Category Archive Seattle

  • Home   /  
  • Archive by category "Seattle"
    • ( Page16 ) ( Page16 )
ByGD
, , , , , , , , , ,

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.}

ByGD
, , , , , ,

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.

ByGD
, , , , ,

Balanchine’s Theme and Variations at PNB

The final program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s regular season is Themes & Variations, a mixed rep of four ballets that finishes with the title piece, George Balanchine’s Theme & Variations. It’s common for PNB to end a mixed rep program with a very traditional Balanchine piece. Balanchine is the foundation of this company, and his more classical pieces are sure to satisfy audiences at the end of an eclectic program, especially one that contains works like The Moor’s Pavane that aren’t for everyone. Theme & Variations is what people think of when they think of ballet.

True Tutu Ballet

Even if you’ve never seen it before, you can tell from the title that it will be a classical tutu ballet with taxing, academic choreography. It’s what nonballet-types are afraid they’ll end up watching if they go, and the sort of thing that beginner balletomanes yearn for as “true ballet.” For the longest time, I had the sophomoric impression that this sort of ballet was like being tricked into watching the dancers practice a set of drills. Lots of technique, but very little choreography – and therefore, kind of boring.

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

True Skill

I hesitate to say I’ve graduated into some sort of ballet expertise (because I’m sure I’d be wrong). But for the first time in a long time, I was really able to appreciate the structured choreography of a classical ballet for the way it highlighted the dancers’ abilities. The fluid movement of contemporary dance draws attention away from the effort required to perform it. Those dances ask you to think about other things, and any number of mistakes can be made to look intentional. But classical ballet is naked in its predictability, and, like the X-Games of dance, it invites us to marvel at the dancers’ mastery.   

True Beauty

And marvel I did. A lot of the time, classical ballet is more about lines and shapes than combinations of movement. When you allow yourself to focus on the images, there is exquisite beauty in the sculptural poses the dancers hold and in the patterns in which they are arranged on the stage.

If I could stand in Mountain Pose with as much stability as Lesley Rausch does vertical splits on pointe, my yoga teacher would be so proud. Jerome Tisserand seemed almost to disappear when partnering, only to burst into view with bold straight lines and powerful spins when it was his own turn to shine. The corps de ballet, even with the new variation in heights and body types that PNB used to avoid, all molded themselves into synchronous uniformity, fluttering on pointe for ages. Individual expression is very important, but there’s also something very stirring in military precision.

And sometimes, it’s comforting to know what should come next and to trust that the dancers can deliver it.  

Theme and Variations

Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Suite No. 3 in G Major, 1884; last movement)
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust
Staging: Judith Fugate
Scenic Design: Charlene Hall
Costume Design: Mark Zappone
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Running Time: 26 minutes
Premiere: November 26, 1947, Ballet Theatre (New York)
PNB Premiere: October 16, 1985

Cast I Saw

Lesley Rausch
Jerome Tisserand

Both were performing the role for the first time.

Details

Remaining performances: June 7 – 8 at 7:30 pm and June 9 at 1:00 pm

 Tickets ($30-$187) are on sale through the PNB Box Office:

·         Phone – 206.441.2424
·         In Person – 301 Mercer Street at Seattle Center
·         Online – PNB.org

Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to show times at McCaw Hall.

{I attended Theme & Variations courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. The tickets were theirs, but the opinions are mine.}

ByGD
, , , , , , , ,

Tarantella and the Moor’s Pavane

The final program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2018/2019 season is Themes and Variations, a mixed repertory of four short ballets broken up by two intermissions. In writing, people often talk about the messy middle. You know what you need to make a strong beginning and a dramatic ending, but how do you connect the two? In Themes and Variations, that’s not a problem. Seeming unrelated at first glance, Tarantella and The Moor’s Pavane are the two strong links connecting Price Suddarth’s Signature to Balanchine’s Theme & Variations.

Tarantella

Music: Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Grande Tarantelle, Op. 67, c.1866), reconstructed and orchestrated by Hershy Kay
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust
Staging: Peter Boal
Costume Design: Mark Zappone
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Running Time: 8 minutes
Premiere: January 7, 1964, New York City Ballet
PNB Premiere: January 31, 1985

As I wrote before, I’m a little prejudiced against folk dance in ballet, even though it’s ubiquitous and I love high/low juxtapositions in other contexts. So Tarantella is never going to be my favorite ballet. But in this program, it’s a fun follow up to the more elegant celebration in Signature, and a good way to transition from that dance’s expressive movements to the more academic styles that will follow. And for the record, everyone else loves Tarantella – my 15-year-old especially, but also the rest of the dance world.

The Music

There’s some history to the music. According to the program, Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle, written about 100 years before the ballet’s premiere, was probably the first work for piano and orchestra ever written in the U.S.  In an interesting twist, the New Orleans-born composer did most of his work outside of the U.S., while the choreographer who used his music came from Russia to compose quintessentially American ballets.

The Characters

Without going so far as to tell a story, there’s a sort of premise about Tarantella that the two dancers are street performers from the region of Naples, drawing a crowd with their dancing chops. Like street performers, the dancers have to have big personalities, with as much humor and charm as dancing skill. Balanchine supposedly wrote this ballet for specific dancers. I don’t know who they were, but if the dance wasn’t dated 1964, I could easily believe he wrote Tarantella for Angelica Generosa and Kyle Davis, who performed it on the day I attended.

Angelica Generosa and Kyle Davis in Tarantella, by George Balanchine, Photo © Angela Sterling c/o PNB.

Virtuosic Camp

So I love this Balanchine quote from the program:

It [the music] is a dazzling display piece, full of speed and high spirits. So, I hope, is the dance, which is ‘Neapolitan,’ if you like, and ‘demi-caractèr’. The costumes are inspired by Italy, anyhow, and there are tambourines.”

George Balanchine, Balanchine’s Stories of the Great Ballets

Throw in a bit with a dog and you’ve got a hit, right? Anyhow, Tarantella is classic Balanchine – virtuosic technique with a dash of sass. If you’ve ever wanted to see a ballerina en pointe, hitting a tambourine with her other heel, now is your chance. You can watch it ironically if you want, but it’s all in good fun.

The Moor’s Pavane

(Variations on the theme of Othello)

Music: Henry Purcell (The Gordian Knot Untied, Abdelazer, or The Moor’s Revenge), arranged by Simon Sadoff
Choreography: José Limón
Direction and Staging: Alice Condodina
Costume Design: Pauline Lawrence
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Running Time: 24 minutes
Premiere: August 17, 1949, José Limón Dance Company
PNB Premiere: November 12, 1986

No humor here, even though it looks kind of funny at first. It’s quite the counterpoint to the Tarantella, which is fitting, I guess, because the choreography is all about equal and opposite reactions. A distillation of Othello told through the courtly dance (hence, pavane) and the choreographer’s own “Limón technique,” it really doesn’t look like anything else you’ll see on a ballet stage. It might sound pretentious to say so, but if Balanchine’s choreography bookending it was academic, The Moor’s Pavane was intellectual.

(L-R) Lindsi Dec, Steven Loch, Joshua Grant, and Elizabeth Murphy The Moor’s Pavane, Photo © Angela Sterling c/o PNB

Then and Now

Even though I love Shakespeare adaptations and I’m usually all about the new and unusual in dance, I really didn’t like Moor’s Pavane the first time I saw it. I don’t remember who the dancers were, but “His Friend” (the Iago to “The Moor’s” Othello) was genuinely creepy. And I found the gravity-driven movement off-putting.

Today I have very little patience for tragedies about men driven to jealous murder, especially when they hinge on the irony of false accusations (because murder is okay if she’s guilty?!) Those stories can only succeed when you accept the underlying assumption that women are cherished material objects rather than, you know, actual human beings with agency and a right to live.

But I have a lot more patience for learning about dance that doesn’t fit my expectations than I used to. Even learning a little bit about the Limón technique helped me make sense of the dance. And the weird movements, alternately jerky and pendulous, reminded me of medieval puppet shows (much like the one in Hamlet). Even though the ballet was written in 1949, the elaborate costumes, 17th century music, and puppet-like quality of the music dovetailed into a beautifully coherent interpretation of a centuries-old story that, for better or for worse, still has modern relevance.

Cast I Saw

The Moor                         Joshua Grant
His Friend                         Steven Loch
His Friend’s Wife             Lindsi Dec
The Moor’s Wife             Elizabeth Murphy

All four dancers were performing these roles for the first time.  

Details

Remaining performances: June 6 – 8 at 7:30 pm and June 9 at 1:00 pm

Tickets ($30-$187) are on sale online, by phone – 206.441.2424, or in person at 301 Mercer Street at Seattle Center. Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to show times at McCaw Hall.

{I attended Themes & Variations courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. The tickets were theirs, but the opinions are mine.}

ByGD
, , , ,

Signature at PNB’s Themes & Variations

As I mentioned in my summary post, I have seen Signature before. But that time I was looking forward to seeing something else, and didn’t give it quite the attention it deserves. This time, I think it was my favorite piece in the mixed rep program that ends PNB’s 2018/2019 season, Themes & Variations.

Unexpected Directions

Signature starts with the lights down low – literally. The lighting truss was dropped down so low that it framed the stage. Eventually the frame expanded, and the lights became brighter. But by that time your attention was already focused on the dancers in practical blue and olive body suits. It was a simple thing, but unexpected, much like the rest of Signature.

Choreographed by PNB soloist Price Suddarth in 2015, Signature used a very familiar vocabulary. Except for some pointy snowflake lifts in the middle part, all of the movement was standard ballet. But every movement was different from what you expected to come next. That sense of constant mild surprise was like the fizz in a summer drink, giving the performance a delightful sense of lightness. To me, the unpredictability elevated Signature from merely pretty to something more substantial even as it injected humor.

Something Unique

Suddarth’s notes say the intent of the piece is to explore the value inherent in each of us as unique individuals, even when we struggle to identify anything in particular that is special about any one of us.

“The most beautiful thing we each have to offer is that we are 100% irreplaceable, distinctively singular, and utterly unmatched.”

Price Suddarth, program notes

That idea is perfectly captured in the unusual combinations of familiar movements in Signature.

In contemporary ballet, you often have a small cast where each dancer is doing their own thing. In Signature, you still have groups of people performing the same steps en masse. But compared to more traditional pieces (like Sleeping Beauty earlier in the season or Theme and Variations later in the program) the dancers in Signature are all doing the same thing in their own way. That looseness reminded me of the dancers I saw in Oslo. But coming from a company that excels in the military precision of classical ballet, those little variations in arm position felt like strong statements – signature moves, even.

Lasting Impressions

I have already said a bit about the music in a previous post, but it bears repeating here. VVLD, the Vivaldi-inspired double violin concerto with orchestra that local composer Barret Anspach wrote for the ballet was some of the best music I’ve heard in a while. Ballet music can disappear behind the dancers sometimes, but VVLD was like an extra dancer. Drawing attention to its own beauty without detracting from the dancers’, it contributed a lot to the celebratory feeling of the piece.

Elizabeth Murphy and Jerome Tisserand in Price Suddarth’s Signature, Photo © Angela Sterling c/o PNB.

I also mentioned in a previous post that I came into this program tired from a super stressful week. Getting too tired always starts the negative self-talk loop in my brain, so this lighthearted affirmation that you don’t have to be special to be unique was a timely breath of fresh air. But it was a joy to watch even if you weren’t in need of a pick-me-up.  

Changing Impressions

Finally, I have one observation that I haven’t previously shared. For years there were a handful of dances that I would never miss. But I mostly sought out novelty and skipped familiar programs. Cost was a factor, and when you just can’t afford to attend everything, it often makes sense to prioritize new work. But whenever you can, it’s so worth seeing things again. Your mood and energy level are different every time you see a ballet. Your knowledge of dance continues to grow. There are different dancers every time a piece is staged, and they each bring unique talents and interpretations to a piece – even when that’s not what the piece is about. You never know when your favorite ballet might turn out to be something you thought was okay a couple seasons ago.

Details

Remaining performances: June 6 – 8 at 7:30 pm and June 9 at 1:00 pm

Tickets ($30-$187) are on sale online, by phone – 206.441.2424, or in person at 301 Mercer Street at Seattle Center. Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to show times at McCaw Hall.

Music: Barret Anspach (VVLD, 2015)
Choreography: Price Suddarth
Costume Design: Mark Zappone
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Running Time: 30 minutes
Premiere: November 6, 2015, Pacific Northwest Ballet

Cast I Saw

There was a cascade of substitutions in the casting on opening night. I’m not even going to try to list the dancers because I know I’ll get it wrong.

{I attended Theme & Variations program courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. The tickets were theirs, but the opinions are mine.}



Publications

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 430 other subscribers

Categories

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Appointee by Webriti