"Cinderella"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
September 21, 2012
September 22, 2012 Matinee
By Helene Kaplan
copyright © 2012 Helene Kaplan
For the opening of this 40th Anniversary Season, Peter Boal originally envisioned an all-Stravinsky program to honor Founding Artistic Directors Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, with a Balanchine staging by Russell and th "Firebird" choreographed by Stowell. As in recent seasons, Boal had to re-arrange the puzzle pieces of the schedule, and as a result, he chose Stowell's "Cinderella," last seen two years ago after a long hiatus, as the season opener, with a nod to the Stravinsky in a one-time performance of Jerome Robbins' "Circus Polka." A tribute to Russell's continuing legacy as a stager will come in the season-ending "Director's Choice" program in "Agon"; "Cinderella" celebrates her other key legacy -- perhaps more important for the Seattle ballet community -- in the creation and direction of the school, which is showcased in the many roles for children in the production. It is also a bittersweet tribute to the great designer, Martin Pakledinaz, whose costumes grace the stage. Finally the work shows Stowell at his best: as a story-teller who creates rich thematic layers and clear narrative, and who confidently takes a patient pace in a full-length neo-classical story ballet.
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
September 21, 2012
September 22, 2012 Matinee
By Helene Kaplan
copyright © 2012 Helene Kaplan
For the opening of this 40th Anniversary Season, Peter Boal originally envisioned an all-Stravinsky program to honor Founding Artistic Directors Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, with a Balanchine staging by Russell and th "Firebird" choreographed by Stowell. As in recent seasons, Boal had to re-arrange the puzzle pieces of the schedule, and as a result, he chose Stowell's "Cinderella," last seen two years ago after a long hiatus, as the season opener, with a nod to the Stravinsky in a one-time performance of Jerome Robbins' "Circus Polka." A tribute to Russell's continuing legacy as a stager will come in the season-ending "Director's Choice" program in "Agon"; "Cinderella" celebrates her other key legacy -- perhaps more important for the Seattle ballet community -- in the creation and direction of the school, which is showcased in the many roles for children in the production. It is also a bittersweet tribute to the great designer, Martin Pakledinaz, whose costumes grace the stage. Finally the work shows Stowell at his best: as a story-teller who creates rich thematic layers and clear narrative, and who confidently takes a patient pace in a full-length neo-classical story ballet.
"Cinderella," was one of two blockbusters choreographed by Stowell for the 1993-4 season to challenge the company after its move to the new, dedicated Phelps Center, which houses the studios, Seattle school, administration, and costume shop. In addition to the three central protagonists -- Cinderella, Prince, and Fairy Godmother (in all her guises) -- there are eight soloists, one dramatic partnering role, four central character and comic roles, eleven smaller cameos, 12 females corps accompanying the seasons, 12 couples at the ball, small roles for upper-level students, and 24 roles for children. Each is complex and demanding, when not in steps, in character, timing, concentration, and ensemble. While the composition of the Company is a lot different than in 1994 -- today, all but a handful of corps members have come through the school and apprentice program, and all of the Soloists and seven of the ten Principals were promoted through the ranks, many after training in the School -- the ballet is no less challenging.
To create a backstory and support so many characters, Stowell and then Music Director Stewart Kershaw, added excerpts from other Prokofiev scores, including the well-known "Love for Three Oranges," which, balance the more acidic parts of the "Cinderella" score while retaining its bite. The PNB Orchestra, led by Music Director Emil de Cou, played it in top form.
The ballet opens with Cinderella standing with her broom by the hearth gazing upstage at action behind a scrim. Stowell uses this convention several times to reveal memories or memory-based wishes. In the first scene we see her dancing with a Prince, but we don't know until a bit later, from a memory scene shared with her father, that her image of the Prince is a mirror of her youthful father and the loving family life they shared. What triggers the shared memory is a private moment in which they do a social dance. Dancing is both metaphor and literal -- something she does and loves -- and is part of the backstories that flow so seamlessly in and out of the standard narrative that they seem inevitable.
Memory sustains Cinderella -- she dances her Act I solo not with a broom, but to a locket portrait of her mother -- and while she shows sadness, she doesn't turn bitter or despairing, even after she's tasted first love and believed that it all ended at midnight. She doesn't blame her father, although, in this production, the memory scene of his virile, loving young self shows us how far he has fallen into cowardice, time after time unable to protect his daughter. Her stepsisters even enjoy her when their mother isn't watching, more frenemies than simply adversaries, and she's at least fond of them, despite everything.
Cinderella has relatives everywhere, real, imagined, and supernatural: the memory of her father, the reality of what he's become, a Stepmother who strides in front of people to obliterate them (and barely misses a beat when entire phalanxes of courtier try to block her and her daughters from the Prince), a mysterious old beggar woman to whom Cinderella shows tender kindness and who turns into her Fairy Godmother, the memory of her mother, the Stepsisters. The Prince, on the other hand, appears to be an orphan, throwing his own ball without any pesky adults or protocol officers around. His Jester is Puck-like and is given the thankless task of running interference with the parvenu step-people between dazzling solos. (After the marriage, he'll never have to worry about job security.) Cinderella and the Prince have two mostly unchaperoned pas de deux, the first exploring and the second joyful, and they and the final pas de deux are in the same neoclassical style familiar from Stowell's "Nutcracker" Act I "Awakening" pas de deux.
One dancer portrays the three characters who propel the memories, the action, and the more general metaphor in the story: Memory Mother, the Fairy Godmother, and the Good Fairy in the "Theatre of Marvels" divertissement at the ball. Dressed in lilac, in case there was any question of her ballet lineage, the Fairy Godmother is the benevolent ruler of the Seasons, and the 12 Attendants, and she bestows her blessings with limitations. In "Theatre of Marvels" the dominant characters, Good Fairy and Evil Spite, each have their say in solos -- his quicksilver and sharp, hers rich and expansive, two of the ballets's choreographic highlights -- but they aren't foils for each other: they show mutual respect and balance. Memory Mother, Fairy Godmother, and Good Fairy are realists and work with what they're given.
Changing Cinderella's circumstances is the easier task: there's no character involved in it. Cinderella's father, though, is cowed and inconsequential in the first two acts, but, having spied Cinderella with her one remaining slipper at the beginning of the last act, reveals it to the Prince, the Jester, and in a wonderful stroke, the doctor, lawyer, and accountant who form the search party, and, finally, reaquaints himself with his spine.
Fairy Godmother, the Seasons, and the corps of Attendants prepare and send Cinderella off to the ball, and in a lovely touch, they welcome her back gently after the magic wears off. The solos for the seasons are all different in temperament -- Spring is quick, Summer languid, Autumn is sharp, and Winter is alternately playful and imposing -- but each has varied sweeping turns and surprising direction changes, accentuated by the swirl of Pakledinaz' silky layers. When these are danced at the level seen opening weekend this could be a stand-alone ballet. So could the Theatre of Marvels, although it is structurally less abstract.
Performance-wise, the matinee cast had it easier: the rehearsal schedule was a condensed three weeks, a very short time for such a complex production, and the Company was rehearsing four new works for November, the Guggenheim presentation, and an upcoming Vegas appearance concurrently. On Opening Night the ensemble was still feeling its way, and there was a distinct lack of overall energy, including little off of which the dancers could feed from the closest Seattle has to a gala audience. By Saturday the audience was full of children -- many of them girls in full princess kit -- the energy was back, and the ensemble was a coherent whole.
On opening night, Carla Korbes and Karel Cruz danced Cinderella and Prince, with Carrie Imler as the trio of protectors. As a pair Korbes and Cruz have a glowing warmth and simpatico. There is little traditional mime in "Cinderella" -- the Jester has most of it -- but there is plenty of physical characterization, at which Cruz excels. (Last season, when he danced in the foreboding central pas de deux in Lopez Ochoa's "Cylindrical Shadows" with his wife Lindsi Dec, it was heart-wrenching.) Korbes' dancing is intrinsically warm, with a creamy quality complemented by Carrie Imler's own, and when she eschews glamor, like in this role, she is a sunny presence. Her approach here was to be and to absorb, and she basked in Imler's regal softness towards her and in the Prince's love for her.
Equally valid, Lesley Rausch, in the afternoon performance, showed a wider range of emotion, with small, quick changes and reactions that had a big impact. Her dancing was clear and beautifully articulated, and she was a tender, charming heroine. Prince was Batkhurel Bold, who in recent seasons has softened his dramatic presence considerably; he's a different dancer when he smiles. Kylee Kitchens, as Fairy Godmother et. al. complemented Rausch physically and stylistically.
The Father is a difficult role: he's on stage much of the time, reacting, but not following through, and hardly sympathetic. Uko Gorter (Friday) and William Lin-Yee (Saturday matinee) each used his physical type to advantage, with Gorter shifting laterally and rarely going forward, and Lin-Yee making his large frame small and apologetic, his upper body impelled to speak and act, but his weight back on his heels planting him in place. As Stepmother, Laura Gilbreath stopped the room through her glare alone. Brittany Reid took a more full-bodied, but no less frightening, approach.
Notable among the Seasons were Leta Biasucci's gently quick Spring, Sarah Ricard Orza's Autumn, which evoked the bitter pangs of the coming winter, and Laura Gilbreath's witty and whimsical Winter in a definitive performance. In the Theatre of Marvels, Matthew Renko's clear lines and buoyant jump made him a standout as Evil Sprite, and both the Sarah Orza/Jerome Tisserand and Amanda Clark/Kiyon Gaines pairings gave personal and charming readings of the Columbine/Harlequin roles. As authoritative as Carrie Imler is as Fairy Godmother, it was as Good Fairy on Friday night, dancing the extended solo as if in moonlight, that she momentarily became the center of the ballet, much the way the Act II Divertissement Pas de Deux" in Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" grounds that ballet. Both Jonathan Porretta's exuberant, cheeky Jester and Benjamin Griffith's plush, centered one were typical of their individual styles and danced with top quality. Each dancer was asked to "put in [his] best trick" in his main solo, and the aerial Griffiths unexpectedly floated at the end of his should be required viewing for Olympic tumblers for its form and style.
In "Cinderella" Stowell created two dozen roles for them throughout the ballet: in the mime roles as Memory Children, as the 12 warning hours, as bugs in the Seasons scene, and as contingents to the Good Fairy and Evil Sprite, in the Theatre of Marvels. In "Circus Polka" 48 girls in the many school levels joined special guest Ringmaster, former Principal Dancer, Kent Stowell muse, and the original Cinderella, Patricia Barker, ending in final formation of "40" to celebrate the anniversary season. Barker wasn't the only dancer to return for a tribute to the Company, Russell, and Stowell: PNB School faculty member Marisa Albee, the original short Stepsister, reprised her role. (It was to her great credit that Jessika Anspach, playing the tall Stepsister, was not overshadowed.) Second weekend the original tall Stepsister, Kimberly Davie, reunites with Albee to recreate her role.
While the ballet ends with Cinderella being turned by the Prince in a tilted, low arabesque as silver glitter trickles down from the flies -- a combination of music box and snow globe -- it's a production that belongs to all of PNB and celebrates the School, from the youngest to Professional Division students to dancers like Barker, Rausch, Imler, and Porretta, who rose from finishing years at the school through the ranks, to Jessika Anspach, the first Francia Russell Center (Eastside campus) student and Eric Hipolito, Jr, the first Dance Chance student to join the Company, and the institution, seeded by Janet Reed, grown and nurtured for 27 years by Russell and Stowell, and now enriched by Peter Boal. Here's to the next 40.
To create a backstory and support so many characters, Stowell and then Music Director Stewart Kershaw, added excerpts from other Prokofiev scores, including the well-known "Love for Three Oranges," which, balance the more acidic parts of the "Cinderella" score while retaining its bite. The PNB Orchestra, led by Music Director Emil de Cou, played it in top form.
The ballet opens with Cinderella standing with her broom by the hearth gazing upstage at action behind a scrim. Stowell uses this convention several times to reveal memories or memory-based wishes. In the first scene we see her dancing with a Prince, but we don't know until a bit later, from a memory scene shared with her father, that her image of the Prince is a mirror of her youthful father and the loving family life they shared. What triggers the shared memory is a private moment in which they do a social dance. Dancing is both metaphor and literal -- something she does and loves -- and is part of the backstories that flow so seamlessly in and out of the standard narrative that they seem inevitable.
Memory sustains Cinderella -- she dances her Act I solo not with a broom, but to a locket portrait of her mother -- and while she shows sadness, she doesn't turn bitter or despairing, even after she's tasted first love and believed that it all ended at midnight. She doesn't blame her father, although, in this production, the memory scene of his virile, loving young self shows us how far he has fallen into cowardice, time after time unable to protect his daughter. Her stepsisters even enjoy her when their mother isn't watching, more frenemies than simply adversaries, and she's at least fond of them, despite everything.
Cinderella has relatives everywhere, real, imagined, and supernatural: the memory of her father, the reality of what he's become, a Stepmother who strides in front of people to obliterate them (and barely misses a beat when entire phalanxes of courtier try to block her and her daughters from the Prince), a mysterious old beggar woman to whom Cinderella shows tender kindness and who turns into her Fairy Godmother, the memory of her mother, the Stepsisters. The Prince, on the other hand, appears to be an orphan, throwing his own ball without any pesky adults or protocol officers around. His Jester is Puck-like and is given the thankless task of running interference with the parvenu step-people between dazzling solos. (After the marriage, he'll never have to worry about job security.) Cinderella and the Prince have two mostly unchaperoned pas de deux, the first exploring and the second joyful, and they and the final pas de deux are in the same neoclassical style familiar from Stowell's "Nutcracker" Act I "Awakening" pas de deux.
One dancer portrays the three characters who propel the memories, the action, and the more general metaphor in the story: Memory Mother, the Fairy Godmother, and the Good Fairy in the "Theatre of Marvels" divertissement at the ball. Dressed in lilac, in case there was any question of her ballet lineage, the Fairy Godmother is the benevolent ruler of the Seasons, and the 12 Attendants, and she bestows her blessings with limitations. In "Theatre of Marvels" the dominant characters, Good Fairy and Evil Spite, each have their say in solos -- his quicksilver and sharp, hers rich and expansive, two of the ballets's choreographic highlights -- but they aren't foils for each other: they show mutual respect and balance. Memory Mother, Fairy Godmother, and Good Fairy are realists and work with what they're given.
Changing Cinderella's circumstances is the easier task: there's no character involved in it. Cinderella's father, though, is cowed and inconsequential in the first two acts, but, having spied Cinderella with her one remaining slipper at the beginning of the last act, reveals it to the Prince, the Jester, and in a wonderful stroke, the doctor, lawyer, and accountant who form the search party, and, finally, reaquaints himself with his spine.
Fairy Godmother, the Seasons, and the corps of Attendants prepare and send Cinderella off to the ball, and in a lovely touch, they welcome her back gently after the magic wears off. The solos for the seasons are all different in temperament -- Spring is quick, Summer languid, Autumn is sharp, and Winter is alternately playful and imposing -- but each has varied sweeping turns and surprising direction changes, accentuated by the swirl of Pakledinaz' silky layers. When these are danced at the level seen opening weekend this could be a stand-alone ballet. So could the Theatre of Marvels, although it is structurally less abstract.
Performance-wise, the matinee cast had it easier: the rehearsal schedule was a condensed three weeks, a very short time for such a complex production, and the Company was rehearsing four new works for November, the Guggenheim presentation, and an upcoming Vegas appearance concurrently. On Opening Night the ensemble was still feeling its way, and there was a distinct lack of overall energy, including little off of which the dancers could feed from the closest Seattle has to a gala audience. By Saturday the audience was full of children -- many of them girls in full princess kit -- the energy was back, and the ensemble was a coherent whole.
On opening night, Carla Korbes and Karel Cruz danced Cinderella and Prince, with Carrie Imler as the trio of protectors. As a pair Korbes and Cruz have a glowing warmth and simpatico. There is little traditional mime in "Cinderella" -- the Jester has most of it -- but there is plenty of physical characterization, at which Cruz excels. (Last season, when he danced in the foreboding central pas de deux in Lopez Ochoa's "Cylindrical Shadows" with his wife Lindsi Dec, it was heart-wrenching.) Korbes' dancing is intrinsically warm, with a creamy quality complemented by Carrie Imler's own, and when she eschews glamor, like in this role, she is a sunny presence. Her approach here was to be and to absorb, and she basked in Imler's regal softness towards her and in the Prince's love for her.
Equally valid, Lesley Rausch, in the afternoon performance, showed a wider range of emotion, with small, quick changes and reactions that had a big impact. Her dancing was clear and beautifully articulated, and she was a tender, charming heroine. Prince was Batkhurel Bold, who in recent seasons has softened his dramatic presence considerably; he's a different dancer when he smiles. Kylee Kitchens, as Fairy Godmother et. al. complemented Rausch physically and stylistically.
The Father is a difficult role: he's on stage much of the time, reacting, but not following through, and hardly sympathetic. Uko Gorter (Friday) and William Lin-Yee (Saturday matinee) each used his physical type to advantage, with Gorter shifting laterally and rarely going forward, and Lin-Yee making his large frame small and apologetic, his upper body impelled to speak and act, but his weight back on his heels planting him in place. As Stepmother, Laura Gilbreath stopped the room through her glare alone. Brittany Reid took a more full-bodied, but no less frightening, approach.
Notable among the Seasons were Leta Biasucci's gently quick Spring, Sarah Ricard Orza's Autumn, which evoked the bitter pangs of the coming winter, and Laura Gilbreath's witty and whimsical Winter in a definitive performance. In the Theatre of Marvels, Matthew Renko's clear lines and buoyant jump made him a standout as Evil Sprite, and both the Sarah Orza/Jerome Tisserand and Amanda Clark/Kiyon Gaines pairings gave personal and charming readings of the Columbine/Harlequin roles. As authoritative as Carrie Imler is as Fairy Godmother, it was as Good Fairy on Friday night, dancing the extended solo as if in moonlight, that she momentarily became the center of the ballet, much the way the Act II Divertissement Pas de Deux" in Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" grounds that ballet. Both Jonathan Porretta's exuberant, cheeky Jester and Benjamin Griffith's plush, centered one were typical of their individual styles and danced with top quality. Each dancer was asked to "put in [his] best trick" in his main solo, and the aerial Griffiths unexpectedly floated at the end of his should be required viewing for Olympic tumblers for its form and style.
In "Cinderella" Stowell created two dozen roles for them throughout the ballet: in the mime roles as Memory Children, as the 12 warning hours, as bugs in the Seasons scene, and as contingents to the Good Fairy and Evil Sprite, in the Theatre of Marvels. In "Circus Polka" 48 girls in the many school levels joined special guest Ringmaster, former Principal Dancer, Kent Stowell muse, and the original Cinderella, Patricia Barker, ending in final formation of "40" to celebrate the anniversary season. Barker wasn't the only dancer to return for a tribute to the Company, Russell, and Stowell: PNB School faculty member Marisa Albee, the original short Stepsister, reprised her role. (It was to her great credit that Jessika Anspach, playing the tall Stepsister, was not overshadowed.) Second weekend the original tall Stepsister, Kimberly Davie, reunites with Albee to recreate her role.
While the ballet ends with Cinderella being turned by the Prince in a tilted, low arabesque as silver glitter trickles down from the flies -- a combination of music box and snow globe -- it's a production that belongs to all of PNB and celebrates the School, from the youngest to Professional Division students to dancers like Barker, Rausch, Imler, and Porretta, who rose from finishing years at the school through the ranks, to Jessika Anspach, the first Francia Russell Center (Eastside campus) student and Eric Hipolito, Jr, the first Dance Chance student to join the Company, and the institution, seeded by Janet Reed, grown and nurtured for 27 years by Russell and Stowell, and now enriched by Peter Boal. Here's to the next 40.