Jerome Robbins Festival at Pacific Northwest Ballet

If you’ve been to the ballet more than a few times, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen something by Jerome Robbins. Pacific Northwest Ballet has 12 of his ballets in their repertory (New York City Ballet has sixty). This year PNB is celebrating the 100^th anniversary of his birth by kicking off their 2018 season with a Jerome Robbins Festival. For balletomanes, this is a major opportunity to see some of the most beloved works of a man who made modern ballet what it is. But why would normal people bother to see two whole programs by someone they’ve never heard of?

First, What’s a Robbins Festival?

The Jerome Robbins Festival opens Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2018-2019 season, but it is a little different from a regular season program. In fact, it’s two separate programs using seven Robbins’ pieces. Tickets for the two programs are sold separately. Between September 21 and 29, each program is performed in both matinée and evening time slots. If you want to see both, either go on both Friday and Saturday night or spend all day Saturday at McCaw Hall to see both the matinée and the evening performance. It’s a lot of ballet to take in at once, but it’s worth it, even if you’re not an uberfan.

What’s in it for Me?

If your knowledge of ballet ends at the Nutcracker, back to back programs might be too much. But either of the Robbins programs is a perfect starting point for ballet. Jerome Robbins is one of the most prolific 20^th century ballet choreographers. He also choreographed and directed in musical theater and cinema, which arguably makes his work more accessible to newbie audiences. There is no question that his style of dance is representative of American ballet. If you want to know what people mean when they say “ballet,” watch something by Robbins.

If you’re a regular at the ballet, but not a hardcore fan, it’s worth buckling in for the whole festival. You’ve probably seen some of these pieces before, and you’re sure to have other chances to see them again. But seeing them all together is a different, and more informative experience. After all, you can only see patterns when they are repeated.

If I hadn’t watched seven Robbins’ ballets in the same day, I would not have been able to see for myself Robbins’ interest in the individual and the relationships between individuals. Seeing so many of his works all once, I could see the recurring themes.

About Those Themes

Even though Robbins is universally remembered as a sort of tyrant who tortured dancers into the perfect form of his vision, that vision always treated every dancer as an individual character. In comparison to classical ballet (rows of identical tutus) or even most modern ballet (pairs in matching or complementary colors) every one of Robbins’ dancers wears a unique color. Even when everyone is dressed the same, dancers are marked as individual characters through props or styles of movement.

The ballets rarely had plots, but they always had stories, because story is inevitable when characters interact. Often the story was a love story, because it is ballet after all, but Robbins really paid attention to awkwardness and conflict. His characters spend a lot of time figuring out how to adapt to each other. Sometimes this is comedic, as in The Concert, and sometimes it’s a little heartbreaking, like the In the Night couple that just can’t make things work.

Jerome Robbins is the quintessential American choreographer because his dances perfectly encapsulate the American experience. We are a nation concerned primarily with the individual. But all these individuals must exist within a larger group. Whether he was using romantic couples or racial groups, Robbins entire oeuvre explores the triangular conflict of individuality, conformity, and community. But it would be easy to miss the point if you only saw individual dances separated from the larger group that makes up his body of work.

Which Program Should I See?

Program A

(Sept. 29 evening is the only remaining performance.)

• Circus Polka
• In the Night
• Afternoon of a Faun
• Other Dances
• West Side Story Suite

Program B

(Remaining performances are on Sept. 27 and 28 in the evening, and Sept. 29 matinée.)

• Circus Polka
• Dances at a Gathering
• The Concert

I believe both programs is the best way to go. But I get it. Four and a half hours is a lot of ballet for one weekend. So if you can only see one of them, which program should you see?

Both programs include Circus Polka, but it’s only three minutes long. There’s a lot of Chopin piano in both programs, so the music isn’t really a deciding factor.

I felt like Program A was more accessible. It has more variety because it includes more dances, but it’s only a few minutes longer than Program B. Afternoon of a Faun is kind of sexy, while still managing a bit of pointed cultural criticism, and West Side Story is not even really ballet. It’s musical theater and you already know it.

But to me, Program B was the more satisfying of the two. Robbins did stretch things out sometimes, and he did it on purpose. He wanted people to linger on feelings and to sit with the discomfort of the pauses between the action. Dances at a Gathering is really long. But with “better” pacing, the audience would not breathe the audible sigh of relief when the number of dancers on stage finally allows everyone to partner up.

That sigh is a release, but the real reward for your patience comes from The Concert. Sense of humor is a very individual thing, which means that throughout the half-hour performance of The Concert, someone was always laughing out loud. Once, the woman behind me actually snorted. I have never seen as wonderful a celebration of social awkwardness and individual imagination in any medium as this ballet. I might not have ever seen those two things celebrated in the same work (okay, maybe Walter Mitty, but this is much better).

So which program should people see? The answer depends on the individual, and how much work they are willing to put in to being a part of the whole.

Get your tickets here.

{I attended Jerome Robbins Festival courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Opinions, as always, are my own.}