Secretary of State, but he's still got to answer this guy over here, because he's already said something. And so that was my initial leap, but my initial impulse was, I'm going to make a concept album. I was very aware that Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita were albums first. And Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't worry about how they were going to be staged. He just wrote really good songs that told a story. And I said, "That's how I'm going to attack this. I'm going to find rappers, and I'm going to make this cool concept album, and then like, Tommy will figure out how to stage it later. 

Jo Reed: And he was the director. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: And he was the director, yes. Tommy Kail, who by all accounts is smarter than me. 

And I'm really glad I did, in retrospect, think of it as an album. Even if it was just to myself. Because what I got out of myself was a density. You know, I chased the lyrical density of my favorite hip-hop albums, which you don't always get in a musical theater album, because you're worried about everyone getting everything for the first time. That's like one of the tenets, right? Make sure everyone understands everything. And like, sure, absolutely, you're telling a story first and foremost, but what I love about my favorite hip-hop albums is, I'll catch a double entendre I didn't catch the first time, or some alliteration, or some word play. Years later, I'm still catching it because that's the form. That's the art form. And so by lying to myself, "This is just going to be an album," I think I wrote something that people keep wanting to come back and get more out of. 

Jo Reed: Oh, are you kidding?!

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  So that's been great! Because I feel like I didn't sacrifice any of the intelligence I know lives in my favorite hip-hop music. In writing it, I was chasing those guys. And I think, you know, it also works on a story-telling level, because I think people catch the surface layer of what's going on in the plot, and then they catch double meanings, and historical references, and hip hop references when they come back for a second--

<overlapping conversation> 

Jo Reed:  And musical theater references, as well. You wanted to tell the story of Hamilton, but as we know there are many ways to tell stories, and everybody has many stories. What particular story were you going after? 

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  What I recognized in Hamilton, which connected me to the genre of hip-hop and the hip-hop culture, but also just felt personal to me, was his relentlessness. I mean, this is a kid who never stopped. There are songs where the other characters are just like, "How are you doing all this? And why don't you stop? And why don't you rest?" And that's really me, as the author, me as Lin Miranda <laughs> reading about Hamilton, I mean like, "Why don't you stop? Why don't you rest?" <laughter> <music> And I think that relentlessness-- I recognize that. I recognize that in people I know. Not only in my father who came here at age 18 to get his education and never went back home, just like Hamilton, but also so many immigrant stories I know, and friends I know who come here from another country. And they just know they have to work twice as hard to get half as far. That's just "The Deal". That's the price of admission to our country. It’s a credit to Ron's writing that I read his version of Hamilton, and said, "I know that guy! And I think I can write him." And I think he pulled out the best in me.

Jo Reed:  You sang your first song introducing Hamilton at the White House for the first time, which was certainly a bold move.  You were not wasting your shot at that one. <laughs>

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  I was not. You don't know how many times you're going to get invited to the White House. It's usually just the once. And they'd asked me to perform something, and I knew I'd written-- like pretty much the rap you hear in the opening number.  I didn't have a chorus yet.  I wrote the chorus for the White House. I just knew, "Well god, I've got a hot sixteen about the guy on the ten-dollar bill, and the White House called."  Like, it would be crazy not to do it.  So, you know, I'd never performed that song anywhere outside my shower before I got that call. So I grabbed Alex--

Jo Reed: That was the first one.

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  That was the first public performance of that song. I’d been writing to a beat I’d created on the computer and I grabbed Alex Lacamoire, figured out what the piano transliteration of that beat would be, and we went, and it was really scary. <laughs>  But unbelievably fulfilling, and that's the hard work part of it. The luck part of it is that HBO filmed that evening, because they were following some of the other poets who were performing that evening. So the footage of the evening doesn't look like your typical C-SPAN three-camera White House event.  It looks like a movie.  You can see the dust flying <laughs> in the Easter Room in the spotlight. So the video went viral--

Jo Reed: And the audio was good.

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  And the audio was good, and it really looks like some fictional movie about my life where I got to perform in front of the president. <laughs> Like I still think that when I watch it.  And so I've known that teachers were going to come see this show for six years.  Like I was not worried about selling our show to teachers, because they've been using it since 2009.  If you look at YouTube comments for the past six years, it's, "My teacher showed me this.  We saw this in eleventh grade history."  Like, teachers caught it and grabbed it and ran with it as soon as it was up on YouTube. So I knew there was an audience for it, and I was like, "I have 50 more songs."  <laughs> 

Jo Reed: Yes, you do 50 songs.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yes, I know. 

Jo Reed:  That is Hamiltonian.  <laughs> 

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  That is Hamiltonian. But Hamilton would have done that in like a year.  I did-- it took me six.

Jo Reed: The casting. I've read critics refer to this as colorblind casting, but it didn't seem very blind to me at all.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: No, not at all.

Jo Reed: I mean, that just seems misplaced.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: No, it was just-- it was just organic to the piece.  The impulse of the piece was-- you can draw a direct line between Hamilton's life and the life of the hip-hop artists I grew up revering.  So to that end, why wouldn't our show look like <laughs> hip-hop culture?  And in that initial read of the book, I was never picturing Founding Fathers. I was picturing what artist could play George Washington, what artist could play Hercules Mulligan.

Jo Reed: Great name.

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  I mean, that's why he's in the show <laughs> to be honest. His name is Hercules Mulligan. It’s the best rapper name I've ever heard.  And so that was a part of the initial inspiration, and then Tommy just extended that to our production.  He said, "We’re eliminating distance between the audience and the story," and the genre of music lends itself to this type of casting because these people sound good on these songs, and it's also the added sense of, "These people are like you and me."  It's only amplified by the fact that we have every color represented on that stage. It just eliminates distance between us and the story of our founders.  It helps them feel more human to us because it's what our country looks like now. That's about as political as it gets, and we never threw around the terms "colorblind" or "color-conscious." I mean, that's how it shook out, but it was always with an eye towards, "Let's get the best actors for these characters and these songs," and that's what we got. It didn't become a big deal until critics starting reviewing it.  They go, "Holy shit, these guys don't look like the Founding Fathers at all." <laughs> 

Jo Reed: Well, I think the surprise was if you read an outline of Hamilton and you have a cast as diverse as your cast, you somehow think tongue is going to be in cheek somewhere, and I think it's the combination of the casting, the diversity of music, but the utter sincerity and integrity that informs it, and I think it's that combination-- 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yes. Yes. And to be sure, the direct inspiration for the show was the improbability of Hamilton's life, and that is something that drew me totally unironically. I can't spend seven years on something I want to take the piss out of. There are artists who know how to do that, and there are brilliant satirists in the world, and I tip my hat to them and I am in awe of them. I don't know how to do that. I get bored making fun of something after about two seconds.  I have to fall in love with something if I'm going to live with it as long as it takes to write a musical.  And that doesn't mean the founders aren't problematic and that doesn't mean there aren't inherent contradictions in Hamilton. Good god, he's so flawed.  He's the flawed-est person who ever lived <laughs> as far as I'm concerned. I get to play in those flaws every night. But the humanity and unlikeliness of the story is what drew me so I'm just trying to make them as human as possible, because that's what Ron did for me in that book.

Jo Reed: You also did it with the music.  The depth of the lyrics-- the layers, the rhymes-- but it's so matched with the musicality of it. Did you study music a lot when you were a kid?

Lin-Manuel Miranda:  Yeah, I mean, I studied-- I did a semester of organ comp. I took piano lessons as a kid. But I mean, most of my studying is just chasing what I love and really learning to listen critically. I think what a liberal arts education gave me <laughs> was the ability to listen critically, and I had teachers-- and this is really more in film even than in theater-- I had great film teachers who said, "If a movie is boring you, stop to analyze why."  And that's always what I tell people.  To say like, "Ah, I loved it, I hated it," that's the least interesting thing you could say.  If something is knocking you out, step outside yourself and figure out why it's knocking you out.  If something is boring you to tears or repulsing you, check in with yourself. Why is it having that effect on you? And that ability to sort of look at things critically-- one, I think it makes for good writing. I mean, I think you're a better writer if you can stand outside yourself and see what's going on clearer, and it also makes me think of genre as very fluid.  People who get lost in genre-- like, "But it's hip-hop!" But people who think hip-hop and melody are mutually exclusive are just kidding themselves, or they heard one rap song in 1982 that just had a drum and have not checked in since. So for me, I'm a big chaser of melody. If Richard Rodgers wrote it, if Taylor Swift wrote it, if it's got a good melody and good lyrics, or a good beat, or two out of three, I'm in. And so, I also think growing up loving Weird Al helps, because Weird Al makes a polka version of every pop song on the radio--

Jo Reed: <laughs> God, that's true.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: --and you realize, "Oh, you can literally boil every pop song down to like a two-chord polka jam."  So genre is just clothing, and the underpinning is what's going to last. And so I think that's the reason there's 50 genres in all of my shows is because I don't think of it as one genre. It's just about what serves our character in that moment.

Jo Reed: And thank you for both plays being a love song to New York. Thank you. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah, I get a lot of crap for that too, but I like getting the love for it. I just like the genre of Love Letter to New York as a genre of music, whether it's Taylor Swift or whether it's Kander and Ebb or whether it's Alicia Keys, everyone's got their "I Love New York" song in their personal canon and I wanted to write my entries, and I've got a couple of entries in that canon.

Jo Reed: Oh yeah, you definitely have a couple of entries.  I keep walking around singing "The Schuyler Sisters" all the time. You wrote killer songs for other members of the cast.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I did.

Jo Reed: You were very generous. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Well, yeah. This is going to be a school play one day, and you don't want one kid to have all the good songs. I still think that the way I make theater is informed by the way I fell in love with theater, which was by doing it.  It was not by seeing a ton of Broadway shows.  I didn't see a ton of Broadway shows until I was an adult. And so my shows tend to be big ensemble shows, because that's like, the best school play. <laughs> 

Jo Reed: That is the best school-- as many kids as can get in should get in.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah, exactly.

Jo Reed: The phenomenon of Hamilton-- you're number one on the Billboard Charts for rap, you're the first musical cast album to get five stars.  Obama loved the show.  So did Dick Cheney.  I heard Laura Ingraham talking about how marvelous it was.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: <laughs>

Jo Reed: Seriously. People who can't agree the sky is blue can agree about this show. What do you think touches people so deeply about this?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: That's a great question. I think it goes back to Hamilton. I think, one, I think we'd like to believe if we work harder than anyone else we can get far in this country. Hamilton is the proto-immigrant story, and everyone can get behind that. Two, I think anything that connects us to the founding in a real way-- like I think for me the joy in researching this show and writing it was being forced to find the humanity in the founders.  I have to find my way into them to write their songs.  That's the only way I know how to write, is I have to put their clothes on and figure out what they're thinking and what they're feeling, and then when it feels true I write it down. That's the recipe.  That's the whole recipe.  That's all I've got to work with. <laughs> And so that means digging deep and figuring out what is it about Washington that keeps him with one eye on posterity and keeps such a steady hand on the wheel in those turbulent early years, and even through the war, where even the people plotting against him are forced to apologize to him because he just kind of doesn't die and keeps going. <laughs>  And Jefferson, who is such a complicated character, writes beautifully about liberty more than anybody else, but also owns a ton of people-- <laughs> does not extend that to the people he thinks of as property.  But grapples with that question in an honest way, in an honest way for his time, and figuring out my way into him in relation to Hamilton, it became very clear how to figure that out because he has honest beefs with Hamilton.  Hamilton is importing all this stuff that Jefferson thought he was running away from with the Revolution.  "What, you're going to bring back banks and stockjobbers and taxes?"  Like, "That's all the shit we ran from." So he's not wrong, and that was my way into Jefferson, was the stuff Hamilton is introducing is-- and Hamilton's perspective is, "Well, that's what works about the other country, so we're going to do it."  <laughs>  "That's why they have economies and we don't."  <music> I had to find my way into them.  I had to make them human for myself, and I think what is touching a nerve is, I think other people are finding the humanity within them as well. They leave with an understanding, or at least a partial understanding, of what they were like as people in some weird way, or they have their head around them that you don't get when you look at a statue of someone.  I think, regardless of your political stripe, to be connected to your country in any meaningful way, or its country's founders-- even if you leave being like, "Oh, Jefferson was a jerk," or "Hamilton cheated on his wife," to make them human you can't dismiss them, and you have to reckon with them, because we live in their country.  I think that's why everyone sees something in it.

Jo Reed: I think partly too, having a diverse cast brings up I think a couple of things. One, who was left out at that time.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yes, absolutely.

Jo Reed: And then also who we can't leave out.  Who refuses to be left out.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah, absolutely.  It’s not lost on anyone that the makeup of the stage would never have happened in the 1790s.  <laughs>  That was not an option. So I think just by that lens on it-- one, gives you hope for how far we've come, and certainly there's farther to go, but the other thing about the show is that the fights they have in the show-- the ideological fights, anyway-- are the fights we're still having. How often do we get involved in the affairs of other countries?  When are we states and when are we one nation?  What is the role of government in our lives?  Is it big or is it small?  It's not an accident that almost every character in our show dies as a result of gun violence.  There are things in the foundation of our country that we will always be grappling with. We will always be grappling with them, and that gives me hope, because we'll go forward and we'll go backwards, but they were always there.  This is not Paradise Lost. They were always there. 

Jo Reed: Yeah. So do you think then that art really does have this ability to allow us to think about these questions that, if we're talking about them in a political arena, it can become very virulent, we cannot listen to one another, but perhaps when it's mounted on a proscenium-- 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah, proscenium is exactly the right word. When you're sitting in the dark with 1300 other strangers, there's no filter.  You're not just looking at the newsfeed of the friends who agree with you. You're not just looking at the clip of the gaffe of the guy you already hated. You're all reckoning with the same story, and that is something that happens at the Super Bowl and happens if we're all watching "Grease: Live" together <laughs>, but other than that we don't all sit down and watch the same things. We very much curate our reality. I'm particularly living in this because I live in this crazy Hamilton bubble now, so something really has to be on the news to penetrate because I just have my head down and I'm just trying to get through seven shows a week.  But we curate our reality to an almost unprecedented level. There are very few things that we all watch together, and when you're in a theater, we make you turn your phone off, and we're all going to watch this thing together. So you have to engage with it, and that's the power of theater. I mean, that's the thing that theater has on every other art form.  Movies have that too, but it's that thing of, "We're all going to sit in the dark and watch the same story," and we might laugh together, and we might cry together, and you don't get that staring at your computer screen; you don't get that alone at home. There's something about seeing that in a community that, I don't know, is magic about it.

Jo Reed: When you started "Ham4Ham," which is small performances you do for people who are waiting for the lottery of 21 ten-dollar tickets, you thank people for coming and supporting live theater.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah. Talk about an unexpected <laughs> new thing in my life. The "Ham4Ham" show literally came because 700 people showed up for our first lottery, and it was summer and it was hot, and I didn't want to send 680 people angry into the streets of New York.  <laughs>  That's bad juju.  That's bad mojo.  So I just got up and thanked everyone for coming, and then Tommy immediately was like, "We should do that every day.  At least while we're in previews, we should just do that every day.  Do a little something.  We've got a bunch of actors in here. Just do a little something every day for the people who show up," and that sort of graduated into this thing. But again, these people have taken the time out of their lives to come show up to try to win a front-row seat to our show.  The least I can do is give them a story if I can't give them a ticket.  Because I believe in the communal power. Everyone's like, "Put it on TV so we can all watch it."  I was like, "You know something's lost when that happens, right?"  Like there is a power to seeing it in a theater with other people that I'm loath to give up until I have to-- and so the "Ham4Ham" has been a wonderful way to engage with the people who are just trying to see the show and leave them with a New York story if nothing else. "Oh man, I saw Kelli O'Hara sing on the corner of 46th Street."

Jo Reed: I saw Lea Salonga sing with you.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah. "I saw Lea Salonga."  I mean, that's a real thing, and that's an incredible thing--

Jo Reed: No, that was a real thing. I saw it. I was there.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah.  <laughs>  Yeah, which was-- it was a real thing for me too.  Good gosh.  Lea Salonga is such a hero of mine.

Jo Reed: Are you feeling more hopeful about seeing more diverse people on stage, not just yours?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Well, listen. We are, by incredible good luck, in one of the most diverse seasons in the history of Broadway. It's Allegiance, it's On Your Feet, it's Color People, it's Shuffle Along, it's an incredibly diverse season. I will remind you that last year was the whitest Tonys I've ever seen. <laughs>  It was-- all great shows-- but nary a brown face to be seen, with the exception of maybe King and I. And so for me it's very hard to assign trends to Broadway, because you're dealing with 40 theaters, you're dealing with three theater owners, and it's about what makes it to the pipeline and what's ready for a theater and what can find a home, so it's hard to say, "It's over!  We achieved diversity. Take that, Hollywood.  Hashtag 'Oscars So White.'" Like, it's not as simple as that. Our Tonys last year were just as white as the Oscars this year, so let's not kid ourselves. But that being said, I do hope that the financial success of On Your Feet, the financial success of Hamilton, empowers producers to say, "Hey, this is actually good business. It's good business to have diverse casts. It’s good business to have diverse stories," because that brings in a newer audience and more audience, and engages us in a different way.  Because that's the only thing that really works. <laughs>  Do you know what I mean?  Like, it's got to be good business.  Broadway is expensive. It's expensive to mount a show. So the fact that-- not only that these shows are here, but doing well, are really what gives me hope, because it means there's going to be more. Tomorrow there'll be more of us. 

Jo Reed: That’s Lin-Manuel Miranda. <overlapping music>  He’s the creator and was the star of Hamilton. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating. It helps other people who love the arts to find us. I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening. <music> 

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I think anything that connects us to the founding in a real way-- like I think for me the joy in researching this show and writing it was being forced to find the humanity in the founders. I have to find my way into them to write their songs. That's the only way I know how to write, is I have to put their clothes on and figure out what they're thinking and what they're feeling, and then when it feels true I write it down and I think what is touching a nerve is, I think other people are finding the humanity within them as well. They leave with an understanding, or at least a partial understanding, of what they were like as people in some weird way, or they have their head around them in a way that you don't get when you look at a statue of someone. I think, regardless of your political stripe, to be connected to your country in any meaningful way, or its country's founders-- even if you leave being like, "Oh, Jefferson was a jerk," or "Hamilton cheated on his wife," to make them human you can't dismiss them, and you have to reckon with them, because we live in their country.

Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd, Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed:  Traditionally, ballet has been a highly structured and gendered art form, with distinct roles and expectations for male and female dancers. But today’s guest is challenging and transforming these norms. 

Welcome to Art Works, the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. Today, a conversation with Adriana Pierce. Adriana is not only an accomplished dancer and choreographer, she’s also a visionary leader in the ballet community. Her groundbreaking initiative, Queer the Ballet, is transforming the traditional landscape of ballet by creating inclusive spaces and dances for queer artists, breaking down traditional gender roles and fostering a more inclusive and dynamic dance community. Through performances, films, and community engagement, Queer the Ballet is not only redefining what ballet can be but also providing vital representation for queer artists and audiences.

Adriana’s own journey is notable, from starting dance at the age of three to performing with renowned companies like the New York City Ballet and Miami City Ballet. Despite facing the challenges of navigating her identity as a queer woman in a traditionally gendered art form, she has emerged as a powerful advocate for change, broadening the scope of classical ballet and creating breathtakingly beautiful work.   Adriana Pierce, first of all, thank you for joining me.

Adriana Pierce: Thank you so much for having me.

Jo Reed: And I would like to start actually with your story: Do you remember what it is about ballet that drew you?

Adriana Pierce: Yes. I grew up dancing and learning in the Russian style. I grew up in New Jersey, and then I started going to the School of American Ballet when I was 14, and I remember when I learned how to hold my hand in the Balanchine style, and that sounds like such a simple thing, but it's a bigger position. It has more breath in there, and I felt like I could open everything a bit more and the movements felt bigger and had this attack to them that really resonated with my body, and I remember thinking, “Oh, this is what feels good to me,” and “This is what I understand ballet to be,” and in this very visceral sense, and I think that that's what started my real love affair with ballet, this idea of it feeling empowering, deeply personal, but also very empowering and feeling like you're in this deep lunge reaching past yourself and towards other people, and I love dancing in the Balanchine style, and that's what really drew me to it in the first place.

Jo Reed: Well, you were an apprentice at New York City Ballet and then you were at Miami Ballet for seven years. That's a good long time. But I'm also wondering about the messages you were getting as a young dancer about gender and about sexual identity.

Adriana Pierce: Yes. I think I learned a lot. I remember when I started taking partnering class for the first time, and that's the first time that I really understood there to be specific definitions for the way that we're allowed to express or the spaces that we're allowed to hold in the ballet community. So I remember in partnering class, there was an emphasis for the young men on their strength, and their upper body strength and their stability and their groundedness, and there was an emphasis for the women in the class on being light and airy-- and the pointe work and the technique and feeling held and creating the positions that the men would then manipulate or move around. And I remember thinking, “Huh, that's interesting, because I can also feel strong and I bet I could probably partner someone else as well.” But it was clear early on that we had to go along our separate hallways, and I think I've always been really interested in blurring whatever those lines are and breaking out of those boxes, both with my own dancing and also with my own choreography, and when we don't have those boxes, what possibilities are open to us that I think ballet as a technique does already provide. I don't think we need to actually reinvent the wheel too much. I just think that we need to understand gender in much more expansive terms, in many more expansive ways, I think.

Jo Reed: Before we talk about your beginning the program or initiative, Queer the Ballet, I want to just ask you this because I'm curious about what the differences might be between the way queer female dancers are seen and queer male dancers in ballet.

Adriana Pierce: Yes, it is different. So different parts of our identity converge in different ways, and I think as a woman in ballet I found that my womanhood would converge with my queer identity in a way that the male dancers around me didn't have the same experience. I think. So on one hand, I'm trying to accept myself and understand ways to express my queerness, but I'm also having to fit in this very specific box of “What is feminine?” and I remember feeling pressure to wear makeup in rehearsal and look a certain way that the men just don't have. And so I actually found that to be quite isolating in my ballet career, because while there were many queer identifying men in the ballet companies that I was in, I felt so separate because I was also dealing with so many of these beauty standards and technical standards that the men just don't have. So yeah, I think it's important to think about all the ways that different personal identities converge and connect and affect one another, because no two people are going to have the same exact experience. And so a lot of the work that I do is really advocating for dynamically inclusive spaces that allow for all those different convergences of all the different identities that someone may have, whether that's like accessibility considerations or racial considerations, but knowing that each person is coming from a very different place and is experiencing each of those identities in the studio in a very different way.

Jo Reed: Now let's move to Queer the Ballet. What was the inspiration for this? What was the catalyst?

Adriana Pierce: Yeah, the catalyst for Queer the Ballet was actually during the pandemic I was sitting alone in my New York apartment for many, many months and yearning for a connection with dance, connection with my art. We were so quite literally isolated from everyone around us, and I started thinking about the future of post-pandemic, which was difficult to envision at the time, but thinking about the way that the art form could move forward from this ground zero moment of the pandemic where we were all just, you know, everything had kind of stopped, completely halted. And I finally reached out to a dancer that I know, Lauren Flower, who identifies as queer and had just left Boston Ballet, and we started talking about ballet and our queerness and started connecting with other queer women and non-binary and trans dancers from all over the world, and we actually assembled a little Zoom group and got on Zoom, which <laughs> I had never thought about Zoom before the pandemic, but now it's like such a beautiful connecting force in my life. But we got in the Zoom room and there were about 15 or 20 of us, which blew my mind, because again, I had thought I was the only one throughout my whole professional career, and it was the first time that I got to connect with other queer people that weren't just gay men, using ballet as the connecting force between us. I think so often, especially like in my younger twenties, it would be I had my ballet life and my ballet persona and the way that I expressed myself in the ballet world, and that was completely separate from my queer identity, and my queer life and the people I was dating or the queer experiences I was having, they were so separate. And so here I was in the most isolated moment of my life, <laughs> most of us in our entire lives, but feeling so connected to my art and my queerness all at the same time, for the first time. It was really wild. All the dancers on those initial calls, we would meet every couple of weeks or so and talk about our experiences and talk about the kind of work we want to make and everything. And I think we all felt that feeling of truly being seen and truly being held as our authentic selves, as our authentic selves in our art form, was so profound, so powerful that I knew that I wanted more people to feel that. That <laughs> “Everyone should be able to have this.” So when one of the dancers approached me to create a pas de deux for her and another one of the dancers, I said, “Of course, but let's make it bigger than one piece of choreography. Let's contextualize that choreography within a much larger conversation,” that I felt like the dance world was finally ready to have about queerness, about gender, about the choices that we're making, about the commissions that we're commissioning and not only what work we're putting on the stage but also how we're creating it. And so Queer the Ballet was built from there, from this isolation the pandemic forced us into, but into this then very robust period of growth and connection.

Jo Reed: And what piece was that that you choreographed?

Adriana Pierce: So that initial piece was “Animals and Angels.”

Jo Reed: That's your first one?

Adriana Pierce: <laughs> Well, it's interesting. So that was our first big piece. Prior to that, I did have a residency where I created a pas de deux called “Overlook,” and that came out of a period of-- it was like a two-week residency where I hold myself up with two dancers from ABT and we just started breaking down how we can explore partnering in some new ways, especially with two people in pointe shoes and how that changes things. But then, yeah, after that initial exploratory process, the first big thing that Queer the Ballet did was “Animals and Angels,” which was produced by the Joyce and premiered as a dance film.

Jo Reed: Okay, let me say, I think “Animals and Angels” is a gorgeous piece. It is so beautiful, so fluid. I have 80 gazillion questions about it.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: So let's talk about how you approached this and your process, and listeners who might not have seen it, if you can just give a thumbnail sketch. It's, as you said, a pas de deux, two women, and they're both on pointe, and I have never seen two women on pointe in a pas de deux together. It was extraordinary and beautiful. The fluidity was amazing.

Adriana Pierce: Oh, thank you so much. I'm so proud of that piece and the process that we entered into in order to create it. These two wonderful dancers, Courtney Taylor Key and Audrey Malek, who are just so beautiful together, and I had this piece of music that I couldn't get out of my head at the time. It's by a singer named Joy Oladokun, who I'm a big fan of, and it sounds like a morning. When you spend a morning together and there's light coming through the window and you're sitting at the kitchen table, and I think the first lyrics of the song are like, "Do you want a cup of coffee? Can we talk stay for a bit and talk?" And I loved that idea of spending this beautifully intimate morning moment with someone that you are growing to know, someone that is new in your life that you are excited about leaning into, with no pressure. And for me, that kind of opened up this beautiful space for their partnership, because it was all at once very respectful and it was exploratory, but also settled in their knowing of each other just in that moment for this one beautiful cup of coffee in the sun together, they're sharing intimacy and respect and celebrating that feeling of getting to feel safe with another person. And you know, it's really hard to be a queer person <laughs> in the world, and that's part of what the song talks about too, is sometimes you just crave this simple knowing and the simple safety of another person, because often it feels like loving, for a woman, for instance, loving another woman sometimes can feel political and feel politicized in a way that doesn't always feel safe or doesn't always feel like it's fully mine or fully yours to claim. And so I wanted something that was intimate and celebrated that quiet, beautiful, respectful, loving learning of another human.

Jo Reed: It really is a piece of classical ballet.

Adriana Pierce: Yes.

Jo Reed: And you said earlier in this conversation:  “It really doesn't take much to expand ballet to include many conversations within it,” and I think that piece is such a perfect illustration of that.

Adriana Pierce: Yeah, when I approach partnering in my work, especially my queer works or my explicitly queer works, I like to take the things that we know about partnering and then integrate them in a way that feels authentic to the two artists who are dancing together so that gender isn't a part of it, but that we are also creating a new language that feels unique to what's happening in the moment. So you'll see, if you know dance and you know ballet, you'll see moments like, for instance, I put a couple dips in, like if someone's dancing ballroom. So it's an image that you know, an image that we can understand as romantic and sweeping and that we are used to seeing in different partnerships, but I'll then ensconce it in ways that feel more authentic and sit outside of that normal rubric that a dip would generally be in. I pass back and forth a lot who is leading and who's following.

Jo Reed: Exactly.

Adriana Pierce: Which really upends the structure of traditional partnering work that we're used to seeing, and I love all the possibilities that brings and I love the way that that opens each partnership. So that's something that I feel really, really strongly about, that each dancer always has equal agency with each other. And honestly, then there's so many ways to get creative about how these two bodies fit together. But of course, with two dancers on pointe, partnering each other, there's a lot to discover and learn about in terms of the strength that it takes to hold another person's weight and what is possible or not possible with someone on pointe. So those are definitely considerations that have to be made when you're using the pointe shoe, but I also like to think of the pointe shoe as a tool that can change and inform the movement, but doesn't necessarily limit it.

Jo Reed: Yeah, I thought that was really, really good because it was suddenly a skill as opposed to a gender identifier. <laughs>

Adriana Pierce: Exactly, exactly. I wish that everyone would think about pointe work in that way.

Jo Reed: How much input do you get from the dancers as you're doing the choreography? Are you a collaborative choreographer?

Adriana Pierce: I would say I am probably. So I like to create in the moment. I know a lot of choreographers will get into a studio by themselves for a while and come up with material and then teach that material. I actually like to come in with maybe one phrase or one image even sometimes and then create in the moment, which allows for a lot of discussion with the dancers. So something that's very normal that I'll say would be like, “Okay, do this, and then where does it feel like your weight is going? Do you feel like you need to go this way or this way?” And they'll say, “Oh, I feel like I want to go to the right here,” and then I'll say, “Okay,” so then we'll incorporate that in. So I like when the movement feels organic or it feels like it's coming from comfortable places in terms of where your weight is going, and then I like to overturn that and go the opposite way. <laughs> But it's often a conversation with the dancers, and a lot of times what happens is there's these happy accidents that happen that I hadn't thought of. So sometimes I'll come up with a phrase on my own and then come in and teach it, but then when I'm in the room, whoever is dancing, it's like they'll bring something different to it that I hadn't thought of myself and then I love that, and so then I kind of change it anyway. So that's why I love to create in the moment and bring everything that's happening in the room into each phrase.

Jo Reed: Well, I think that's difficult for an evening-length work, or maybe it's not. I don't know. I would think it would be. And I'm thinking of one of your more recent works, “Dream of a Common Language,” which you directed. It's an evening length work, as I said, based on the poems of Adrienne Rich, and how many? There are four or five choreographers?

Adriana Pierce: Yeah, there's four of us, yes.

Jo Reed: How is bringing that together? Because it's very challenging to put on an evening-length work.

Adriana Pierce: Yeah. We're in process now, and it's been amazing so far, so we were trying something a little bit experimental in that it's an evening of work, but it's not a mixed bill. We're all contributing sections to a larger work, which has been really beautiful and collaborative because we're all, even though each of us are creating different sections, we're all very much in conversation with each other and collaborating to create something that feels cohesive. But there are very different, we're all very different voices, so it's going to be cool to see each of our voices side-by-side and see how that changes and enriches the work. But I've also, I encourage each of the choreographers, to also lean into their process because we're all very different.  I think allowing each of us to have the space to say what we want to say in the way that we want to say it and then have everything come together is going to be really, really special.

Jo Reed: For the work done in  Queer the Ballet. The choreographers are queer. The dancers themselves are queer, and you try to involve as many queer people and non-binary people in the process as well in all aspects of the work.

Adriana Pierce: That's correct, yes.

Jo Reed:  What does that inclusivity give you as a creator? It’s creating a space like that is safe but it also really calls for opening up the imagination, I would think

Adriana Pierce: Yeah, I think it goes back to what I was saying about those initial Zoom calls that we had. It's feeling seen, feeling radically seen in who you are. And it's hard to have that when you don't feel like you have full community around you, and that's not to say that you can't feel that other times. But there is something that does feel safer and more held when you can be in a space that you can feel fully seen, allow yourself to fully go to the places that you might feel like you have to protect in other ways. But it also isn't easy to be in those spaces. We've also realized, we've learned a lot when we've been in process with queer artists, that sometimes it can be triggering working on queer work and going to these places, that there might be trauma and there's hurt, and it's not easy. So we've also had to find ways to provide the right resources, to make sure that we have community support. But yeah, I think it's this idea of feeling radically seen for who you are in all of your wholeness that it's difficult to feel in other spaces. But also, just to be clear, we're also learning. I'm also learning about what that does. This is the first time, even since we've began, it's the most queer artists I've had on one project thus far. Because even in the beginning I tried to find as many as I could, but it was like this conversation hadn't been around as long, I hadn't been connected with enough people. So this actually is kind of a new frontier in a lot of ways, just even for me and for all of us involved and we're learning the ways that this type of community and this type of space will affect us all. So <laughs> we'll have to have a follow-up conversation after the performances, <laughs> and I'll let you know how it felt. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Well, thus far, how has the reception been from the ballet community, from audiences, from queer communities? And there are communities within those communities, so obviously it's varied, but what have you heard?

Adriana Pierce: Well, I will say even just from like on the basic level, when I started talking about Queer the Ballet, to have other people in the ballet community say to me, “Okay, what can I do? How can I support this? I want to hear more.” That is so powerful because, to be honest, none of the stuff that I've really been saying through this work is new for me in my life. I was 23 years old rambling on about partnering and equal agency and stuff, <laughs> but people at that time weren't always ready to listen.  I don't know if it's the pandemic or just that we've evolved as a society, but the fact that the dance world I truly feel now can hear and engage with the work that we're doing is really, really exciting to me. So I've definitely been able to have conversations with a lot of people within the dance world, and the queer people that I know who have come to see our shows or have engaged with our work, I get messages all the time from people, and some of them are from people who grew up in the dance world but when they realized they were queer they felt they had to quit because it didn't feel like a safe space for them. I get that all the time. It's also people who never did dance but always wanted to but never thought that they could because they didn't feel like it was the right space for them. But now looking back they always wish they had, but they love engaging with it, and the fact that there's queer work out there now is so exciting for them. I get messages from parents who talk about their young queer child and how this is beautiful and that how now they know that their kid can grow into a space that is inclusive and that can hold them better.  I've gotten the question of, “Well, does it matter? Does it matter if the work is queer or if the dancers are queer? Can it just be two people? Can't it just be two people in love? Does it matter if they're queer or not?” And to that I always say, “If you're not looking for that, then you can glean from any performance what you need, right?” And so some people might look at a queer pas de deux and say, “Oh, that's so beautiful. Those are two people in love,” but someone else might look at that and say, “Oh, this is what I've been searching for my entire life,” or, “This is the representation that I've been looking for,” or, “This is what I've always needed to be able to accept myself and what I want,” and first of all, art is so beautiful that it can be so many different things to so many people. But that's also why we have to have representation, because there's something for everybody and everyone should feel like they have something to grasp onto and to relate to.

Jo Reed: And I wonder how embracing your own identity as a queer woman has enriched your work and enriched and inspired your own choreography.

Adriana Pierce: Oh, it has changed my work immensely. It was hard. I was scared. I was really scared to fully embrace myself in my work. I think vulnerability is hard for me sometimes, just like in my life, and I think it felt really scary and vulnerable to show myself fully in my choreography. But I do find that when I'm drawing from an authentic personal place that my work is better and I'm really proud of that. But I will say that it hasn't been easy because I think on one hand it's so healing for me to be able to create queer work for other queer dancers, because I get to watch them have this beautiful experience, bring their whole self into the studio and feel like they can relate and express something that feels so close and dear to them. But on the other hand, it's been really hard for me to accept that I never had that. That when I was in professional ballet I never got to feel what that feels like and I never will. So it's a lot. It's brought up a lot for me in my life and I'm very grateful for all that Queer the Ballet has taught me, and just this journey of meeting these people and creating this work, I've learned so much. And I also have had to accept a lot and also forgive myself for a lot of stuff too, because I don't feel that I was always very kind to myself when I was in those ballet spaces, and I was very much holding myself to these standards and putting myself in these boxes that I just wasn't ever going to fit in. But then I feel very lucky to be able to include all of those things, all of those multitudes, in my work, and I will continue to explore and to express that.

Jo Reed: I wonder how the dance community can better support queer artists and create more inclusive spaces for not just diverse voices, but authentic voices. What does expanding representation require?

Adriana Pierce: It requires so much, but things on the very basic level, like language that we use in the studio. People always ask me, “What's the very first thing that I can do to create inclusive spaces?” And it's like, “Use non-gendered language in the studio.” It's like I cannot stress how huge that is, and it might feel like just a tiny thing to change but will dramatically change the way that people feel safe in those spaces. So for instance, the correction should never be, “That should look more feminine.” The correction should be whatever adjective it is that you're looking to get out of the different movement. And then bigger things, like anyone who wants to be able to start training in pointe shoes when they're young I feel should be able to have, be exposed to, that training, regardless of their gender expression, and <laughs> in the same way, anyone who doesn't necessarily want to go the pointe shoe route I also feel should have the space and the runway in order to still have a professional career as well. So I would really love to see pointe shoes less gendered. So those are things we can do in a studio, but I think there's so many, because what we see on stage is like the last thing to happen. So it's how are we creating space? And not only making our spaces inclusive but also, in advance of people coming, prepare the space for them. That's the other thing that I think... we're in a place right now where we have to make changes, but in the future I also want us to be thinking about, “Okay, who are we not considering, and how can we prepare the space and open the space and invite those people in and be ready for them?” Because I think that that's a little bit more dynamic in terms of opening the door and keeping the door open.

Jo Reed:  What do you see for Queer the Ballet? How do you envision it evolving?

Adriana Pierce: Yeah. So we were going to continue to create and produce live performances. I want to commission choreographers and bring people in and hire <laughs> as many artists as I can. I'm also going to continue to produce films. It's really, really important to me to continue to create dance film because of how accessible it is. Because there could be a lot of young people who can't make it to New York City to see a performance and they might not feel safe to be out with their family or whatever circumstance they're in, but if they go online and they search queer ballet they can always find something to watch. So always going to create film. We're working on specifically building resources for education, for studios, so that those questions of “How can I make this space more inclusive?” Well, we can help give some ideas or at least connect them to people and show them where to begin. And then trying to build out our community engagement program. We've been working on a donation-based class here in the city, where it's kind of in the beta phase but has been going really well, and just a class, an open class for people to come and take ballet, and it's a queer-friendly space. Not everyone necessarily is queer who comes, but anyone who dance, who considers themselves that they dance outside of the gender binary, that can include a lot of different people and just to have good training and feel safe to be themselves. So that's been really fun as well, and after our shows in June, we're looking for the rest of 2024 to be a really big building year, grow out our team, grow out our infrastructure, because we got big dreams. I'm really, really excited for all the things that we can do.

Jo Reed: And that is a good place to leave it. Adriana, thank you, truly. Thank you for giving me your time, especially because you're so busy. <laughs> I really do appreciate it. And honestly, you are doing such terrific work, so thank you for that.

Adriana Pierce: Thank you so much. It was really lovely to chat with you.

Jo Reed: It was really nice for me too. Thank you. 

That was dancer, choreographer and founder of Queer the Ballet, Adriana Pierce. You can keep up with her work at Queertheballet.com. We’ll have a link in our show notes. You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get podcasts and leave us a rating. It helps other people who value the arts to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Adriana Pierce: …it hasn't been easy because I think on one hand it's so healing for me to be able to create queer work for other queer dancers, because I get to watch them have this beautiful experience, bring their whole self into the studio and feel like they can relate and express something that feels so close and dear to them. But on the other hand it's been really hard for me to accept that I never had that. That when I was in professional ballet I never got to feel what that feels like and I never will. So it's a lot. It's brought up a lot for me in my life and I'm very grateful for all that Queer the Ballet has taught me, and just this journey of meeting these people and creating this work, I've learned so much. And I also have had to accept a lot