From Kansas to Cuba.

Wichita-born choreographer Trey Mclntyre takes his eclectic style and his frank approach to gay subject matter to the four corners of the globe

A dancer himself, Trey McIntyre often towers over the dancers for whom he choreographs. It's a fact of life that has also helped shape his career. In the early '90s he was apprentice choreographer for the Houston Ballet under Ben Stevenson, creator of such full-length modern ballets as Dracula and Cleopatra. "Stevenson wasn't interested in me as a dancer," McIntyre recalls. "I'm 6 foot 6; he wanted me as a choreographer." Houston has mounted four of his ballets so far.

Like Dorothy's tornado, McIntyre spun out of Wichita, Kan., when he was 15, and he's been dancing and making dances ever since. At age 31, the openly gay McIntyre has already created 35 works, including his campy Aliss in Wonderland. His most recent accomplishment as a choreographer--the ballet Second Before the Ground--landed him in the spring in London (with the Houston company), New York (with Ballet Memphis), and Russia (for a Moscow Ballet Theater production).

McIntyre's choreography has been known to polarize critics. What he sees as a broad range of styles sometimes simply baffles audiences and pundits who can't pin him down. "I kind of just shake it up for myself," he says. "By design, I'm all over the place."

Take, for example, his ballet Plush, performed in February by the Pennsylvania Ballet. "For Plush, I used five symphonies," says McIntyre. "I wanted each part to have its own specific feeling but be cohesive overall. So it becomes a puzzle, and I had to put the pieces together and make it work."

Gay love definitely informs McIntyre's artistic vision. "I make dance after dance with [heterosexual] romantic subtext," he says. "It makes no sense to me as a gay man to always present love that way." His 2000 work for the Washington Ballet, Blue Until June, which includes a romantic pas de deux between two men, worried his D.C. collaborators at first; they were taking it to Cuba, with its history of sexual repression. McIntyre stood firm; the pas de deux stayed in. Blue Until June did make waves: Cuban television aired a performance live from Havana in October 2000, and it is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Barbara Kopple.

McIntyre suggests that closeted gay dancers may be reacting not so much to homophobia as to the fear of fulfilling expectations: "A lot of dancers who are gay have a personal prejudice [against coming out] because it's assumed when they are young that they will be gay [as adults]. Because they spend a lot of time trying to fight that assumption, it can take dancers a long time to come out professionally."

Still, two men dancing together, as in Blue Until June, is "just not a shock anymore," McIntyre says. "In Cuba so many strangers came up to me after [Blue] was telecast. The audience was embracing, even protective of my work, because the pas de deux is warm and honest and genuine. It's very direct and matter-of-fact." In other words, it reflects its creator.

Find more about Trey McIntyre and links to sites about his work at www.advocate.com

Whittingham writes for Dance magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer.