Emily Fritz | a&e editor |

A whimsical thread of emerald green has started to trace its way through the 2024-25 season at Pittsburgh Ballet Studio (PBT). As the company welcomes its 55th anniversary, it also begins its three-show “Family Fairy Tale Package” of “Peter Pan,” “The Nutcracker,” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

Ringing in the storytelling repertoire this weekend at the Benedum Center is Trey McIntyre’s “Peter Pan.” Based on the classic book by J.M. Barrie, the choreographer pulled smaller details from the text to exaggerate and expand upon.

“The piece opens with these three, ginormous nursemaids pushing perambulators,” McIntyre told The Duke. “There’s kind of a macabre story that the Lost Boys come from babies that have fallen out of their cribs and they get swept away. … I placed Peter Pan as one of the original Darling children, and he falls out of his [crib] and that’s how he ends up going away [to Neverland].”

To position the performance from the perspective of the child, McIntyre wanted to play with scale and size. The parental figures move in long, rigid movements while the Darling children and Peter Pan are more contemporary in style and rough-around-the-edges.

Breaking free from the jewelry box ballerina motif, Principal Artist Hannah Carter gets to explore both roles — as Wendy in the matinee performances and Mother in the evenings.

“Trey wants [Wendy] to portray quite a strong personality … and the mother is a smaller role, but it’s definitely important within the ballet,” Carter said. “The last pas de deux that the mother and father have, … before the children come back and they think that they have lost them forever. It’s a really stunning, emotional moment in the ballet.”

For Carter, this production helps to capture more ballet nuance for audience members, exposing them to the athleticism that goes into the discipline. In years past, some conversation has perpetuated the myth that ballet artists struggle with disordered eating.

While the nutrition, strength and conditioning portions of their regiment are up to the individual, PBT artists are far from the dainty, delicate stereotype. Instead, a keen eye will find undeniably lean muscle, suited for challenging lifts, immaculate balance and unwavering silhouettes.

“It is a very physical thing that we do,” she said. “The outside world [is] realizing how demanding, how grueling a lifestyle and a career we choose to have, and how short it is, and all the sacrifices that we have made to get here.”

Although Carter has flown in other productions, she explained that flying is the most challenging part of appearing effortless on stage.

“If anything, you feel heavier [in the air] than when you do when you are on the ground, just walking,” she said ahead of rehearsals with flying company ZFX.

Over the course of his nine year tenure, ZFX Flying Director and Producer Sean Roschman has worked with more than 40 different ballet companies in addition to choreographing concert, dance, circus, theater, film and music videos.

“[Ballet artists] have a great sense of how to carry the upper torso in the harness, which really sells the effect,” Roschman said. “Working with someone with [an] incredible amount of body intelligence makes our jobs easier and it makes the flying look so much more exciting.”

In this particular rendition of “Peter Pan,” the flying sequences are more dynamic and better suited for the choreography of the show, according to Roschman.

In addition to the flying components, PBT has been hard at work rehearsing sword fighting sequences. In a promotional video, “Peter Pan” stager Dawn Scannell shared the importance of audience perception for combat scenes in the ballet.

“The dynamic of the actual sword fighting has to have a sense of realism to it,” Scannell said. “They’ve really done a phenomenal job with combining … the musicality and making the audience feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a real fight.’”

“Peter Pan” is the latest installment of PBT’s effort to break down barriers between the dance discipline and those furthest from aficionado. PBT will host four shows — two evenings and two matinees — from Friday, Oct. 25 through Sunday, Oct. 27. Tickets prices start at $25 and can be purchased online at https://pbt.culturaldistrict.org/.

“We are not just appealing to the stereotype of the young girls in tutus and fairy dust and pink sparkly tutus with pointe shoes,” Carter told The Duke. “Ballet really is for everyone and … you don’t have to know ballet to enjoy it.”