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PNB Season Encore 2019

I’ve attended regular season ballet performances since I was 18. But last season was the first time I attended any of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “extra” events – like performance previews and Ballet 101 lectures. Of those, the extra performances like Season Encore and NEXT STEP were my favorites. This year I couldn’t attend NEXT STEP, but I did get to see the Season Encore. It’s called an encore, but it’s not just a highlights reel of the most popular dances of the past season.

Family Night

PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal describes the Season Encore performance as “Family Night.” And that’s not far from the truth. The program always includes some of the biggest hits and most interesting additions to the repertory from the last season. But it also includes pieces selected by retiring dancers. Those dancers are honored with a between-dances slide show a lot like the one celebrating graduating seniors get at high school pep rallies. And there’s an element of pep rally to it, too, with flowers and endless standing ovations for the departing dancers. There is a celebratory in-crowd vibe to the whole event, which really does seem to be more for the dancers and their families than for paying audience members. But at the same time, by choosing to attend this non-season performance, regular audience members get to feel like part of the family.

Retirements

Dancers

This year we said farewell to two principal dancers, Jonathon Poretta and Rachel Foster. Peter Boal talked about his long history with Poretta and Foster’s strength as a dancer. Dances that showcased male dancers were a rarity when I started watching ballet early in his career, but they’ve always been among my favorites. Now I realize that’s at least partly a result of Poretta’s performances back when I didn’t pay attention to who the dancers were. Similarly, my preference for contemporary ballet has a lot to do with Foster’s flawless performances.

Most of us in the auditorium don’t pay a lot of attention to the behind-the-scenes credits in the program, but if something seems “off” on stage next season, it might be because there were important retirements backstage this year, too.

I used to watch Ballet Master Paul Gibson dance when he was a soloist and a principal at PNB. I met him once when I was working on a story about the Nutcracker. He graciously allowed me to sit in on one of his toughest jobs – rehearsing the children who dance the battle between mice and nutcracker soldiers. Gibson always prioritized his job at PNB, but he was also a choreographer.  

Backstage

Costume Shop Manager Larae Hascall and Resident Lighting Designer Randall Chiarelli both came out to take their first – and final – bows. My mind raced over the dances in the program, realizing that they showcased striking costumes and dramatic lighting. For a moment I thought that was purposefully honoring these two, just like including ballets that showcased the performances of the retiring dancers. Then I realized – any ballet in the repertory would highlight the talent and skill of these two professionals. I realized with something like a pang of fear that I have never seen a performance at PNB that these two were not involved in.

Program

Theme & Variations (excerpt)
Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Theme & Variations was the final piece in the program that closed only a week before. I wrote an entire post about it then, so I don’t have much to add here. I could add that seeing it at the beginning of the evening instead of as a finale gave it a slightly different color. And even if I can’t always consciously identify the differences, I always enjoy seeing different dancers interpret the same roles. During the season program, I saw Jerome Tisserand and Lesley Rausch perform; on this night it was Laura Tisserand and Dylan Wald.

Jerome Tisserand and Lesley Rausch in Theme and Variations, by George Balanchine, Photo © Angela Sterling c/o PNB.

The Piano Dance (pas de deux)
Music: Gyorgy Ligeti
Choreography: Paul Gibson

I was certain that I had never seen Paul Gibson’s The Piano Dance before. In fact, I could only remember seeing one of Gibson’s ballets, and I remembered it as being very neoclassical and pretty. Then, when I heard the first chords of Ligeti’s music, I remembered the whole thing. I hadn’t seen it in at least a decade, but every moment of the pas de deux evoked an “Ah yes, that’s right,” response. The stark lighting and red leotards. The spiky, spiderlike movements. An atmosphere that built ominous tension, only to instantly deflate it with humor. It was a truly unique work, and all the more enjoyable in contrast to what I thought I knew about Gibson’s choreography.                    

Rassemblement (pas de deux)
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Choreography: Nacho Duato

Only a few days earlier, I was telling my husband about one of the dances in Theme & Variations and he was trying to remember if he had seen it before. “Oh, was it the one with…?” and he lifted his elbows and dropped his head like he was hanging on a scarecrow.

“No, no, no,” I replied. “You’re thinking of Rassemblement.” I don’t tell this story to make us sound like ballet experts, because we’re not. It’s just that Rassemblement was one of the very first contemporary ballets from outside the Balanchine lineage that we ever saw. And, to put it bluntly, it blew our fucking minds. It was the first time we ever rushed to our programs to learn the name of the choreographer and the ballet so that we could remember it later and be sure to see it again.

Choreographer Nacho Duato is special for Rachel Foster, too. She danced in the ensemble when PNB performed this piece 12 years ago, but on her final night as a performer, she chose to learn a new role and dance the final duet.  

Bacchus
Music: Oliver Davis
Choreography: Matthew Neenan

Bacchus premiered at Director’s Choice earlier in the season. Seeing it for the second time around, I was a less put off by the men’s costumes and didn’t waste any energy on metaphors. This time I could just enjoy the dancing as unreservedly as I enjoyed the music the first time I saw it.  

Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in Matthew Neenan’s Bacchus. PNB is performing Bacchus as part of DIRECTOR’S CHOICE, March 15 – 24, 2019. Photo © Angela Sterling.
Matthew Neenan’s Bacchus. Photo © Angela Sterling. c/o Pacific Northwest Ballet

After the Rain pas de deux
Music: Arvo Pärt
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon

I hate crying in public. After the Rain is so beautiful and heartbreaking it’s hard not to cry, though. Especially when it’s a favorite of the ballerina dancing it and it’s the last time she’s dancing it and she made you cry the first time you saw it, too.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Rachel Foster and James Moore in Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain pas de deux, which PNB is presenting as part of LOVE & BALLET, June 1 – 10, 2018. Photo © Angela Sterling.
Rachel Foster and James Moore in Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain Photo © Angela Sterling.

Silent Ghost
Music: Dustin Hamman, King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo

Part of this season’s All Premiere program, Silent Ghost is a few of my favorite things: I love the music and the choreographer. I saw Rachel Foster when it premiered, and she danced in it again at the Season Encore. So even though I love Silent Ghost, mostly what I remember is the endless standing ovation she got for this, the last performance of her PNB career.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Noelani Pantastico and Lucien Postlewaite in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Silent Ghost, which PNB is presenting as part of ALL PREMIERE, November 2 – 11, 2018. Photo © Angela Sterling.
Noelani Pantastico and Lucien Postlewaite in Silent Ghost. Photo © Angela Sterling c/o PNB.

Prodigal Son
Music: Sergei Prokofiev
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Jonathan Poretta chose Prodigal Son as his farewell performance, and no wonder. Remember when I mentioned ballet showcasing male dancers? This biblical tale choreographed in 1929 was one of the only ones available until recent years. Like The Piano Song and Rassemblement, it’s one that redefined ballet for me, and has really stuck with me, even years after seeing it. It was probably Poretta on stage the only other time I saw it, and then as now, I was struck by how ugly it is.

But it’s also captivating in the way that it uses strength and brutish movements to communicate emotions; so different from the sterile pantomime of most biblical retellings. What I didn’t remember was that even this male-focused dance includes one of the most dramatic – and lengthy – en pointe solos in the history of dance. My younger self was also less sensitive to the brutal beating that Poretta’s knees must take as he crawls and stumbles in the role. Yes, that was makeup on his knees, but it would be real blood if I tried it.

The middle of the 20th century was such a retrograde era, those of us born in its wake don’t always realize how much creative exploration really took part in the first part of that century. Prodigal Son (like The Moor’s Pavane) still looks fresh and unexpected, nearly a century later.

Last Bow

For years I’ve said that Director’s Choice is my favorite program of the season. Lately, All Premiere has been pretty special, too. Season Encore doesn’t stand on its own like those two; part of what makes it so wonderful is the shared history among audience and dancers of experiencing all the other programs, in the season that is ending, and for many seasons before. But as family nights go, this one is favorite.


{I attended Season Encore compliments of PNB. Opinions are entirely my own.}

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Published In May 2019

Since I spent a lot of April traveling in Norway, I didn’t pitch as much as usual. But it doesn’t seem to have mattered, since I had ten stories publish in May. In case you missed any of them, here they are. (BTW, this new blog theme doesn’t underline links, and I think the slight difference in text color is too subtle. Until I figure out how to customize link appearance, please note that all titles are linked to the articles.)

Seattle Times

Writing for Seattle Times is still new and exciting for me, so I’ll lead with the pieces I wrote for them. Only a few days after I got back from Norway, I met up with Seattle Times’ drinks columnist to celebrate the Blue Moon Tavern’s 85th birthday. The result was a new addition to the Seattle Times’ Arts Outing series: Opera in a Dive Bar.

I’m so proud of the article about Seattle Symphony’s Lullaby Project, my first real reported piece for Seattle Times. It was an honor and a privilege to hear Shawna’s story and talk to the symphony musicians who have helped women experiencing homelessness write music for their children.

I’ve been reviewing opera performances for years here on the blog. But writing the city newspaper’s review of Seattle Opera’s Carmen feels like writing the official version. I hope I did it justice; writing a professional critique of a performance that I just wanted to squeal in delight over was a challenge.

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ParentMap

I got to write a review for ParentMap in May, too. Seattle Public Theater’s The Call was excellent theater, but its incisive exploration of the complexities of international, transracial adoption hit pretty close to home. I hope I did it justice; writing a professional critique of a performance that sent me home in tears was a challenge.

I love recommending books, and in preparation for summer vacation, I got to write a list pairing Books That Celebrate Summer Adventures with real-life local adventures.

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Earth911

On a related note, I got to do a book list for Earth911. Stop the Summer Eco-Slide lists summer reading books that will get kids excited about nature and the outdoors.

I also got to celebrate the winners of the Green Earth Book Awards, whose winners also aim to inspire the next generation of environmentalists.

Following up on the roofing buyers’ guide I wrote a while back, I reported on the longest-lasting roofing options in Lifetime Roofs. Following up on the dishwasher buyers’ guide, I looked at the Water vs. Energy trade-off.

In what turned out to be the most challenging buyers’ guide to research yet, I pursued The Search for Sustainable Pavers.

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Crooked Road Blog

The quest for meaningful blog data continues. The number of page views jumped 35% over April, but it was only a little bit more than March. So I don’t know. I published 15 posts in May, fewer than either April or March. Here are the most popular posts in May:

  1. Calling Forth the Militia
  2. Commander in Chief Clause
  3. About Me
  4. Stay Safe
  5. Orchestra Link Up

So I guess what I learned is that I should go back to writing about the Constitution and stop writing about music? And promoting posts on Instagram (except for music posts) seems to work.

figure skating in a Chinese mall
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Second Skate

I’ve already shared how a birthday party created a figure skating monster. The monster was fed the following spring when we traveled to China and visited Qingdao’s brand new MixC Mall, which housed an Olympic size rink. While part of the rink was blocked off for a dancing walrus, my daughter taught herself to skate in a pair of rental skates and summer capris. It was her second skate, and my first inkling that figure skating would become a major part of our lives.

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Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo

A lot of people like folk museums for their down-to-earth “what life was like in the old days” approach to history. For me, the old days in question are never old enough. But when you’re traveling with a kid, the hands-on outdoor folk museum is kind of a no-brainer. Plus, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum) in Oslo has a stave church. Since we were on Bygdøy anyway, that was enough to merit a quick visit. Little did I know they’d have to push us out the door at closing time.

The Draw

The Norwegian folk museum is an open-air museum with 160 historic buildings, mostly built in the last 500 years. One exception is the Gol Stave Church, a main attraction at the museum that was built in the village of Gol sometime around 1200. There are also indoor exhibits featuring Norwegian folk costumes, folk art, church art and Sami culture. They offer hands-on activities for children, and docents in period dress demonstrate old skills and explain aspects of life in different epochs. My daughter requested participatory art experiences on our itinerary, and this sounded like the kind of museum where you might get to try working at a loom or braiding rope.

The Reality

The reality of Norway’s hard divide between high season and off season with no shoulder in between meant that there were no costumed docents walking around or doing demonstrations. The majority of the buildings were locked up and only visible from the outside or, if you were tall enough, by peeking through a window. Surprisingly, running around on a sunny spring day peeking into windows had tremendous appeal to my ten-year-old. All the patience she extended to me at the Viking Ship Museum was now repaid, as she attempted to peek into every single one of the 160 historic buildings onsite.

The promised petting zoo of farm animals appeared deserted, and to my eyes, the dozens of elevated, turf-roofed farm buildings quickly blurred together. But my daughter was having a blast, stopping to photograph architectural details on nearly identical buildings and cataloguing the contents observed through dirty windows. We both found the apartment buildings where each unit was decorated in the style of a different decade entertaining. And the stave church, well, it deserves its own subheading. By the time we got to the indoor exhibits there were only a few minutes left to closing. We had to breeze past exhibits on folk art, clothing, and Sami culture. Fortunately these overlapped a lot with exhibits at our own Nordic Heritage Museum back home, so we didn’t miss too much.

Gol Stave Church

You may have noticed that I am irreligious. I have to work at being open-minded enough to stay on the polite side of antireligious. I do appreciate architecture, but churches don’t usually do it for me. (Exceptions include St. Stephen’s in Vienna and the chapel at Seattle U, both of which I can appreciate for purely aesthetic reasons).

I say all this is to set up what a tremendous surprise it was to walk inside the tiny wooden Gol stave church and feel something. Yes, of course it was pretty. But there really was a special atmosphere inside that little 13th century village church. Only one other visitor entered while we were there. She stopped short just inside the door, said, “Wow,” and quickly dropped to the floor to take a picture of the roof.

Medieval cathedrals in mainland Europe awe with their immensity. But this tiny church creates the same sense of smallness inside a vast universe using a very tall, narrow space. It almost felt like standing inside a concentrated column of energy.

Unexpected Highs

One of my favorite things about travel is how you’re guaranteed to have moments you’ll never forget, but they are almost never the ones you planned for. I never expected to have a spiritual moment in a church of all places. And I never thought that running around looking in the windows of old buildings would keep my 10-year-old occupied in sheer delight for a whole afternoon. I can only imagine what highs we might have achieved if all the activities I was expecting had been available. But then again, maybe the magic lay in having acres of old Norway all to ourselves.

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My First NW Terror Fest

I moved to Seattle for the music. But for all its musical history, Seattle has always been a little weak in the heavy metal department. So it was an understatement to say that I was stoked with a new heavy metal festival started up in Seattle presented by No Clean Singing, the blog that has introduced me to most of the metal I’ve discovered in the last five or so years. But times being what they are, life got in the way and I missed the inaugural fest. It happened again the second year. But this year I finally managed to make it to one night at one of the venues. So here is my take on Northwest Terror Fest.

NWTF 101

Northwest Terror Fest is a 3-day extreme metal festival in Seattle. More or less. There are some peripheral sets that extend the duration a bit, and there are always a couple bands on the line up that don’t fit the “extreme” label. They combine some pretty big names like Pig Destroyer and Inter Arma with a bunch of Northwest bands that may be less familiar (even to locals, since there aren’t so many Seattle venues booking metal).

So far, it has always been the last weekend of May at the joint Neumo’s/Barboza venue with a stage in each. You can buy a full festival pass or tickets for individual days/stages. The prices are remarkably cheap, especially for the full festival pass. One of these days, I’ll manage to clear the whole weekend and take advantage of the savings.

What I Saw

This year I was only able to attend on Saturday night, and with funds tight, I only bought tickets to the Barboza Stage. That means I got to see five bands: Shrine of the Serpent, Immortal Bird, Eight Bells, Gadget, and Khorada. As is often the case, I was most excited about the bands earlier in the evening.

Shrine of the Serpent

Shrine of the Serpent out of Portland are crushingly heavy doom. As I wrote last week, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything this heavy capable of maintaining a melody before, which makes Shrine of the Serpent a festival highlight for me. I’ll be listening to them a lot in the weeks to come.

Immortal Bird

Immortal Bird was a grab bag of goodies that take it to eleven. Their tags on Bandcamp include black, death, grindcore, thrash, prog, and sludge, and they are all accurate. The amalgamation isn’t quite cohesive, but it is hella fun. Fronting the band with great stage presence, Rae Amity’s gnarly snarls really transformed it from a set to a show.

Eight Bells

Eight Bells certainly have their extreme moments, but they exist more to punctuate the otherworldly, post-black Portlandness of their spooky, atmospheric ballads. These are the witchy women the Eagles sang about. Anyone who has ever sat in a basement smoking pot, playing D&D, and listening Black Sabbath needs this band. If you think that sounds dismissive, please remember that Conan the Barbarian was my favorite movie when I was twelve. You can’t listen to this music without visions of swordsmen and sorcerers dancing in your head. After the intensity of Immortal Bird, this set was almost a palate cleanser. In daily life, Eight Bells is absolutely my jam.

Gadget

After Eight Bells, we left Barboza to grab tacos down the street. We got back just as Gadget was starting their set, but the crowd had filled in, and we didn’t feel like fighting to get up front. So I enjoyed the madness of Gadget from a comfy seat in the back with a girly drink. These Swedes had a similar approach to Immortal Bird, but where Immortal Bird sometimes stepped back, putting some variety into the dynamics, Gadget turned it up to eleven and broke the knob off.

What I saw during the Gadget set.

Khôrada

Khôrada seemed like a bit of an odd closer for a set of mostly extreme bands. But Khôrada comprises Agalloch members Don Anderson (guitar), Jason Walton (bass) and Aesop Dekker (drums) and Giant Squid guitarist/vocalist Aaron John Gregory. With a pedigree like that, I would have scheduled them to headline, too. Plus, there was a doomy cast to the overall lineup (and for passholders, it was the pause before the storm of Pig Destroyer headlining the upstairs venue) that fit with Khôrada’s gothy melancholy. That dark but not particularly heavy music doesn’t always do it for me, but there are times when it’s all I want to hear.

Unfortunately, Khôrada was having a little bit of trouble with the sound, and we couldn’t hear the vocals for much of the set. Compared to how tight and clear the rest of the sets sounded, it was a little bit of an anti-climactic close to a really great line up. I kind of got the impression that they haven’t quite gelled as a unit yet. I’ll be keeping an eye on them in the future, though. With such high caliber musicians in the group, in a few years I will probably be bragging about having seen them when.

Clockwork and Butter

Neumo’s and Barboza are two of my favorite Seattle venues, even in earlier incarnations. Neumo’s has hosted some of my favorite shows of all time. Barboza is a classic Seattle shoebox, but in a basement. That should make it awful, but somehow it manages a classy, almost speakeasy vibe and always has good sound. The two stages are in the same building, and the NWTF set times are staggered so that passholders never need to choose between shows.

The Barboza lineup started at 5 pm and was done by 10:10, and yes, the set times were that precise. Smooth as butter and regular as clockwork, you’d never know NWTF was run by mostly people new to festival programming. Maybe getting home before 11 isn’t very metal, but personally, I loved being able to see five bands and still get a full night’s sleep.

Quality Humans

For years, I’ve had a fancy set of expensive ear plugs that I keep in my purse at all times. But a while back the drawstring on their little pouch broke, and sometime this winter, one of the ear plugs was lost. We also keep a box of the cheap disposable kind in a cabinet by the door. But I forgot that I emptied the box last year at Pickathon (so many families don’t realize kids need ear protection for amplified music regardless of genre). Which is a long way of saying that for the first time in years, I went to a concert without ear plugs. Late in the evening, a man standing near me tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Do you need ear plugs?” and just handed me a pair. It was a small act of kindness that exemplifies the generally friendlier vibe of NWTF.

Quality Fest

They’ll talk about it when asked, but marketing materials for NWTF never mention feminism. It is a feminist festival, though. Three of the five bands I saw included women (one was female majority). That is a higher proportion of female artists than any other festival I’ve ever attended. I’ve been to festivals that didn’t have any female artists. So I know that the organizers had to work really hard to bring that kind of equality to their stage, and it’s even cooler that that they don’t pat themselves on the back for it. They’re just quality humans doing what everyone should be doing – booking the best bands they can get, which includes making the effort to reach good bands that get overlooked due to structural inequality in the industry.  

One thing they do promote is their anti-harassment policy, posting it on social media and all over the venue. The first time I saw that was as Eistnaflug, the Icelandic metal festival that feels like a family reunion (if you liked your whole family) and I thought it was brilliant. I’m glad to see it’s catching on. I think I’m not the only one, either, as the demographic mix of the audience was a lot more varied than you usually see at a metal show.

{Aside: I don’t mean that the festival drew a bunch of non-metalheads, either. I mean, it’s still a line up of extreme metal bands and you’d have to be buried pretty deep to believe that there even is such a thing as “posers” who pretend to like metal. Heavy metal is still not cool in the mainstream world no matter how many Kardashians wear Slayer shirts on Instagram.}

My Kind of Fest

Pairing the anti-harassment policy with NWTF’s generally loose approach to rules (sure, bring a camera, stage-dive, whatever you want) gave the entire event a very grown-up vibe. You know, fine, if you’re a 21-year-old white dude who knows how to behave, come on in. But for once, here’s a festival for grown-ups who don’t have time for bullshit that distracts from the music, and like the music they like. That music just happens to sound like jackhammers and broken glass. And it is sweet to my ears.

About me, in brief:

I’m a freelance content and grant writer sharing my work and my thoughts about books, music, and travel on this blog. If you want to know how I can help you share the things you care about, read more about me.

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