Cacti at Pacific Northwest Ballet

All Premiere, the second program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2018-2019 season, is an annual tradition that features some of the most interesting and innovative dance in the ballet world. I’ve already talked about A Dark and Lonely Space, which surprised me with its – literally – cosmic scope, and about the ballet I was most looking forward to, Silent Ghost by Alejandro Cerrudo. The final piece in the program was Cacti, a comic ballet that provides an ironic perspective on the arts world.

Comic Ballet

People don’t often think of ballet as a vehicle for comedy. Lots of ballet draws from and references the comedia dell’arte tradition, usually making it feel more academic and historical than actually funny. But dance is fully capable of expressing the full range of human experience. Alejandro Cerrudo’s Little Mortal Jump makes a lot of people cry, but there is still a lot of humor in it. After all, dancers get stuck to Velcro walls, and free themselves by shrugging off their clothes. Jerome Robbins was often witty in his ballets. The Concert (or the Perils of Everybody) is as close to Monty Python at their best as it is to ballet. Audience members laugh so hard at that one it can be hard to hear the music. Because when choreographers do crack a joke, it’s even more effective for being so unexpected. It’s that puffed up expectation of artistic seriousness that Alexander Ekman pops with the spines of Cacti.

The Joke

Like The Concert, Cacti pokes fun at human foibles in the art world. In particular, he targets the pretentious way people interact with art. Sometimes I felt like the audience laughed a little too hard – everyone wanted it known that they got the joke. Even if it wasn’t that funny, Cacti was funny. A recorded “review” plays during the first part of the dance. The reviewer spouts a bunch of pseudointellectual nonsense and oxymorons that would be at home in Dio’s lyrics but that seem almost unrelated to the dance itself. Having heard what the dance is supposed to mean, the audience is then given access to the dancers’ own thoughts and conversation during the performance. They try to remember what’s next, worry about dropping each other, and negotiate the terms of a breakup.

The Dance

Ekman extends the joke into the dance itself, stuffing it with contemporary dance clichés like audible breathing and using the body for percussion; running in place; awkward still poses under stark spotlights; nude-looking costumes; and mystifying props. It’s funny, but the problem with a dance full of clichés, is that it’s full of clichés. After the third or fourth time you think, “Oh my god, choreographers do that all the time, don’t they?” you are kind of ready to see something interesting. There are some interesting and beautiful moments tucked into the jokes. The dancers worshipping a column of light are beautiful even as you’re made self-conscious for thinking so; some of the silly synchronized movements around the platforms-cum-screens are truly impressive – and that’s really where the technique comes in on this one.

In all comedy, the trick is timing. Cacti is a Rube Goldberg sort of ballet with a lot of moving parts. The dancers are tightly synchronized and they have to keep time with both the recorded narrative and the music. Sometimes that music is the orchestra, and sometimes it’s a string quartet that walks around the stage interacting with the dancers or just getting in their way. Cacti references a lot of ballets, but since it’s an extended joke, catching the references can be as awkward as satisfying. When you see something familiar, you can’t help but think, “Wait, I loved that ballet! Was it really that pretentious?” The exception is that the incredible timing of Cacti echoed In the middle, somewhat elevated, which is a technical feat no one can make fun of.

Music

About that quartet. The music is so good, and it makes me wish I knew classical music the way I know popular music. There was Schubert and Haydn and Beethoven, and I know that selection was significant, but I don’t quite get the joke. One of their pieces had a mean violin solo that would hold up against any heavy metal guitar. And like a good rock band, the quartet is not just playing their instruments, they are also putting on a show. They move around the stage and interact with the dancers. And the best part is, they’re not rock star soloists brought in as guests. These four are part of the regular PNB Orchestra.

Michael Jinsoo-Lim is PNB’s concertmaster; Jennifer Caine Provine is the assistant concertmaster; Alexander Grimes is the principal viola and Page Smith is the principal cello. Each of them has musical credits worthy of being the flown-in guest artist (seriously, google them) except that they all in-house performers already. The orchestra usually gets a nod, in the sense that everyone acknowledges live music as one of the strengths of PNB. But we sit there watching the dancers and evaluating their technique while we just assume the orchestra will get it right. We can make that assumption because our musicians can really shred.

But the Cacti

Okay, back to the props for a minute. The recorded voice of the reviewer makes a big deal about them. It’s kind of hard not to. Dance does not require props, so when they are used, it’s natural to assume that they are significant. They can also be really distracting, but in Cacti, some of the most interesting movements are the interactions with the props. Some of the best jokes are there, too.

The recorded voice describes the symbolism of the boxes but then proclaims, “the beating heart of the work is the cacti.”

The program booklet contains an advisory for profanity. I didn’t notice any in the recording (although I may have missed it) but there was a suggestively placed cactus. Because if it was good enough for Shakespeare, why should the ballet pass up the opportunity for a good dick joke?

via GIPHY

Tickets

The remaining performances are:

November 9 – 10 at 7:30 pm

November 11 at 1:00 pm

Tickets may be purchased online. Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to each performance at McCaw Hall – these “at the door” tickets are half-price for students and seniors; $5 for TeenTix members. If you are between ages 20-40, sign up for ThePointe to receive discounts.

Cacti
(PNB Premiere)

Music: Franz Joseph Haydn (Sonate no V “Sitio” from Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze, Hoboken XX, 1B, 1786-1787; Allegro from string quartets Opus 9, no 6 in A major, 1769), Ludwig van Beethoven (String quartet no. 9 in C major, Op. 59, 1808, from Andante con moto quasi allegretto), Franz Schubert (Presto from string quartet Der Tod und das Mädchen, 1824, arranged for orchestra by Andy Stein)
Text: Spenser Theberge
Choreography: Alexander Ekman
Staging: Ana Lucaciu
Scenic and Costume Design: Alexander Ekman
Lighting Design: Tom Visser
Running Time: 27 minutes
Premiere: February 25, 2010, Nederlands Dans Theater 2
Cast I Saw:
Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan*
Christian Poppe*
Genevieve Waldorf*
Elizabeth Murphy*
Cecilia Iliesiu*
Elle Macy*
Amanda Morgan*
Sarah Pasch*
Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan*
Leah Terada*

James Moore*
Benjamin Griffiths*
Lucien Postlewaite*
Steven Loch*
Christopher D’Ariano*
Miles Pertl*
Christian Poppe*
Ezra Thomson*

{I attended All Premiere courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Opinions, as always, are my own.}