Locally Sourced at Pacific NW Ballet

The second program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s season is Locally Sourced, a mixed rep comprising three world premieres by local choreographers. The title Locally Sourced is a gift to bloggers. It begs for restaurant metaphors and punny references to house-made ingredients and sound-to-stage production. But I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately and can’t generate my usual enthusiasm for a writerly gimmick. Fortunately, enthusiasm for the actual program is in abundant supply. Locally Sourced was a high point in an otherwise bleak week.

Locally Sourced

All three ballets were choreographed by local artists: Eva Stone, Donald Byrd, and Miles Pertl. I was pleased to see that the only white male in the group was a Seattle native and member of PNB’s corps de ballet – a house-made talent, if you will. The local bench is deep, too, with local artists credited for much of the scenic and lighting design, costumes, and music.

There was even a big art exhibition staged in the lobby of McCaw Hall showcasing work by dozens of low-income local artists. More on that later.

Complementary Flavors

It’s always fun to look for common threads in mixed rep programs. You’re not always guaranteed to find them, especially when the theme is something like where the artists are based. Artistically, there were common threads, even though the choreographers were diverse and two of them spend more time in the contemporary dance space than the classical ballet world. I guess dance has local scenes as much as music does.

In any case, all three pieces were barefoot or mostly so with very simple but colorful flowing costumes. All three could be described as “fluid” in style, both in the sense that they blurred boundaries between classical and contemporary styles and that the movement was very smooth and lyrical. The first two of the ballets had feminist themes; the second two combined orchestral music and recordings in the score. The scenic design for the first and third was part of the storytelling.

F O I L

World Premiere
Music: Nadia Boulanger, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Francesca Lebrun, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann
Choreography: Eva Stone
Costume Design: Melanie Burgess
Lighting Design: Amiya Brown
Assistant to the Choreographer: Sarena Fishman Jimenez

Eva Stone

I already knew about Eva Stone as the founder, producer and curator of the contemporary dance festival CHOP SHOP: Bodies of Work. If I wasn’t afraid of the Eastside, I would have made it to that festival years ago. I have never seen her dance company, The Stone Dance Collective. But I have seen some of her work before – she assisted Donald Byrd for the Seattle Opera production of Aida.

She is also on faculty at both Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theater and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and will coordinate this season’s Next Step choreographers’ showcase.

F O I L

Stone didn’t explain the title F O I L in the program, but she did provide a lovely anonymous poem:

And so she built the house with a steady hand, room by room, until the walls held tight every secret of the Universe, and the neighbours, their hands pressed to the glass, watchful of the radiance within.

Locally Sourced program booklet

I think it’s so lovely, in fact, that analysis would almost spoil it. Sometimes it’s better to just to enjoy something beautiful without breaking it down. But I will say that to me it’s an elegant and graceful statement of appreciation for women’s creative power.

With the combination of traditional music, contemporary barefoot ballet, and sets and costumes as props (in addition to the chandeliers, there was one costume with baroque panniers) F O I L reminded me of Baroque Movement, the ballet I saw in Oslo last April.

I leaned over and whispered as much to my 10-year-old, who disagreed. Then, I have to admit I cried a little. Such a difference between the 10-year-old Arizona girl who sent away for tour brochures in the backs of magazines and wondered if she’d ever escape the desert and her daughter, who can say, “No, this ballet is not at all like the one we saw in Oslo.” We spend so much energy looking ahead to the next thing, it can be a little overwhelming to be reminded how far you’ve come.

Love and Loss

World Premiere
Music: Emmanuel Witzthum
Choreography: Donald Byrd     
Costume Design: Doris Black
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Assistants to the Choreographer: Nia-Amina Minor, Emily Pihlaja, Andrew Pontius, and Fausto Rivera

Donald Byrd

I can’t remember when I first became aware of Donald Byrd, or what I first saw by him. But by the time I saw Christopher D’Ariano perform his piece Wake the Neighbor at Next Step, I already knew I liked his work. Byrd is the Tony-nominated (The Color Purple) and Bessie Award-winning (The Minstrel Show) choreographer in charge of the contemporary dance company Spectrum Dance Theater.

Love and Loss

Byrd is known for tackling hard issues (Spectrum’s current season is titled “Race and Climate Change”) but he said that for this PNB commission, he wanted to focus on beauty and the sublime.

Love and Loss was beautiful and sublime, but it wasn’t quite true that he left social justice at home. These movements were not your typical ballet romances. In Love and Loss, women take the lead and set the boundaries in a series of romantic scenarios that all approximate love and end in loss.

Wash of Gray

World Premiere
Music: Jherek Bischoff
Choreography: Miles Pertl
Scenic Design: Sydney M. Pertl, Eli Lara, and Max Badger Woodring
Costume Design: Patrick Stovall
Lighting Design: Reed Nakayama

Miles Pertl

My first experience of Miles Pertl as a choreographer was at Next Step, in Riding the Wave, a playful dance performed by PNB students in the fountain outside of McCaw Hall. (Are you getting that Next Step is a really good place to preview artists who will show up on PNB’s main stage in the next couple seasons?) But I never really noticed him as a dancer until last summer when he ate an apple in Frugivory during Seattle Dance Collective’s first program.

One of the other things I noticed at that SDC performance was the venue. The Vashon Center for the Arts is a lovely little theater with a lobby that doubles as an art gallery. I thought that was a brilliantly synergistic use of a performing arts space to support local visual artists. Maybe Pertl did, too. Because in addition to choreographing a ballet about Seattle, he partnered with his sister Sydney Pertl to form SeaPertl Productions and the pop-up Skid Road Gallery in McCaw Hall.

Skid Road Gallery

SeaPertl selected more than 60 sculptors, visual artists, and mixed media artists to participate in the show. All of the artists are local, low-income, and unrepresented. Ranging from completely abstract to photorealistic paintings of recognizable locations, all of them submitted work with a Seattleish theme. Nearly every work on display is for sale. I noticed prices from $150 to several thousand. The artists receive 90% of the selling price (that’s 30%-60% more than they would get at a gallery). Looking at the art was a wonderful way to fill the intermission, and for those who can afford it, a great way to add to an art collection. I don’t know about you, but I only hang things on my wall that have a story attached, and I think this is a great story.  

A Wash of Gray

Going into A Wash of Gray, Pertl was pretty strongly associated with humorous dance in my mind. But from now on, he’ll be associated with home. Pertl is a Seattle native, and in keeping with the theme of the program, A Wash of Gray is about Seattle. Trying to dance about a city sounds about as easy as dancing about architecture, but it can be done – and done well. Watching A Wash of Gray felt like getting a love letter. I guess the projected dedication to Seattleites near and far as the curtain rose was effective.

It would be easy to focus on the staging – field recordings, actual rain, real-time sketches projected on the backdrop. But even with so many non-dance things going on, I was impressed that the overall performance didn’t seem gimmicky. It really accomplished what it set out to do, expressing what we all love about Seattle and serving as a reminder that there is more to this place than bad traffic and skyrocketing real estate.

Details

November 8 – 17, 2019
Marion Oliver McCaw Hall

Remaining performances

November 14, 15 & 16 at 7:30 PM
November 17 at 1:00 PM

Tickets ($37-$190) are available 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.

GROUP SALES

Discounts are available for groups of 10 or more. For group tickets, call 206.441.2416, email JulieJ@PNB.org or use PNB’s online contact form at PNB.org/Season/Group-Sales.

GET THE POINTE

The Pointe is PNB’s mailing list for ballet fans between the ages of 20 and 40 notifying members of special events and flash sales. Visit PNB.org/ThePointe to sign up.

TEENTIX

TeenTix’s members (13 to 19 years old) can purchase tickets to PNB and a ton of other local arts events for only $5. For a free membership to TeenTix or to view a list of participating organizations, visit TeenTix.org. 

STUDENT AND SENIOR RUSH TICKETS

Subject to availability, half-price rush tickets for students and senior citizens (65+) may be purchased in-person with ID, from 90 minutes prior to show time at the McCaw Hall box office.