Seattle Dance Collective Premiere on Vashon Island

It’s not very often you get a chance to witness the birth of a new arts institution. But when I heard that Pacific Northwest Ballet principals Noelani Pantastico and James Yoichi Moore were starting their own off-season dance company, I knew it was going to be something special. Even though I usually keep my arts adventures close to home (living in Fremont, I there is more good art than I can consume within 3 miles of my house) I gladly took the ferry to Vashon to see Program One of the Seattle Dance Collective.

Seattle Dance Collective

As founding artistic directors Pantastico and Moore are quick to make clear, Seattle Dance Collective (SDC) is a side hustle. They are both in a place to be thinking about their post-PNB careers, but neither of them is ready to move on yet. Instead, SDC is intended as a summer season company.

With only ten dancers, the company repertory will necessarily comprise smaller, contemporary pieces that don’t use the principal/soloist/corps structure of classical ballet. But with eight of the ten dancers recruited from PNB (two work with Whim W’him) you can still expect it to be ballet. The small size of the organization and the facility also necessitates recorded music rather than the live orchestra of PNB. SDC makes up for this by using non-orchestral music and introducing a lot of verbal narrative to the dances.

Vashon Center for the Arts

Although “Seattle” is in the name, SDC has found a home at the Vashon Center for the Arts. I confess that although I’ve lived in Seattle since 1992, the first time I ever went to Vashon Island was three years ago to pick up my daughter from her middle school orchestra retreat. So in my mind, Vashon was already associated with the arts.

The Vashon Center for the Arts opened in the summer of 2016, a $20 million arts facility in a community of 10,000 people. This was my first visit to the Center, which is a small but lovely arts venue. There’s a gallery in the lobby (and judging by all the red stickers, performance venues are a great place for artists to sell their work) with really interesting work on display. The stage is just the right size for a small dance company like SDC, and the auditorium is comfortable and intimate. Even when I get the really good tickets at McCaw Hall, I am never as close to the stage as a person sitting in the middle of VCA.

The hassle of the ferry means that it’s tempting to “make a day of it” when you see something at the Vashon Center for the Arts. But there are worse things than spending the day on Vashon. The cost of the ferry means that tickets at VCA are not as affordable as they seem at first glance, but the space is worth the added cost for shows you really want to see. For me, that will definitely include future programs of Seattle Dance Collective.  

In a Minute

Program One officially comprised six short contemporary ballets, but the performance began with an unannounced piece. Pantastico crawled out from behind the still-closed curtain to perform In a Minute by choreographer Penny Saunders. Unlike the dancer in the video below, she her costume and facial expressions evoked a creepy doll.

The 90-second dance was simultaneously unnerving and a delightful Easter Egg that clued us in to not expect much in the way of traditional presentation from SDC.

Program One

Even if I try to keep my comments short (and you know how good I am at that) I have too much to say about what I saw at Program One to fit it all into this post. So I plan on writing about the dances themselves separately. But for the record, here is what was on Program One.

The Grey Area

(an excerpt)

Choreography: David Dawson
Music: Niels Lanz
Staging: Rebecca Gladstone
Costume Design: Yumiko Takeshima
Lighting Design: Bert Dalhuysen

Cast I Saw: Elizabeth Murphy/Miles Pertl

Shogun

Choreography: Ivonice Satie
Music: Milton Nascimiento, Fernando Bryant
Staging: Liris do Lago
Lighting Design: Ivonice Satie

Cast I Saw: James Moore, Ezra Thomson

Sur Le Fil

(By a Hair’s Breadth)

Choreography: Penny Saunders
Music: Mike Wall, Moon Dog, Yann Tiersen
Staging: Jacqueline Burnett
Lighting Design: Ben Johnson

Cast I Saw: Liane Aung, Angelica Generosa, Jim Kent, Elle Macy, Elizabeth Murphy, Miles Pertl, Ezra Thomson, Dylan Wald

Anamnesis

Choreography: Bruno Roque
Music: Nils Frahm
Text: Noelani Pantastico
Lighting Design: Alex Harding and Bruno Roque

Cast I Saw: Noelani Pantastico

Frugivory

Choreography: Bruno Roque
Music: Dead Combo
Costume Design: Noelani Pantastico
Lighting Design: Reed Nakayama

Cast I Saw: Liane Aung, Angelica Generosa, Jim Kent, Elizabeth Murphy, Miles Pertl, Dylan Wald

Mopey

Choreography: Marco Goecke
Music: CPE Bach, The Cramps
Staging: James Moore
Lighting Design: David Moodey

Cast I Saw: James Moore

Next Up

Seattle Dance Collective has not announced specific plans for the future yet. It’s uncertain when Program Two will take place, or how many programs they hope to perform each summer. It’s possible that we’ll have to wait until next year for a follow up. But you can be certain that I will be there.

{I attended Program 1 courtesy of SDC and Vashon Center for the Arts. The tickets were theirs; the opinions are mine.}