Pacific Northwest Ballet Director’s Choice 2019

As Audience Education Manager Doug Fullington likes to point out, all Pacific Northwest Ballet programs are the director’s choice – choosing the programs is a director’s job. But the Director’s Choice program introduces new work into the company’s repertory. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it is unusual for a ballet company director not to be a choreographer. Since Peter Boal is not a choreographer, he approaches the programming with a truly curatorial eye. Where another director would showcase his own work, Boal scours the world for interesting choreographers and presents the best work he finds each year.

Bacchus

World Premiere
Music: Oliver Davis
Choreography: Matthew Neenan
Costume Design: Mark Zappone
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Running Time: 25 minutes

Matthew Neenan’s Bacchus is so new it didn’t even have a title when the press release went out. This is the first Neenan ballet to be performed at PNB; I was completely unfamiliar with him and with the composer Oliver Davis.

In every pantheon, I have a favorite, and I’ve always had an affinity for Dionysus/Bacchus. The women’s costumes were especially beautiful; the men’s were a little ’90’s International Male, but I still loved the purple color – my favorite. Oliver Davis’ music was beautiful, something I would happily listen to on its own.

I kept looking for the Bacchus in Bacchus. There were parts that felt like friends having a good time, but I found none of that god’s frenzy or wildness. When I abandoned the theme and just watched the movement, it was extremely beautiful. My friend said that both emotionally and technically, it was like the dance was wringing out the most from the dancers that they could give. Perhaps it was a more literal offering to Bacchus than I imagined.

The Trees The Trees

World Premiere
Music: Kyle Vegter
Choreography: Robyn Mineko Williams
Words: Heather Christle
Vocalist: Alicia Walter
Scenic & Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Costume Design: Branimira Ivanova
Running Time: 32 minutes

This was another world premiere and PNB audience’s introduction to the choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams. I have loved everything I’ve seen that had any association with Hubbard Street Dance, and this was no exception. Where Bacchus was all feeling, The Trees The Trees had a lot of ideas. Audience response reflected the lower level of emotional engagement, but I might have liked this piece best of the three.

Without ever seeming busy, there was just so much going on. The vocalist on stage with the dancers, interacting with them as part of the dance. The poems she sang sometimes felt like they belonged in an underground jazz club, sometimes on a James Bond soundtrack, but the actual lyrics described such mundanities that they almost felt like one of Frank Zappa’s ridiculous story songs. The costumes reflected the everydayness. The sets did too, at first, but when they start moving around, it felt like a metaphor for uncertainty, a lesson about taking the ordinary for granted.

The actual dancing was a type of movement that I love to watch. There may be a technical name for it, but I think of it as ionic. The dancers move in relation to each other more like charged particles than partnered people, coming together and pushing apart depending on their often shifting polarities. At the same time, there’s an elasticity to it that fascinates me. It’s not really as pretty as the movement in a piece like Bacchus, but I can never take my eyes off it.

In The Countenance of Kings

PNB Premiere
Music: Sufjan Stevens (The BQE, 2007-09; orchestration Michael P. Atkinson)
Choreography: Justin Peck
Staging: Felipe Diaz
Costume Design: Ellen Warren
Lighting Design: Brandon Stirling Baker
Running Time: 31 minutes
Premiere: April 7, 2016, San Francisco Ballet

We’ve seen Justin Peck at PNB before, twice in Year of the Rabbit and also Debonaire (which I missed). I always forget how playful Peck’s ballets feel. Even the title feels like an inside joke.

Sufjan Stevens, who has referred to his score, The BQE, as ‘a cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Hula-Hoop.’ The ballet’s name is taken from one of the movements of The BQE.

Director’s Choice program booklet

It goes on to explain that this movement relates to Kings County and the dancers’ characters are named in the style of Pilgrim’s Progress. I know nothing about the boroughs of New York and I haven’t read Pilgrim’s Progress, so I’m pretty sure I missed the point. I don’t really know if the costumes were referencing chi-chi Pilates studios or the Fame Academy or something else.

But I did get the sense of fun, the wry wit, and the energy, the bright colors and symmetry. I was reminded of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou throughout the whole performance. Wes Anderson is a divisive reference point, but that movie is one of my favorites. I watch it whenever I need to be reminded that life is worth the bother. So whatever your take on Wes Anderson, coming from me the comparison is a compliment of the highest level.

Details

Director’s Choice runs approximately two hours and twenty minutes, including two intermissions.

March 21 – 23 at 7:30 pm
March 24 at 1:00 pm

Tickets start at $30, and are available online.

Cast (I Saw)

The Trees The Trees

Noelani Pantastico
Elizabeth Murphy
Elle Macy
Leah Merchant
Christopher D’Ariano
Ezra Thomson
Dylan Wald

Bacchus

Leta Biasucci
Elizabeth Murphy
Margaret Mullin
Angelica Generosa
Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan
Leah Merchant
Lucien Postlewaite
Seth Orza
James Moore
Kyle Davis
Price Suddarth
Dylan Wald
Christopher D’Ariano

In the Countenance of Kings

Elle Macy
Jerome Tisserand
Margaret Mullin
Lucien Postlewaite
Laura Tisserand
Joshua Grant