PNB Season Encore 2019

I’ve attended regular season ballet performances since I was 18. But last season was the first time I attended any of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “extra” events – like performance previews and Ballet 101 lectures. Of those, the extra performances like Season Encore and NEXT STEP were my favorites. This year I couldn’t attend NEXT STEP, but I did get to see the Season Encore. It’s called an encore, but it’s not just a highlights reel of the most popular dances of the past season.

Family Night

PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal describes the Season Encore performance as “Family Night.” And that’s not far from the truth. The program always includes some of the biggest hits and most interesting additions to the repertory from the last season. But it also includes pieces selected by retiring dancers. Those dancers are honored with a between-dances slide show a lot like the one celebrating graduating seniors get at high school pep rallies. And there’s an element of pep rally to it, too, with flowers and endless standing ovations for the departing dancers. There is a celebratory in-crowd vibe to the whole event, which really does seem to be more for the dancers and their families than for paying audience members. But at the same time, by choosing to attend this non-season performance, regular audience members get to feel like part of the family.

Retirements

Dancers

This year we said farewell to two principal dancers, Jonathon Poretta and Rachel Foster. Peter Boal talked about his long history with Poretta and Foster’s strength as a dancer. Dances that showcased male dancers were a rarity when I started watching ballet early in his career, but they’ve always been among my favorites. Now I realize that’s at least partly a result of Poretta’s performances back when I didn’t pay attention to who the dancers were. Similarly, my preference for contemporary ballet has a lot to do with Foster’s flawless performances.

Most of us in the auditorium don’t pay a lot of attention to the behind-the-scenes credits in the program, but if something seems “off” on stage next season, it might be because there were important retirements backstage this year, too.

I used to watch Ballet Master Paul Gibson dance when he was a soloist and a principal at PNB. I met him once when I was working on a story about the Nutcracker. He graciously allowed me to sit in on one of his toughest jobs – rehearsing the children who dance the battle between mice and nutcracker soldiers. Gibson always prioritized his job at PNB, but he was also a choreographer.  

Backstage

Costume Shop Manager Larae Hascall and Resident Lighting Designer Randall Chiarelli both came out to take their first – and final – bows. My mind raced over the dances in the program, realizing that they showcased striking costumes and dramatic lighting. For a moment I thought that was purposefully honoring these two, just like including ballets that showcased the performances of the retiring dancers. Then I realized – any ballet in the repertory would highlight the talent and skill of these two professionals. I realized with something like a pang of fear that I have never seen a performance at PNB that these two were not involved in.

Program

Theme & Variations (excerpt)
Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Theme & Variations was the final piece in the program that closed only a week before. I wrote an entire post about it then, so I don’t have much to add here. I could add that seeing it at the beginning of the evening instead of as a finale gave it a slightly different color. And even if I can’t always consciously identify the differences, I always enjoy seeing different dancers interpret the same roles. During the season program, I saw Jerome Tisserand and Lesley Rausch perform; on this night it was Laura Tisserand and Dylan Wald.

The Piano Dance (pas de deux)
Music: Gyorgy Ligeti
Choreography: Paul Gibson

I was certain that I had never seen Paul Gibson’s The Piano Dance before. In fact, I could only remember seeing one of Gibson’s ballets, and I remembered it as being very neoclassical and pretty. Then, when I heard the first chords of Ligeti’s music, I remembered the whole thing. I hadn’t seen it in at least a decade, but every moment of the pas de deux evoked an “Ah yes, that’s right,” response. The stark lighting and red leotards. The spiky, spiderlike movements. An atmosphere that built ominous tension, only to instantly deflate it with humor. It was a truly unique work, and all the more enjoyable in contrast to what I thought I knew about Gibson’s choreography.                    

Rassemblement (pas de deux)
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Choreography: Nacho Duato

Only a few days earlier, I was telling my husband about one of the dances in Theme & Variations and he was trying to remember if he had seen it before. “Oh, was it the one with…?” and he lifted his elbows and dropped his head like he was hanging on a scarecrow.

“No, no, no,” I replied. “You’re thinking of Rassemblement.” I don’t tell this story to make us sound like ballet experts, because we’re not. It’s just that Rassemblement was one of the very first contemporary ballets from outside the Balanchine lineage that we ever saw. And, to put it bluntly, it blew our fucking minds. It was the first time we ever rushed to our programs to learn the name of the choreographer and the ballet so that we could remember it later and be sure to see it again.

Choreographer Nacho Duato is special for Rachel Foster, too. She danced in the ensemble when PNB performed this piece 12 years ago, but on her final night as a performer, she chose to learn a new role and dance the final duet.  

Bacchus
Music: Oliver Davis
Choreography: Matthew Neenan

Bacchus premiered at Director’s Choice earlier in the season. Seeing it for the second time around, I was a less put off by the men’s costumes and didn’t waste any energy on metaphors. This time I could just enjoy the dancing as unreservedly as I enjoyed the music the first time I saw it.  

After the Rain pas de deux
Music: Arvo Pärt
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon

I hate crying in public. After the Rain is so beautiful and heartbreaking it’s hard not to cry, though. Especially when it’s a favorite of the ballerina dancing it and it’s the last time she’s dancing it and she made you cry the first time you saw it, too.

Silent Ghost
Music: Dustin Hamman, King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo

Part of this season’s All Premiere program, Silent Ghost is a few of my favorite things: I love the music and the choreographer. I saw Rachel Foster when it premiered, and she danced in it again at the Season Encore. So even though I love Silent Ghost, mostly what I remember is the endless standing ovation she got for this, the last performance of her PNB career.

Prodigal Son
Music: Sergei Prokofiev
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Jonathan Poretta chose Prodigal Son as his farewell performance, and no wonder. Remember when I mentioned ballet showcasing male dancers? This biblical tale choreographed in 1929 was one of the only ones available until recent years. Like The Piano Song and Rassemblement, it’s one that redefined ballet for me, and has really stuck with me, even years after seeing it. It was probably Poretta on stage the only other time I saw it, and then as now, I was struck by how ugly it is.

But it’s also captivating in the way that it uses strength and brutish movements to communicate emotions; so different from the sterile pantomime of most biblical retellings. What I didn’t remember was that even this male-focused dance includes one of the most dramatic – and lengthy – en pointe solos in the history of dance. My younger self was also less sensitive to the brutal beating that Poretta’s knees must take as he crawls and stumbles in the role. Yes, that was makeup on his knees, but it would be real blood if I tried it.

The middle of the 20^th century was such a retrograde era, those of us born in its wake don’t always realize how much creative exploration really took part in the first part of that century. Prodigal Son (like The Moor’s Pavane) still looks fresh and unexpected, nearly a century later.

Last Bow

For years I’ve said that Director’s Choice is my favorite program of the season. Lately, All Premiere has been pretty special, too. Season Encore doesn’t stand on its own like those two; part of what makes it so wonderful is the shared history among audience and dancers of experiencing all the other programs, in the season that is ending, and for many seasons before. But as family nights go, this one is favorite.

{I attended Season Encore compliments of PNB. Opinions are entirely my own.}