ByGD
Seattle Dance Collective continues its second season with the third of five pieces, A Headlamp or Two by Beth Terwilleger. On July 16, this unusual dance premiered, like the rest of them, online. But although every piece in the program so far has made good use of location and format to create something different from you would see on a regular season stage, A Headlamp or Two felt like film first and dance second. Which, considering how rarely those two art forms play well together, was lovely.
ByGD
Seattle Dance Collective is back with the second work for its odds-defying second season of five new works. The first of these, Home by Penny Saunders, premiered on July 2. The second one, The Only Thing You See Now by SeaPertls, premiered online July 9. Making the most of both location and format, The Only Thing You See Now perfectly expresses its origin.
ByGD
Against all odds, Seattle Dance Collective is back for a second season with five new works. The first of these, Home by Penny Saunders, premiered on July 2. It was as artistically engaging as its backstory is bizarre. And in contrast to the challenges that had to be overcome to create it, there has never been a ballet with lower barriers for its audience. Home is free to view online.
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ByGD
One of the most frequent – and most valid – arguments against the contemporary relevance of classical art forms like opera and ballet is their heroine problem. Misogyny is an unfortunate and unavoidable conclusion when the canon is littered with stories whose female characters are subjected to the virgin/whore binary and who usually end up dying for love regardless of in which category they are placed.
But then I watched the Met’s stream of Norma – a bel canto exception filled with strong, complicated women. In that opera, Pollione, the male romantic lead, starts out as one of the most obnoxious men in theater, a real dick. But he repents and redeems himself with an act usually reserved for the soprano – dying for love. His character development is so unusual that it got me thinking about men in opera. Women might get short shrift, but men aren’t portrayed very nicely either. Normalizing their bad behavior is another facet of misogyny, but the fact remains – if you believe the classics, men are just dicks.
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ByGD
Little did I suspect when I watched the final performance of Yardbird at Seattle Opera that it would be the last performance anyone saw at McCaw Hall for the foreseeable future. Like many others, I had tickets to see Pacific Northwest Ballet’s new program 1000 Pieces the following weekend. But two days before the program was to premiere, the governor shut down all large gatherings. In the midst of pandemic, it was a minor tragedy, but it wasn’t a total loss. In fact, it turned into a special event, the memory of which I will both cherish and grieve.
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