NEXT STEP: Outside

In the past, my ballet exposure was limited to regular season performances. But this year I busted out of that narrow approach. I attended preview dress rehearsals, lectures, the season encore, and now, NEXT STEP. NEXT STEP is Pacific Northwest Ballet’s annual choreographers showcase. Managed by former PNB soloist Kiyon Ross, NEXT STEP is a one-night-only event where company dancers rise as choreographers, and the PNB School’s Professional Division students take center stage in an all-premiere program. This year it busted out of McCaw Hall, spilling onto the grounds of Seattle Center. Called NEXT STEP: OUTSIDE/IN, it featured (almost) all-new choreography (mostly) by PNB dancers. Appropriately, the evening began OUTSIDE.

Literally. The first part of NEXT STEP was outside. The free performances were performed in the areas around McCaw Hall at Seattle Center, free to anyone who happened by, with some of the feeling of a flash mob. The atmosphere was totally casual, with PNB staff and regular company dancers mingling through the crowd. Most of us were there to see ballet, but a few lucky folks wandered by and discovered art. Even those of us in the know couldn’t always tell exactly what was art and what was life.

Picnic

Food trucks from Frankie & Jo’s, Lumpia World, and Roll OK Please were parked nearby and lots of people nibbled while they watched Picnic on the Boeing Green outside McCaw Hall. Picnic, choreographed by PNB Principal Noelani Pantastico, premiered in the summer of 2017 at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Even recognizing the dancers in casual summer clothes hanging out on the lawn, it wasn’t easy to tell exactly when the hanging out transitioned into choreography, but it was well before the music started. When dancer Ryan Cardea casually stepped onto the grass and wandered among the others, my daughter gasped in shock, thinking he was some rando interrupting the performance. She only relaxed when the music started and he partnered with another dancer.

Such casual humor is the dominant characteristic of this dance that evokes both real-life summer days and a number out of a Gidget movie. It truly belongs outside; the surf-rock Picnic would be wrong on a stage in a darkened auditorium. Its relaxed combination of ballet and goofing around feels like something that could only have been written by a ballerina from Hawaii.

My family watched it up close the first time, then sat on the stairs inside McCaw Hall and watched it from above and behind the second time. Even though we couldn’t hear the music there, it was fun to see the action from a very different perspective, and to see how much of the performance was improvised, especially when the dancers played around at the beginning.

Picnic Details

Choreography by Noelani Pantastico
Danced by Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers
            Ryan Cardea
            Elle Macy
            Miles Pertl
            Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan
            Leah Terada
            Dylan Wald

Performed on the Boeing Green (lawn behind McCaw Hall) at 6:05 and 6:50.

Riding the Wave

While Pertl was performing Picnic, more than 40 Level IV students from PNB School were donning galoshes in preparation for their performance of his piece, Riding the Wave. Once again the beginning was ambiguous. You couldn’t quite tell when “Places, everybody,” gave way to choreography. Once again, the dance was playful and humorous, this time with obvious references to “Singing in the Rain” as the dancers conscientiously splashed viewers with the water from the fountain in which they danced.

My daughters squeezed to the very front and sat on the ground at the edge of the fountain (they got soaked). Even though I was pretty close to the front, I watched the dance in glimpses through crowd. Since the tween dancers were shorter than their audience, they often disappeared from view. We watched the second performance from the orchestra-level seating lobby. From there we could see over the crowd and could also watch the interaction between the blocks of dancers stationed along the length of the promenade. The second performance was also more fun to watch because the dancers had relaxed a little after surviving the first performance. Their smiling faces were much better suited to the playful nature of the dance than the endearingly serious looks of concentration that dominated the first round.

Riding the Wave Details

Choreography by Miles Pertl
Danced by 40+ PNB School Level IV students
Performed in the Kreielsheimer Promenade fountain (a.k.a. the “dribble sidewalk”) at 6:15 and 7:00. (Riding the Wave will have a third performance during the intermission of the “IN” portion of the evening, at approximately 8:42.)

Wake the Neighbor

Donald Byrd’s Wake the Neighbor was on a small square stage just inside the McCaw Hall lobby, in front of the ushers who take your tickets. You didn’t need a ticket to come in and watch, but the stage backed up to the lobby windows, so you didn’t have to come inside to watch. Since the crowd was pretty thick in front of the stage, we thought we’d be clever and get our tickets scanned so we could run up the stairs and watch from above. Other clever people were faster, and we couldn’t get space on the rail directly above the stage. I ended up hanging over the edge of the landing, with a pillar blocking the center third of the stage from my view.

But, considering the name of the piece, Wake the Neighbor, it was an appropriate way to watch. Craning to catch glimpses of PNB Apprentice Christopher D’Ariano felt a lot like peeking through the curtains at the neighbor. “What is he doing over there?” Just in case we missed something, though, we got close to the stage for the second performance. Up close was good, too. Moments before the dance was supposed to start, we looked up to see D’Ariano peering through window at us from outside. He came in the front door, pushed through the crowd, ducked under the ropes, and walked around the stage, examining it as if to decide whether to use it, before stepping up onto the stage and “beginning” to dance.

The dance itself was like the scene in Jeffrey when the superhot love interest dances his frustration in the living room when he finds out that Jeffrey has stood him up. Well, it was like that and also like the opening sequence of Cowboy Bebop. I’m sure that’s partly due to the fact that D’Ariano should play Spike in the live action movie. I realized Byrd is kind of the Yoko Kanno of dance; a chameleon who can drop into any style as if it were their own home base.

Your Own Back Yard

Byrd’s actual home base is Seattle. I’ve loved everything I’ve seen by him. I should make a greater effort to take advantage of the non-PNB talent in my own back yard. So as soon as I write up my thoughts on the IN portion of the evening, my own personal NEXT STEP will be figuring out how to swing tickets to the Seattle International Dance Festival, which ends this weekend.

Wake the Neighbor Details

Choreography by Donald Byrd
Danced by Christopher D’Ariano
Performed in the McCaw Hall lobby at 6:30 and 7:15.

Tickets

NEXT STEP is a one-night-only event that has passed.

Tickets for the 2018-2019 ballet season are currently on sale.

{Like everyone else, I attended the free performance of NEXT STEP: OUTSIDE compliments of PNB.}