Verona native Adriana Pierce has been cast in the ensemble for a Broadway revival of Carousel that is set to open in the spring of 2018.
Pierce is a dancer, choreographer, performer and instructor who attended Laning Avenue School and H.B. Whitehorne. She studied at New Jersey Ballet for nine years before being accepted on scholarship at The American School of Ballet in New York City, commuting in for classes six days a week starting in ninth grade. She began her professional dance career as an apprentice with the New York City Ballet and completed seven seasons with Miami City Ballet under the direction of Edward Villella and Lourdes Lopez.
Pierce has choreographed dance for musical theater and modern/contemporary projects, creating her first strictly balletic works for the School of American Ballet’s Annual Student Choreography Workshop under the guidance of Peter Martins. In Miami, Pierce sought projects which encouraged collaboration between art forms, including a performance piece for the annual O, Miami Poetry Festival, which was featured during Miami City Ballet’s Dance at the Walls event. In March 2014, Pierce choreographed and curated the cross-disciplinary Movements with dancers from the Miami City Ballet and fellows from the New World Symphony.
Pierce was selected to participate in New York Choreographic Institute’s Fall 2014 choreographic session, and completed a residency in the inaugural Resident Fellows program with the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. She debuted a choreographic work at The Joyce Theater for The Ashley Bouder Project in August 2015. For the past five years, she has been commissioned to create dance elements for Miami’s annual Mainly Mozart Festival by the Miami Chamber Music Society, performed at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall. In March 2017, Pierce’s new duet, Dreaming, was featured as part of the Adrienne Arsht Center’s 11th annual gala.
In her spare time, Pierce directs and choreographs amateur musical theater productions in New Jersey and creates short dance videos with videographers and musicians. She and Michael Hardenberg, a 2013 graduate of Verona High School, have also recently opened a dance studio, “We Dance” at First Presbyterian Church at Caldwell and offer classes in tap, ballet, jazz and yoga for adults and students.
Carousel doesn’t yet have an opening date, but it does already have an impressive cast that includes Tony winner Jessie Mueller as Julie Jordan, Tony nominee Joshua Henry as Billy Bigelow, and opera star Renée Fleming as Nettie Fowler.
