They like him; they really like him
Former Houston Ballet star Trey McIntyre gets more love from The New York Times
Trey McIntyre
Trey McIntyre Project dancers in "Sun Road"Photo by Jeremiah Thompson
Former Houston Ballet star Trey McIntyre just can't seem to get enough love from The New York Times. The nation's preeminent newspaper gushed over McIntyre's Boise-based company, The Trey McIntyre Project, when it performed during the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in New York a little over a week ago.
The 40-year-old choreographer and company founder gets another valentine in Sunday's arts and entertainment section of the Times, released on the newspaper's website Friday, with a look at how the Idaho town has fallen hard for him since he moved his troupe there in 2008.
"Imagine an alternative universe where dancers are treated like celebrities: recognized in public, lavished with gifts, fawned over by fans. They even have cocktails named after them. Now get out your atlas and locate Boise, Idaho, where the skies never seem to cloud over, the people are disconcertingly friendly, and Trey McIntyre Project is the toast of the town," writes Times reporter Claudia La Rocco.
And that's just the first paragraph.
La Rocco, who clearly has a huge crush on McIntyre, notes that "his earnest, athletic choreography, often inspired by American themes, strikes a particular chord here (in Boise)." She also notes that the city has made the company its first cultural ambassador and that Boise State University is renovating a small campus theater for more intimate performances. McIntyre's dancers get a lot of freebies, ranging from M.R.I.'s, X-rays and surgery at an orthopedic practice to free cookies at a bakery.
Our only real quibble about the article: La Rocco skips entirely over McIntyre's Houston ties, where he joined Houston Ballet's Ben Stevenson Academy in 1987, was named choreographic apprentice in 1989, corps member in 1990 and created six ballets for the company, including 2002's Peter Pan. Instead she focuses on his successful freelancing career creating works for New York City Ballet, Ballet Memphis and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, "among others."
If she gives short shrift to the influence of Houston Ballet on him, he doesn't.
"My ties to Houston are so strong; it's always home to me," McIntyre said in a May CultureMap interview. "We plan tours there as often as possible."
But not for free cookies.
