Chandler Maria Bingham, a dancer in her seventh season with PearlArts Movement & Sound, is at Field Day in Lawrenceville, sipping a lavender chai — one of her favorites. Her hair, in box braids, cascades over her shoulders and a leather jacket adds a touch of edginess to an otherwise timeless ensemble.

The trained dancer, choreographer and model is a native of Detroit — and she has found her footing in Pittsburgh, where she’s lived since college at Point Park University.

When she first saw dancers from Point Park University perform at a National High School Dance Festival during her sophomore year at Cass Tech, she set her sights on the school. She made the very last audition for Point Park’s Conservatory of Performing Arts and was accepted, eventually earning a bachelor of arts in dance with a minor in history.

After graduation, she started as an apprentice with PearlArts Movement & Sound, a dance and arts organization based in Braddock, formerly known as Staycee Pearl Dance Project and Soy Sos, before later securing a full company contract.

“It’s invigorating when you’re on stage. I feel myself developing every time I perform, like I’m mastering my craft. Every time I dance, I discover something new within me … I feel like a new part of me has been unlocked,” Bingham said.

She recently returned from a performance in New York with PearlArts, touring with “CIRCLES: going in.” She performed the piece again in Pittsburgh while also serving as a dance faculty member, teaching contemporary classes at the International Association of Blacks in Dance’s “On the 1” dance class series in Pittsburgh last month.

The moment was full circle for the 27-year-old, who once took classes with some of the very instructors she taught alongside.

For the first time in January, Bingham curated performance art for the Carnegie Museum of Art’s “Winter Heat” in the Hall of Sculpture, bringing in five dancers who interpreted the artwork. Some danced en pointe, others in contemporary jazz and one in heels, each embodying different dance styles.

Mikael Owunna, founder of Mikael Owunna Studios, president of the City of Pittsburgh’s Public Art and Civic Design Commission and co-founder of Rainbow Serpent, a nonprofit organization celebrating Black LGBTQ culture, worked directly with Bingham on the performance “Opening the Mouth,” presented by Rainbow Serpent. It premiered at the Pittsburgh Glass Center alongside an exhibition of 16 Black queer Egyptian deities. Bingham was the lead dancer, guiding the ritual performance that was styled after an ancient Egyptian ceremony where ritual objects were brought to life.

“It was very much a spiritual role, one in which Chandler deeply embodied the spirit of these ancestral African traditions in a way that not only brought the performance to life but also allowed us to feel the transition from the mundane to the spiritual,” Owunna said.

It’s common for Black women in ballet to feel like they are the only ones in that space.

“I was the only brown girl in my ballet studio. Outside of my separate home studio, it was hard to find those role models. Unless they brought them in, there was no one consistently,” she said.

But her mom did a lot to ensure she had plenty of Black role models.

“One of my favorite teachers was a Black woman, and I looked up to her so much. She was my inspiration for a very long time… and I was like, ‘Mom, where can I find her outfit, or how can I be like Miss Debra?’” Bingham said, referring to instructor Debra Miller-Cherveny.

She said navigating that space might have been frustrating had she not had the strong support of her parents, family, friends and faith. But at PearlArts Movement & Sound, “there are so many beautiful Black people,” she said.

“I just want people to know that dancers of color can move their bodies in graceful, lighthearted ways with technique. You can do all the things that any other dancer can do,” Bingham said.

Bingham’s days often stretch to 12 hours, balancing rehearsals and teaching as an instructor in multiple spaces, like Open Up Pittsburgh, where she leads beginner ballet classes every Tuesday night. On top of that, she also teaches yoga. But she’s been training for this since the age of 3 — athleticism and the embodiment of movement have been second nature.

Growing up in Detroit as an only child, her mom handled ballet and her dad handled sports.

“I would change out of my ballet clothes really fast and head over to T-ball,” she said.

Her father played baseball growing up, so Bingham played softball, eventually making it to fast-pitch softball. She moved between dance and softball until high school, when her passion for dance fully took over. By age 12, she knew she wanted to be a dancer.

“I really wanted to take my pre-professional training more seriously,” she said.

Bingham trained in ballet, contemporary and jazz at her home studio, MBS and a Russian ballet school within the Detroit Opera House. She also completed summer intensives with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater before attending Cass Technical High School to study dance. At the Opera House, she was exposed to role models from Dance Theatre of Harlem, Christina Johnson and others.

“Their dance company at Cass did a lot of repertoire and work that I just hadn’t gotten my feet wet in yet. Because I grew up doing only ballet, which is straight technique, once you get to modern, that’s very different,” she said.

It was an eye-opening experience for Bingham, learning new techniques like Horton and Limón and working with choreographers.

“So much of the power of Chandler in performance is that she is able to connect with audiences, but also, there is this genius she has, of being able to spiritually activate the spaces around her as she performs,” Owunna said. “It blurs the line between present, past and future and uses dance as a language.”

“CIRCLES: Going In” has allowed Bingham to connect further with her identity and womanhood. The hour-long piece, which has been workshopped for the past four years, explores Black love, femininity and womanhood.

“All things Black. That piece ties into this new stage of my life as a professional dancer and artist. It has helped me discover and blossom into things I didn’t know I could do,” she said.

Bingham says she is moving into a new phase of her career, one where she is pulling from the community, creating events and using her degree in a way that complements her work. She aims to understand and showcase the history of dance and use that knowledge to push her into the curatorial space. She is also building her pedagogy and choreographic skills.

In the rare downtime she finds, she enjoys resting and embracing moments of quiet, despite what she calls her “busybody” nature. She also loves being out in the sun, spending time in nature or engaging in slow-flow yoga and meditation.

When it is time to get back on stage, she has a ritual: meditating on a mantra her mom always tells her.

“Be strong and be beautiful.”

Join Bingham for Open Up: Inclusive Ballet in Lawrenceville on Tuesdays here.

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