The ballet has left me breathless before, but breathless and speechless? That’s new. There is so much to say about the current mixed rep at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Emergence, that I’m paralyzed before I begin. The title comes from the final piece in the rep, Crystal Pite’s Emergence. It’s an audience favorite capping off Little Mortal Jump and the Seattle premiere of RakU. I always go on about how Director’s Choice is the best rep of the season, but this one is so powerful. I wanted to go to the artist Q&A after the performance, but I was too wiped out and had to go straight home. Emergence left me exhausted and wrung out, like I had been through something. But in a good way. Mostly. Anyway, it felt more like an experience than a performance.

The Dances

I’m ashamed to say that I had already seen Little Mortal Jump because when I saw it this time, I realized how much had gone over my head the first time. I had remembered the wry beginning and fun Velcro boxes while completely forgetting how emotionally powerful it is. The movement is so unique and interesting that it’s easy to zone out and just watch thoughtlessly. So you never notice when the mood changes and becomes mortally important.

RakU is also emotionally intense, but in a trigger-warning sort of way. It’s a historical fiction inspired by the burning of Kinkakuji. I have so many thoughts. The music was beautiful, and principal Noelani Pantastico fully deserved the standing ovation for her performance. I cautiously approve of the ballet’s attempt to address sexual assault and thought that most difficult aspect of the piece was properly handled. But white guys just need to stop with the Madame Butterfly tropes. Puccini can be forgiven for some of the errors of his generation. In the 21^st century, Possokhov cannot.

Ugh. I just love Emergence so much. The industrial electronic score, the topless tattooed dancers, the faintly ominous atmospherics. Everything about this ballet is on my list of favorite things. When I saw it the first time it immediately jumped onto my top favorite ballets of all time list (with Mopey, and later, Romeo et Juliette). Without diminishing my love for this ballet at all, the energy of the piece felt very different to me this time. Probably because of context.

Ballet in Context

I remembered Little Mortal Jump as lighthearted and witty. It starts that way, but by the end it’s something much deeper. I couldn’t extract any literal story from it, but it felt (I hate to use the word) existential. The title evokes orgasm, le petite morte, but the movement seems to be much more literally concerned with life and death. It left me breathless and ashamed that I had forgotten its power.

RakU. Well, if Mishima wrote about it, you know it’s sordid. And compared to the purity of Little Mortal Jump, the twisted wrongness of RakU was genuinely disturbing. Partly that is intentional – it’s a story about rape and suicide. But part of the squirminess came from feeling complicit in cultural appropriation and the all-too-familiar feeling that a story purportedly about a woman’s tragedy was actually for men’s benefit.

I remembered Emergence as humid and claustrophobic. I remembered the skin-crawling dis-ease that comes from weird almost digital movement of segmented bodies and swarming insects. But following RakU, where the worst elements of human nature run free, Emergence was almost calming. There was comfort in the scores repeating patterns and harmony in the dancers’ unison. I remembered the creeping terror of conformity as the dancers counted time; this time I constant cooperative effort required to build order.

Linked Pieces

I don’t usually give a lot of thought to why particular pieces end up on the same bill. Often a theme is presented, like female choreographers in Her Story, or an all-Balanchine night. Other times, I can see the common pattern of “start with something conventionally pretty, follow with something that challenges the audience, finish with something very famous and well-loved.”

The “theme” in this rep was more subtle and exquisite. Maybe I’m just proud of myself for seeing a little deeper into the program than usual. These three ballets have little in common on the surface. All three are contemporary ballets by well-respected choreographers. Put together, the rep says, “We are a world class ballet company with sophisticated and mature audiences who don’t want to be spoon-fed stale dance.”

But on the surface, they seem pretty different from one another. Alejandro Cerrudo’s abstract ballet used a mix tape of contemporary popular and classical music and a vaudeville look. For his historical drama, Yuri Possokov commissioned a classical score inspired by Japanese traditions from composer Shinji Eshima. Costumes were a sort of International Male interpretation of traditional kimono and hakama. Crystal Pite used an industrial electronic score supplemented with recordings of bees. Bizarrely, the dancers were sexy in black and flesh tones while disconcertingly also looking like bugs (bare abs/masked faces).

But the first two pieces both used giant, portable boxes to dominate the sets. All three pieces used stark lighting to sometimes create silhouettes and sometimes obscure the action on stage. Several somewhat unusual movements were echoed in all three pieces – like placing hands on the head to guide movement, and lifts from behind supported under the shoulders.

Conclusion

Go see Emergence. It is a powerful program. You might love all of it. You could hate all of it. But you cannot possibly be indifferent to these three ballets.

Tickets

Remaining performances:

April 19–21 at 7:30 pm

April 22 at 1:00 pm

Tickets ($37-$187) may be purchased online. Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to each performance at McCaw Hall – these tickets are half-price for students and seniors; $5 for TeenTix members.

Just the Facts

Little mortal jump

Music: Beirut; Andrew Bird; Alexandre Desplat; Philip Glass; Max Richter; Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo
Staging: Pablo Piantino
Scenic Design: Alejandro Cerrudo
Costume Design: Branimira Ivanova
Lighting Design: Michael Korsch
Running Time: 26 minutes
Premiere: March 15, 2012; Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
PNB Premiere: March 18, 2016

RAkU

(PNB Premiere)
Music: Shinji Eshima (2011)
Libretto: Gary Wang
Choreography: Yuri Possokhov
Staging: Quinn Wharton
Scenic and Projection Design: Alexander V. Nichols
Costume Design: Mark Zappone
Lighting Design: Christopher Dennis
Running Time: 36 minutes
Premiere: February 3, 2011; San Francisco Ballet

Emergence

Music: Owen Belton (2009)
Choreography: Crystal Pite
Staging: Hope Muir
Scenic Design: Jay Gower Taylor
Costume Design: Linda Chow
Lighting Design: Alan Brodie
Running Time: 28 minutes
Premiere: March 4, 2009; National Ballet of Canada (Toronto)
PNB Premiere: November 8, 2013