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Resistance Is Futile

"KYLIAN + PITE"
"Petite Mort," "Sechs Taenze," "Forgotten Land," "Emergence"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
Saturday, November 9 (matinee and evening)

by Helene Kaplan
copyright ©2013 Helene Kaplan

Peter Boal has said that he's chosen to develop Pacific Northwest Ballet's rep by selecting multiple pieces by a smaller number of choreographers. During his tenure as Artistic Director, he has acquired works by Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon, and Jiri Kylian that have been performed by other ballet companies, first integrating them into mixed rep programs, and then, after further acquisitions or commissions, featuring them in dedicated or close-to-dedicated programs.  Coming right off PNB's second all-Tharp program is "KYLIAN + PITE," which features revivals of "Petite Mort" and "Sechs Taenze" and the new-to-PNB "Forgotten Land." Interestingly, Boal did not choose to pair the Kylian works with another work in PNB's rep, Nacho Duato's "Jardi Tancat," where Kylian's influence on Duato, who joined Kylian's Netherlands Dance Theatre in 1981, is so clearly seen in the gestures, vocabulary, and momentum of "Forgotten Land" made that same year. Instead, the last work in the program is Crystal Pite's "Emergence," originally choreographed for National Ballet of Canada in 2009, which shows the influence of the other important post-Balanchine choreographer, William Forsythe, for whom Pite danced, especially in Pite's use of flank and group movement.

Charlie Returns Home

"AIR TWYLA!"
"Brief Fling," "Waiting at the Station," and "Nine Sinatra Songs"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
28 September 2013, matinee and evening

by Helene Kaplan
copyright 2013 by Helene Kaplan

In 2008 Pacific Northwest Ballet presented its first all-Tharp program in which Twyla Tharp created her first two works on the Company:  "Afternoon Ball," a contemporary character work and incisive snapshot in time that mined the dramatic and expressive talents of Kaori Nakamura (and Chalnessa Eames in the second cast), Olivier Wevers, and guest dancer Charlie Neshyba-Hodges, and "Opus 111," a larger, more formal work to that Brahms string quartet. (PNB performed "Opus 111"  at the Joyce Theater in 2010.)  Peter Boal noted her influence and guidance across the company, from onstage to backstage to administration, and over the past calendar year, she has been Artist-in-Residence. For PNB's second All-Tharp program, "AIR TWYLA!," she created a single new work, "Waiting at the Station," which reflects her recent forays into Broadway choreography, which was presented with opener "Brief Fling," an early work (1990) as American Ballet Theatre's Associate Artistic Director under Baryshnikov, and "Nine Sinatra Songs" once again rounding out the bill.

Endings

"40th Anniversary Season Encore Performance"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Sunday, June 9, 2013

"32nd Annual School Performances"
Saturday, June 15, 2013 (evening)

McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington

by Helene Kaplan
copyright © 2013 by Helene Kaplan

Early in his tenure as Artistic Director of Pacific Northwest Ballet, Peter Boal introduced a special season-ending retrospective of excerpts from the season's rep in which each of the Principals and Soloists reprises at least one featured role. A weekend later, the School is celebrated with the "Next Step" program, in which the Professional Division students dance works by company choreographers, giving them valuable experience of working directly in the creation process, and the following day with the two-part school performance, in which the Student Divisions in the Francia Russell Center and Seattle Schools perform works by the faculty and the Professional Division students dance works by prominent choreographers.  For most of the second-year PD's, it's a farewell to Seattle as they take their places in companies around the US and in Europe.

Four for Fall

All Premiere:
 "arms that work," "Lost in Light,"
"Kammermusik No. 3," and "Sum Stravinsky"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
3 November 2012 (matinee and evening)

by Helene Kaplan
copyright 2012 by Helene Kaplan

Peter Boal spoke and wrote that presenting a program of world premieres was a risk.  When it was all over, the program felt familiar, even cozy. The new Mark Morris ballet, "Kammermusik No. 3" fit into the cooler end of the neoclassical spectrum, like Boal's choices by Ratmansky, Wheeldon, Robbins, and previously unknown-to-Seattle Balanchine, but the ballets "Sum Stravinsky" by Kiyon Gaines and "Lost in Light" by Margaret Mullin, and the contemporary work, Andrew Bartee's "arms that work," had a warmth and diversity that could easily have been part of a program by Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, who presented company premieres of works by Tudor, Dumais, Caniparoli, Gibson, and Limon and who gave Kiyon Gaines and Olivier Wevers their first opportunities on the Main Stage.

Bird Warfare

"The Golden Cockerel"
The Royal Danish Ballet
Operaen Store Scene
Copenhagen, Denmark
28 September 2012

by Helene Kaplan
copyright 2012 by Helene Kaplan

At the end of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Golden Cockerel" the Astrologer tells the audience that only he and the Queen of Shermakhan are real human characters.  In Ratmansky's new version for the Royal Danish Ballet which premiered in September, these two characters are so viscerally alive compared to the rest that no disclaimer is necessary, and they are squarely within two great traditions of the Royal Danish Ballet: conveying underlying, roiling emotion in mime and storytelling.  For the rest of the cast, Alexei Ratmansky's "The Golden Cockerel" made yeoman demands in mime, particularly in telling an unfamiliar story clearly and concisely, but as two-dimensional archetypes -- the coddling nurse, the sulky Princes, the maidens, the happy loves, the bereaved fiancee, the King's useless advisors, the Golden Cockerel -- and the development of underlying emotion was not an option for most of the ballet. This is the antithesis of what the Company does and what its audience expects from it.

"Cinderella" in Seattle

"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.

The Sound of Silence

"Coppelia"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
9 June matinee
10 June matinee

By Helene Kaplan
copyright © 2012 Helene Kaplan

Pacific Northwest Ballet ended the 2011-12 season with a revival of its 2010 re-designed production of "Coppelia": Roberta Guidi di Bagno's designs looked as fresh and beautiful as when it debuted, and the score sounded as ravishing.  Opening the run as Swanhilde was the company's reigning senior ballerina, Kaori Nakamura, and closing it was one of the company's newest corps members, Leta Biasucci. (It also featured the newest company Principals, Rachel Foster and Lesley Rausch, both of whom debuted in 2010.)  Jeffrey Stanton, who retired from the company last season, returned to reprise Dr. Coppelius with Nakamura, and corps member Ezra Thomson made his debut in the role with Biasucci.  I saw the second/last performances of these two casts. 

Episodic

"All Balanchine"
"Stravinsky Violin Concerto," "Episodes," "Rubies"
Ballet Arizona
Symphony Hall
Phoenix, Arizona
1 June 2012 evening
2 June 2012 matinee

By Helene Kaplan
copyright © 2012 Helene Kaplan

"Episodes" is a rarity in the Balanchine canon in many ways:  originally half of a joint project with Martha Graham, set to multiple works by a single composer, Anton Webern, that span nearly a quarter century of composition, and comprised of four connected works, three of them multi-movement pieces, each of which could stand alone, but together, are greater than the whole.  While "Agon," "Four Temperaments," and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" appear on more and more company calendars, productions of "Episodes" are much rarer, and the challenge greater, since it was created for one of the, if not the, strongest assemblage of ballerinas in a neoclassical work:  Violette Verdy, Diana Adams, Allegra Kent, and Melissa Hayden, partnered by Jonathan Watts, Jacques d'Amboise, Nicholas Magallanes, and Francisco Moncion.  With staging by Joysanne Sidimus, Ballet Arizona took on that challenge, and while not as consistently strong as last year's excellent company premieres of "Monumentum pro Gesualdo"/"Movements for Orchestra", it was a remarkable new addition to the company's season-ending "All Balanchine" program .

All Wheeldon

"All Wheeldon"
"Carousel (A Dance)", "After the Rain Pas de deux", "Polyphonia", and "Variations Serieuses"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington
24 September 2011 (matinee and evening)

By Helene Kaplan
Copyright ©2011 by Helene Kaplan

On the morning before Pacific Northwest Ballet's second program of the season, "Love Stories", which features company premieres of Balanchine's "Divertimento from 'La Baiser de la fee'" and Robbins' "Afternoon of a Faun" in addition to "After Petipa" classic pas de deux, the memory of the "All Wheeldon" program from September still lingers.  Often mixed programs featuring one choreographer show that choreographer's limitations, and Wheeldon has received criticism for the inconsistency of his output -- I've seen some outside PNB that warrants it -- as well as for not being the next Balanchine.  PNB's "All Wheeldon" program, comprised of the four ballets by Christopher Wheeldon in the Company's rep, showed the choreographer's richness of invention and belied easy categorization of these works, and, as a result, each work made an even stronger impression.  Whatever the logic and intention behind granting permission to and acquiring these specific works for the Company, it worked like a charm. 

Tradition

"After Petipa"
Doug Fullington
with Christina Siemens (piano) and Batkhurel Bold, Karel Cruz, Kyle Davis, Rachel Foster, Carrie Imler, Kylee Kitchens, Carla Körbes, William Lin-Yee, Kaori Nakamura, Sarah Ricard Orza, Jonathan Porretta, Lucien Postlewaite, Lesley Raush, Brittany Reid, and Jerome Tisserand of Pacific Northwest Ballet
Phelps Center
Seattle, Washington
20 October 2011

by Helene Kaplan
Copyright © 2011 by Helene Kaplan

Last night in the stage-sized Pacific Northwest Ballet Studio C, Doug Fullington presented "After Petipa", the latest in a series of presentations that feature reconstructions from Stepanov notation of excepts of Petipa's works and compare 19th and early 20th century versions of the classics to current versions and the works of his choreographic descendants. "After Petipa" focused on three pas de deux from "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty", and while the program was more narrowly focused than previous programs, it was no less illuminating and revelatory. The comparisons illustrated several underlying themes: the simplicity of the reconstructed versions to faster tempos, the remarkably similar floor patterns in many old and new versions, changes and re-arrangements of the music between the premieres and the Petipa revivals, the incorporation of drama into the dance movements to replace original mime in pas d'action, and the distinct transition from the Cecchetti-influenced petite allegro with many connecting steps to grande allegro.