Dancer turns passion into Visceral experience for Chicagoans

When Nick Pupillo stands in the middle of the dance floor, he doesn’t just stand there, he grows.

His quiet strength radiates against the roughness of the room, with its exposed brick walls, industrial pipes overhead and a metal door that opens onto a loading dock.

His bare feet are rooted in the black vinyl floor. His sweat pants are rolled up, squeezing the flesh just above his knee. A man with short brown hair, athletic build, crooked smile, and big, friendly eyes, he looks up. He lifts one arm to the sky, letting the other dangle toward the earth.

“I think deep down there’s always something,” said Pupillo, the artistic director of a new studio, Visceral Dance Chicago. “I’ve always wanted to dance; I think it’s just been in me.”

Visceral Dance wasn’t a reality until six months ago when Pupillo transformed a fabric outlet store near Bucktown into his dream studio. Since then, word of mouth has fueled the studio’s growth. MTV saw something in the space, and it hosted open auditions there for “Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew” on Saturday.

The 29-year-old former professional dancer, turned guest choreographer, teacher and artistic director, Pupillo is excited about Visceral’s exposure.

“I want my space to be accessible,” he said. “I want to get people here, get energy here.”

Pupillo knows energy.                                                                               

One moment he’ll be sitting, the next he’s somersaulting into a handstand, his bare feet suspended in the air. Then he’ll sprint across Visceral Dance's main studio, a vast room with dimensions similar to the stage of downtown Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre. He turns up the volume on the music system before darting back to the center of the room in a gravity-defying leap.

“He is so much fun to be around,” said Brittany Kolquist, 19, a student in Pupillo's advanced/performance jazz class. “The minute you walk into class there’s a smile on your face because he’s so outgoing.”

Pupillo never stops dancing. On a recent Tuesday night, after teaching his intermediate jazz class, he immediately moved on to an advanced jazz class. His choreography incorporates ballet, jazz and modern dance techniques.

“I like to do things out of the norm," he said, "to be constantly changing.” 

Jacquie Tietz, 21, of Fox River Grove has been taking classes with Pupillo for four years. Before opening Visceral Dance, he was a guest teacher at local dance studios, including those of Lou Conte and Gus Giordano, two of Chicago's leading teachers and choreographers.

“His style, his personality, it’s really raw,” Tietz said. “There’s not really many other dance teachers like him in Chicago.”

Sitting on a couch in the studio’s break room, he relaxed as the robust voices of the Chicago Opera Theater cast floated into the room. The company is one of several groups that rents Visceral Dance rehearsal space.

“I want to change the performance aspect of what people expect when they go see a dance show,” Pupillo said. “I’d like to incorporate multimedia into my choreography…pull in some stuff from local artists—the opera,” he added with a grin.

When Pupillo’s not dancing, teaching or choreographing, he’s sleeping—at least he tries.

His parents once told him that, as he slept, they would see his arms moving, “dancing around.”

“It’s always been such a part of me,” said Pupillo, who discovered dance at age 4 while growing up in Schererville, Ind.

“My parents owned a [hair salon], and the building next door was a dance studio,” he said. “It was kind of an easy babysitter for me. Since then, I’ve never stopped.”

At Indiana University, Pupillo started a contemporary jazz program. In 2001, a week after earning his bachelor’s degree in ballet, Pupillo moved to the Windy City to perform with Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago. Three years later Pupillo had new dreams: choreographing, teaching and eventually owning a company that “steps outside of what’s normal.”

Pupillo began the march toward Visceral Dance in 2006 when he founded Visceral Studio Company. This group of 14- to 18-year-old dancers worked with Pupillo in various Chicago studios for several months before Visceral Dance opened in October. He hopes they will eventually become a trainee ensemble to complement a future apprentice program for a professional company.

Visceral Dance almost didn’t happen.

“I had everything lined up and ready to go, start construction, do everything,” Pupillo said.

He had signed the lease for another space in the Ravenswood neighborhood when the landlord backed out at the last second.

Ready to quit, Pupillo and his real estate agent were sitting at a traffic light at Western and Elston avenues when they saw a 10,000-plus-square-foot warehouse. It had washed-out, splotchy-red brick walls, a loading dock and windows that were little more than narrow slits of glass.

“This place had not been updated in 20 years,” Pupillo said. “But I looked at it, and I just saw this open possibility of anything.” 

Now pirouetting in a studio with what he calls a “raw, urban feel,” Pupillo and his students appear inspired by their environment.

With hair pulled back in messy up-dos, sweat pants and tank tops hugging their bodies, and gripping the floor in their socks or bare feet, they dance.

“Nothing about this is a business," Pupillo said. "It’s so personal, so deep, so visceral.”