PNB’s Digital Season Rep 6

The sixth program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s digital season is here. It’s a mixed program with three filmed performances of ballets that are new to PNB. Two of them are world premieres. Rep 6 is the final program of the regular season. Not that there has been anything regular about this season, with McCaw Hall closed to the public and everything produced for film. But it has been a wonderful season nonetheless, filled with beautiful performances of exquisite ballets. So far I’ve enjoyed everything so much more than I expected. So, in their bold leap into digital production, did PNB stick the landing with their final program?

Curious Kingdom

World Premiere
Music: Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, and songs performed by Edith Piaf (Non, je ne regrette rien; La vie en rose; L’homme a la moto [Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots])
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon
Featuring: Leta Biasucci, Elle Macy, Lucien Postlewaite, Jerome Tisserand and Dylan Wald
Costume Design: Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme
Lighting Design: Reed Nakayama
Approximate Running Time: 30 minutes

Well, it certainly is a curious ballet. To be honest, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. But I have many thoughts. Mostly confused ones. Wheeldon is a very familiar name to PNB regulars, so I was surprised when I searched my blog (aka, my external memory drive) and discovered the only other Wheeldon piece I’ve seen was Tide Harmonic. But I saw that one twice and really liked its visual metaphors that balanced brains and beauty.

“Curious Kingdom” is also brainy (I think). I mean, it reminded me of this music teacher at my university who was so deep into theory and history that she always put on concerts full of pieces that no one outside of her upper level courses could appreciate. I’m not a fan of the “single piano with a lot of open space” type of music, so that put me off a bit. But the actual ballet starts out innocently enough, with five dancers in shiny silver costumes on a reflective floor. The choreography for Lucien Postlewaite’s solo was interesting in a kind of academic way, except that he performed it with such feeling that it became a bit heartbreaking anyway. I’m not sure if I would have liked it if anyone else danced it, though. Then Dylan Wald and Elle Macy, in Bridgerton terms the diamond couple of the season came out with a single pair of gloves between them and some very strange, geometric symmetries and partnering. At this point, with the lamé and asymmetrical orange gloves and mechanical precision, I was almost positive this was some sort of Devo/David Bowie thing.  

When Jerome Tisserand came out in a sheer metallic jumpsuit, I was sure of it. Leta Biasucci’s supershort solo almost felt like an organic response to his. Then Macy and Wald were back in the jumpsuits, with more of that Hubbardy partnering and weird lifts that I love. Through the miracle of video editing, they followed themselves in the lamé again, but this time with giant orange tulle bows and music by Edith Piaf. Suddenly my David Bowie theme was interwar Paris or… I don’t know what the fuck is going on here. Except that I discovered I don’t like Edith Piaf any more than piano music.

But there are spirals everywhere. And there’s one moment when Macy’s facial expression is straight out of a silent movie. There’s a lot more – another solo from Biasucci; an absurd sequence with Tisserand and Postlewaite in swim caps; Postlewaite inexplicably believable as an ingenue in a sheer gown – but it would just be like describing a weird dream and I’d be no closer to figuring it out.

So now that watched it again and talked through it, I’ve decided. I still don’t get “Curious Kingdom,” but I do like it. Art is supposed to make you feel things. “Curious Kingdom” makes me feel perplexed. That’s actually pretty cool.

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Pacopepepluto

Music: Songs sung by Dean Martin and Joe Scalissi (In the Chapel in the Moonlight, Memories Are Made of This, and That’s Amore)
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo
Featuring: Christopher D’Ariano, James Moore, and Lucien Postlewaite
Staging: Pablo Piantino
Costume Design: Rebecca M. Shouse
Lighting Design: Matt Miller
Approximate Running Time: Eight minutes
Premiere: June 17, 2011, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
PNB Premiere: November 20, 2020 (First Look Gala)

I am an unabashed fangirl for Alejandro Cerrudo’s choreography, and the dancers in this piece are among my favorites (actually, one of them is my favorite). After the mindfuck of “Curious Kingdom,” three gleeful solos set to Dean Martin music featuring ostensibly naked dancers in “Pacopepepluto” was so uncomplicatedly enjoyable. There’s delightful humor in the pretended nudity making explicit the innuendo of songs from a more prudish time. And there is just unabashed straightforward silliness in the movement as each dancer struts and leaps and grabs his junk like a little kid running naked through a roomful of grownups to avoid a bath with the innocence that those old songs pretended. Postlewaite just kills me running off stage like Will Ferrell shouting “I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it” in Elf. This piece is just so fun, I laugh out loud every time I watch it.

The Veil Between Worlds

World Premiere
Music: Oliver Davis
Choreography: Edwaard Liang
Costume Design: Mark Zappone
Lighting Design: Reed Nakayama

PNB performed one of Liang’s pieces back in 2008, but I didn’t see it. So my first experience of his work was a silhouette in a huge skirt that immediately put me in mind of “The Calling.” Then the figure grew taller and walked right out of its skin, revealing itself to be two dancers; two more dancers run in from the wings, covering the entire stage in fabric. I knew in that instant that I would love Liang.

Liang has said the veils in this piece represent barriers in the human search for connection, but so far this piece has felt more connected than searching. When the lights came up, the dancers were wearing leotards with spiral stripes in 70s earthtones. Was it coincidence that the costumes match the upholstered wall in the McCaw Hall lobby? I’ve never really liked that wall, but it gave me a bit of a feel to see it duplicated in that way on onstage. And about those spirals – they are also everywhere in the dance, connecting back to “Curious Kingdom.”

Actually, “The Veil Between Worlds” has a lot in common with “Curious Kingdom.” Spirals; weird knee things and held feet in Wald’s solo; electrostatic, Hubbardy connections between dancers in the pas de deux. But here it’s so much prettier, with so much more emotional impact than the cerebral (or possibly lunatic) “Curious Kingdom.”

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The Tisserands had a sweet, very spiral-heavy, pas de deux, and I realized that (I think) I haven’t ever seen them paired onstage before; only now that they are leaving for France. And the veils come back at the transitions, always to beautiful effect, especially when doing double duty as a skirt and a cape in the Macy/Wald pas de deux with its tightly synchronized movements and pretzely lifts. Honestly, those two.

I love how the duos often move in sync, but movements seem to domino through larger groupings in “The Veil Between Worlds.” This was by far the most balletic piece in the program, as if signaling that this very strange year is about to give way to a return to normalcy. It was kind of a relief to be back to string-heavy orchestral music, too.

I’m definitely up for more Liang on the PNB stage.

Cast

Leta Biasucci
Angelica Generosa
Elle Macy
Lesley Rausch
Laura Tisserand
Kyle Davis
Lucien Postlewaite
Ezra Thomson
Jerome Tisserand
Dylan Wald

Extras

I’m going to miss the musician spotlights when we go back to live performances. This time, right after “Curious Kingdom” we got “Jota” featuring Josh Archibald-Seiffer on a blond piano and Sarah Viens, credited as trumpet but what a curious trumpet.

When the video is over, don’t forget to scroll down for other extras (I did, so I haven’t watched these yet). There’s an interview with Edwaard Liang (yes, there are two ‘a’s in Edwaard) and his “Distant Cries” as well as world premieres of Op. 21 by Vincent Michael Lopez, and “And yet here we are” created by Nia-Amina Minor (I wonder if that title is an Incredibles reference? My family uses Edna’s quote all the time.)

{Update: I watched the extras last night and they are so good!}

The End

Next Step is also currently streaming, and Season Encore is coming up on June 18, but Rep 6 is kind of the end of the season proper. In so many ways this hasn’t been a proper season at all. But PNB has put out six programs of dance (five of them newly performed and filmed) that honestly hold up against anything I’ve seen live. Several pieces this season are among my all-time favorites. I discovered PNB (and by extension, ballet) within months of moving to Seattle in 1992. And I have been to most of the programs of most of the seasons since. So they could have taken this year off and I would still be a loyal fan. But the incredible creativity and quality of work they released during the pandemic means that Rep 6 is not just the end of a very unusual season. It’s the beginning of a new love affair with dance.  

The Details

Rep 6 is available online through June 14, 2021. Purchase tickets here for $29 or for $39 to access the extras.

{I purchased season tickets for access to PNB’s virtual programming. You can subscribe to next season’s in-person performances here.}