Barely four months into his tenure as the artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Adam W. McKinney is already implementing revolutionary ways to build on the company’s existing strengths with his gaze firmly set on its overall health a hundred years from now.

Adam has a remarkable resume as a ballet dancer, a choreographer, a professor, an activist and an arts leader. He danced with some of the world’s most renowned ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland.

He was the co-founder and co-director of DNAWORKS, an arts-and-service organization based in Fort Worth, TX, dedicated to dialogue and healing through the arts. Among DNAWORKS’ many projects is the interactive “Forth Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse.” Thanks to an app with augmented-reality features, the tour allows audiences — whether in person or virtually — to visit four sites in Fort Worth associated with the December 11, 1921 lynching of Mr. Rouse. DNAWORKS also produced “The Borders Project,” which uses a variety of creative performances and events to explore the histories of manmade borders and their effects on the human spirit and body. “The Borders Project” has so far worked on the U.S./Mexico and Israel/Palestine borders.

Adam was also awarded the NYU President’s Service Award for his dance work with populations who struggle with heroin addiction.

Before accepting his new post in Pittsburgh, he was the Associate Professor of Dance and Ballet at Texas Christian University, a tenured position he took on after having served as the inaugural Dance Department Chair at New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe.

In this interview he describes the core beliefs and practices he believes will make ballet a rigorous, sustainable contemporary artform accessible and welcoming to all for generations to come.

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