Giuseppe Altomare makes his Seattle Opera debut as the title character in Rigoletto.
Sunny Martini photo c/o Seattle Opera
Some people dislike modern productions of old operas. These are often the same folks who think Shakespeare should always be performed in Elizabethan costume (but curiously, not by men in drag). Personally, I don’t agree. I mean, I can understand the appeal of a period piece. I adore reconstructions of historical costumes, houses, and technology where every last detail is true to the original. But the appeal is usually more intellectual than emotional. Dressing a story in historical costumes and sets doesn’t necessarily distance viewers from the humanity in the story, but it often does. And rigid conformity with past practice is literally the opposite of art. Plus, the original productions were usually anachronistic themselves. How a director chooses to frame a production is an artistic choice that can fundamentally alter viewers’ understanding of the story.
Pacific Northwest Ballet is starting the season with a powerful pair of 20th century ballets: George Balanchine’s Agon and Kent Stowell’s Carmina Burana. In many ways, Agon is the better ballet, but Carmina Burana is the audience favorite. It’s only natural – Carmina Burana is an irresistible combination of passion and spectacle.
Pacific Northwest Ballet is starting their 2019/2020 season
with a powerful pair of 20th century ballets: George Balanchine’s Agon
and Kent Stowell’s Carmina Burana. Paired with crowd-pleaser Carmina
Burana, Agon tends to be a bit overlooked. But as any reader of
fiction knows, it’s never a good idea to overlook the quiet ones.
Pure Dance
As I mentioned before Agon is a dancers’ dance. It’s contemporary ballet stripped down to the essentials. There is no sense of narrative or even character. The dancers wear black leotards with white tights or white ones with black pants. There are no sets and even the lighting is straightforward.
With nothing else going on, you are forced to concentrate on
the movement, which does not lend itself to interpretation. Agon is
really about geometry – dancers move through lines and angles ending in interesting
shapes at pauses in the music. It’s like the world’s most beautiful math class.
Agon gives us surprise and asymmetry rather where classical ballet
offers harmonious balance and satisfied expectations.
Challenging Music
Stravinsky said he was inspired by a 17th century manual of French court dances when he wrote the music for Agon. I will have to take his word for it, because I can’t find the sonic connection. The program booklet describes the score as a
…fiendishly – and to him [Balanchine], delectably – difficult score
-Jeanie Thomas, PNB program
I’m not sure about delectable, but it is certainly difficult
for the listener. I’m open-minded – I don’t think music has to be pretty. In
fact, I’m listening to the new Blood Red Throne as I
write this. Even so, I would have to say the music of Agon is rather
more grating than challenging.
I would never listen to this without the accompanying ballet.
But that’s okay, because the two were (literally) made for each other, and the
score would be pointless without the ballet. When people first start watching
ballet, they often expect each physical movement to tightly bound to each
musical note, as if the dance were the literal physical translation of the music
into movement. As much as it is physically possible to do so, Agon
actually does this. It’s like the section of Fantasia where the oboe is
a squiggly, pink line.
Intellectual Humor
So, yeah, Agon is a ballet more for the head than the
heart. But surprisingly, it also has a lot of humor. Scattered throughout all
the dramatic and elegant shapes are movements that are just – silly. Granted,
the opening night audience was pretty high-energy (Artistic Director Peter Boal
even commented “We got the party crowd tonight” when he came out on stage to address
the audience) but chuckles rippled through the audience several times during Agon.
Sometimes they were in response to funny movements like prissy little hand waves
while walking en pointe. But sometimes the laughter expressed sheer delight and
surprise, like when Lesley Rausch moved from a classic ended up in this iconic
pose in a movement so quick audiences could hardly see how she got there.
Pacific Northwest Ballet is starting their 2019/2020 season (their
47th, for anyone keeping track) with a powerful pair of 20th
century ballets: George Balanchine’s Agon and Kent Stowell’s Carmina
Burana. Both ballets had their PNB premiere in 1993 (the same year I
started attending regularly) but otherwise, they could hardly be more different.
On September 20, youth around the world went on strike, skipping school to march and demonstrate, demanding that adults start acting like grownups and take meaningful action to deal with the climate crisis. Among them were my youngest daughter and some of her friends.
As a 10-year-old, my daughter only recently learned about the climate crisis. Last summer, she accompanied me on two interviews with local youth climate activists. While I got information for my articles about Fridays For Future and other local groups, she learned about climate change as a problem that kids are active in solving.
In anticipation of the Global Climate Strike, she prepared a presentation for her classmates. I thought it was pretty good. I was especially impressed that she did not piggyback on the information from the interviews she heard, but built her powerpoint on her own research. So I thought I’d share it here.
