Rep 2 of PNB’s Digital Season

I almost didn’t watch Rep 2, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s second program of the 2020-2021 digital season. It wasn’t because I didn’t like Rep 1 – quite the opposite. It’s just that Thursday was one of those days when most of what I tried to do didn’t get accomplished and everything I did accomplish took twice as much time and effort as it should have. Maybe it was the crash following a post-election high, but all I wanted to do was go to bed early after watching a feel-good K-drama with a too-tall pour of rye. But I remembered how good Rep 1 was. So I tuned in to the ballet instead and was reminded once again that art is more uplifting than escapist television – even when it’s on the tv.

Before I jump into the individual pieces, I’d just like to point out that Rep 2, without any fanfare, features an entire program choreographed by women. It’s rare enough for a major ballet company to present works by women, and even more unusual to have an entire program, especially one that isn’t specifically a celebration of female choreographers. I appreciate that PNB has done so without any fanfare, but also want to applaud it.

Wonderland (World Premiere)

Original Music and Adaptations: Michael Wall
Additional Music: Jean-Philippe Goude, Hugues Le Bars, Erik Satie, Camille Saint-Saëns
Choreography: Penny Saunders
Assistant to the Choreographer: Pablo Piantino
Sound Design: Penny Saunders
Costume Design: Melanie Burgess
Lighting Design: Trad Burns
Featuring: Christopher D’Ariano, Angelica Generosa, Elle Macy, Elizabeth Murphy, Lucien Postlewaite, Yuki Takahashi, Dylan Wald, and Genevieve Waldorf

To me, the highlight of the program was Penny Saunders’ Wonderland. Even though I tuned in reluctantly, I knew within seconds that this was going to be something special. Saunders, who used the film format to such good effect in Home for SDC’s summer program, choreographed Wonderland as a love letter to the live theater experience. But ironically, it’s a letter you could only read online, as the piece required an empty theater and cameras to be viewed. Dancers performed lying on the floor in the orchestra pit, standing on the stage, confined to the boxes, and disappeared up the aisles.

There were references to Alice in Wonderland that echoed Saunders’ companion piece ALICE, a coproduction with SDC released earlier in the week. But the absurdities were equally referential to the surreal year we’ve all been having. When the fun opening music gave way to something more meditative and Lucien Postlewaite appeared, dancing in a quarantine-tiny space that hid his legs, I’m not gonna lie. I cried. Even when the camera wasn’t showing us the empty auditorium, you could feel the empty space in the performances. And like I said, it had been a hard day.

I could easily write a thousand more words on Wonderland, but it’s probably more important to post this thing while people still have a chance to watch it for themselves. So I’ll leave it here, with the final comment that a DVD release is guaranteed at least one buyer.

Waterbaby Bagatelles (Excerpt)

Music: 20th-century bagatelles (Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain, The Hunt)
Choreography: Twyla Tharp
Staging: Shelley Washington
Scenic and Costume Design: Santo Loquasto
Lighting Design: Jennifer Tipton
Featuring: Madison Rayn Abeo, Guillaume Basso, Ryan Cardea, Dammiel Cruz, Mark Cuddihee, Kyle Davis, Luther DeMeyer, Joshua Grant, Steven Loch, Miles Pertl, Clara Ruf Maldonado, Jerome Tisserand, and Sarah Villwock
Approximate Running Time: Five minutes
Premiere: April 30, 1994, Boston Ballet
PNB Premiere: November 2, 2006

I always like Twyla Tharp’s dances. When I was a kid, I loved the movie Waterbabies. I don’t know what a Bagatelle is. Google tells me it’s either a pinball-type lawn game or a very easy task. Since I haven’t had time to watch Doug Fullington’s Ballet Talk video yet, I don’t know what’s going on in this Twyla Tharp excerpt. The costumes and some of the movement seem related to swimming. But the music sounds like tabla and a lot of the movement looks like classical Karnatic dance. Is this a piece about swimming on South Indian beaches? I doubt it, but since that’s a thing I have done, that’s where this excerpt takes me.

La Muerte del Angel

How often do you get to watch a classical music video in the middle of a live performance? La Muerte del Angel was obviously recorded in a studio (you just don’t get that sound quality on the lakeside) but we get to watch four cellists perform it in outdoor environments with kayakers and picnic tables in the background. Fun.

Arms (PNB Premiere)

Music: Luis Resto
Choreography: Susan Marshall
Lighting Design: Mark Stanley
Original Lighting Design: Mitchell Bogard
Featuring: Miles Pertl and Leah Terada
Approximate Running Time: Five minutes
Premiere: 1984, Performance Space 122, New York

Susan Marshall’s Arms dates back to 1984, and at the time it was hailed for its innovations in form. (She’s the same one who hung dancers from ropes in Kiss.) But it would be easy to think it was expressly created for this program. Echoing the topsy-turvy world of Wonderland, Arms does things we don’t get to do during the pandemic, while being restricted in ways we are not.

Social distancing? Nah, let’s have a pas de deux where the dancers are never more than arms’ length from each other. (Dancers Miles Pertl and Leah Terada live together, and also danced together in The Only Thing You See Now for SDC’s summer program.) Spreading out and taking up space is the obvious thing to do in a socially distanced dance. But in Arms, the dancers barely move their feet at all, seeming stuck in place like a physical representation of how stuck we all feel during quarantine. And the music so perfectly captures the sense of low-grade anxiety that underlies every interaction these days. How is this dance a quarter century old?

Ghost Variations (World Premiere)

Music: Robert Schumann (Ghost Variations, 1854, Theme, Variations II & V; Lierderkreis, Op., 39, No. 5 “Mondnacht”, 1840, arranged by Clara Schumann, 1872–1874) and Clara Schumann (Three Romances, Op. 11, 1839, I. Andante; Scherzo No. 2 in C minor, Op. 14, after 1840)
Choreography: Jessica Lang
Creative Associate: Kanji Segawa
Costume Design: Jillian Lewis
Lighting Design: Reed Nakayama
Featuring: Leta Biasucci, Kyle Davis, Angelica Generosa, Elle Macy, Elizabeth Murphy, Lucien Postlewaite, Jerome Tisserand, and Dylan Wald
Approximate Running Time: 20 minutes

I get really excited about ballets that feel edgy or push the boundaries of what counts as ballet, and sometimes I forget that beauty is central to the artform. Jessica Lang never forgets that. Hers will always be the most beautiful thing on whatever program she appears. Ghosts is no exception. It reminds us what we are missing in a digital season, and will fit seamlessly into a normal night at the ballet when live performances are possible again.

But pretty doesn’t mean boring. The costumes are kind of a metaphor for what Ghosts feels like: they evoke 1950’s evening wear, but with cutouts that remind me of the geometry of 20^th century Mexican silver jewelry. It’s classical and familiar, but not too smooth. And the Peter Pan shadows hint at a barely contained chaos that makes complacency dangerous.

Walk-Off

I love that the video format lets PNB showcase its musicians a bit more. This time around, Jennifer Caine Provine, Associate Concertmaster of PNB’s excellent orchestra accompanied the credits with a movement from Partita in D Minor by Bach.

Details

Rep 2 is available through full-season subscriptions ($155) and individual tickets ($29-$39) exclusively through the PNB Box Office only through Monday, November 16. The First Look Gala (with a PNB premiere from Alejandro Cerrudo, a repeat of two pieces from Rep 2, and excerpts from Apollo, Red Angels, and Swan Lake) will post November 20. The Nutcracker will begin streaming on December 11.

{I purchased season tickets for access to PNB’s virtual programming, and I highly recommend that you do, too. You can do that here.}