BECKET, MASS. — TREY MCINTYRE'S initial experience with ballet did not augur well for a career in dance. "I would skip class a lot. My mom would drop me off, and I would go get a Slurpee next door." Ballet class, to this 11-year-old in Wichita, Kan., "felt so square and confining."
But an enlightened teacher noticed that while her less-than-stellar student was spending time in the parking lot, he was also busy teaching steps he had invented to some friends. "She watched from the window -- from the class I was supposed to be in. When she came outside, instead of yelling at me, she suggested, 'Why don't you teach this to the rest of the class?' She really helped me to find what was exciting about dance for me."
It was clear that choreography was McIntyre's focus, even as he continued to hone his own technique, eventually joining the Houston Ballet. And in fact, at 38, he has now been making dances for professional companies in the U.S. and abroad since he was 20. Altogether, he has created more than 70 ballets.
This year, however, McIntyre has taken a bold step: He has committed himself full time to his own troupe, the Trey McIntyre Project. After a warmly received debut in August at the venerable Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in the Massachusetts Berkshires, the company will launch its inaugural tour Friday in Laguna Beach as part of the Laguna Dance Festival. (Additional Southern California performances, in Santa Barbara and L.A., are planned for February.)
For three years, McIntyre led a company during the summer only. Each June, he assembled the dancers -- mostly members of full-time companies with whom he had worked previously -- and spent a month in the idyllic White Oak Plantation in Florida preparing repertory before heading out to summer festivals.
But by 2007, the third year of the project, the strapping 6-feet-6 choreographer felt eager to take on a year-round operation. "The next step I wanted to take as an artist required a much more long-term collaboration," he said during a relaxed interview in the cozy Tea Garden on the Jacob's Pillow grounds, as piano music from a ballet class in an adjacent rustic studio spilled outside.
"It was a big leap of faith. I had been offered company directorships in the past and was fully aware of all the other things that are involved, besides getting to have dancers you can work with all the time. But shortly before the 2007 tour, the realization was, we either were going to move forward or we were going to be stuck. I have to evolve, to move forward, on a regular basis. If something feels mastered, it's not comfortable just to stay with that. That extends to all things -- choreography, relationships."
