ByGD
The fourth program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s digital season, appropriately titled Rep 4 – launched? opened? posted? Premiered? – on Thursday, but I couldn’t watch it until Friday. It’s only available until Monday. So since time is short, I’ll try to keep my comments short. Rep 4 is a mixed rep program comprising world premieres by two of my favorite choreographers, and archival video of a third piece that PNB performed in 2017. I have mixed feelings about it.
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ByGD
As if I needed another reason to love my favorite local arts institutions, the way groups like Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet have responded to the pandemic has been amazing. Not only have they managed to survive without their normal revenue streams in a time when live theater performances are banned, but they have produced new, creative work that would not have been possible – even conceivable – in normal times. The most recent example is Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Intermission Project, a midseason collection of short filmed ballets.
ByGD
If true love is the one that makes you throw away your own rules, it must hold true for art as well as relationships. Story ballets are supposed to be the easy one to get into, but to be honest, they’ve never really been my thing. And yet, Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Romeo et Juliette is one of my favorite ballets and one of my favorite adaptations of the Bard’s much misunderstood tragedy.
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ByGD
Chapter One. Down the Rabbit Hole. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting and of having nothing to do.
That’s the very familiar beginning to a very new artwork. Because while many of us have been sitting around with nothing to do most of this year, local dancers have been hard at work. Seattle Dance Collective and Pacific Northwest Ballet have both created some of my favorite dances during the pandemic, and last week they added one more: ALICE.
ByGD
I almost didn’t watch Rep 2, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s second program of the 2020-2021 digital season. It wasn’t because I didn’t like Rep 1 – quite the opposite. It’s just that Thursday was one of those days when most of what I tried to do didn’t get accomplished and everything I did accomplish took twice as much time and effort as it should have. Maybe it was the crash following a post-election high, but all I wanted to do was go to bed early after watching a feel-good K-drama with a too-tall pour of rye. But I remembered how good Rep 1 was. So I tuned in to the ballet instead and was reminded once again that art is more uplifting than escapist television – even when it’s on the tv.
