Dance Collective Leader Makes Room
For Work And Play:
Micki Taylor-Pinney
If Micki Taylor-Pinney's 1920s bungalow-style house could speak, it probably would demand a vacation.
The compact, seven-room house not only held her parents and their five children throughout the 1950s, `60s, `70s, and early `80s (Micki, 48, is the oldest), it also has served as headquarters for nonprofit groups for nearly five decades - and it is about to become the center of operations once again. This weekend, following the 30th anniversary concert of Dance Collective, a nonprofit contemporary dance organization, Taylor-Pinney becomes artistic director of the group when Dawn Kramer, co-artistic director and a founder, retires. Taylor-Pinney has served as co-artistic director since 1998; during that time, she and Kramer ran the organization from their homes. Now, all the action will be at the Taylor-Pinney home.
Meanwhile, Taylor-Pinney also has directed the dance department at Boston University for 18 years, and she choreographs, directs, and dances.
Dance is in her genes. Her parents, Marianne and Conny Taylor, founded the Folk Arts Center of New England in the mid-1980s (Marianne still advises). Long before then, they ran dance programs, classes, and camps, and distributed international folk records, coordinating all these efforts from their little house.
Taylor-Pinney hardly recalls her parents' dining room table clear of paperwork, mailings, records, even visiting folk dancers who hung out at the hectic house and often stayed through meals.
"My parents had an open-door policy, with people helping out on different projects," she recalls. "Guest teachers stayed here, as did `transient' folk dancers. I recall people camped out in the living room and in the yard in tents and campers." As she talks, the Dance Collective phone rings. She laughs, and adds, "and the phone was always ringing."
She earned a bachelor's degree in dance from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, then a master's in dance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She and her husband, Markus Pinney, 50, natural resources administrator for the town of Concord, bought the house from her parents in 1986. There was one catch: They had to store hundreds of folk dance records, still well concealed in the basement. There were perks, too, however.
"Some beautiful pieces of furniture came with the house," says Taylor-Pinney, explaining that her mother, separated from her father back then and since divorced, packed up the things she wanted, and left. The original pieces - an antique, claw-foot dining table and a hutch, a corner table, and a desk - blend well with the cozy sofas, lighting fixtures, and dance and music posters and knickknacks that define the home.
During the past decade, the couple gutted and expanded the original kitchen, renovated the bathroom, and refinished the room that doubles as Dance Collective office space and a study. They painted the outside a lively blue, and added a deck that overlooks a peaceful patch of woods and their flourishing perennial and vegetable gardens. The tiny second floor has a bedroom and two petite sitting rooms.
"I can't believe we had so many people stuffed into this house," Taylor-Pinney says, adding that it was at once chaotic, exciting, and stimulating.
The couple maintain a far quieter household than in those days, except every other week, when Markus, also a jazz pianist and singer, rehearses with his trio in the living room. (They created the music for the premier piece Taylor-Pinney is to dance this weekend, "Seeing the Forest through the Trees.")
"The line between work and play narrows" with home offices, she says. "You're constantly trying to balance feeling that your home is your sanctuary, but necessity also dictates using it for work space. It's hard to stop thinking about and doing it. Maybe it's both a blessing and a curse that I love this work so much."