Singularly Cerrudo at PNB in Person (and Online)

Friday, September 24, 2021 may not go down in the history books as anything special, but it was a momentous occasion for me. It was my first night out since the pandemic started. The last time I attended a public event was Charlie Parker’s Yardbird at Seattle Opera on March 7, 2020, just days before the first lockdown. Under those circumstances, the experience itself would threaten to upstage whatever performance I went to see. Except that I saw the Singularly Cerrudo program at Pacific Northwest Ballet. And nothing upstages Cerrudo.

Alejandro Cerrudo

There are people who love to read and yet remain completely oblivious of the names of the authors who write the books. Barbaric, I know. And yet, for decades I enthusiastically attended ballet without paying attention to the names of the choreographers. Even now that I make an effort, there are only a handful of choreographers whose names I instantly recognize and have an opinion about. There are even fewer that I get excited about. Alejandro Cerrudo is one of them.

My first introduction to Cerrudo was in Memory Glow. Ironically, it’s one of the less memorable pieces of his that I’ve seen, but even then I noted that the relationships between dancers seemed to be defined by surface tension rather than muscles. It’s one of the things that most defines him for me, and it is absolutely my kryptonite. I was mystified by Little Mortal Jump two years later and then saw it quite differently two years after that. Later in 2018, Silent Ghost combined the movement style that slays me with some of my favorite music.

I was thrilled when Alejandro Cerrudo was selected as PNB’s first resident choreographer. But the lockdown started two days before the PNB premiere of another one of his dances. The dress rehearsal was filmed, and that recording was made available to ticketholders. Over the next season, PNB got really good at producing ballet for film, but the ad hoc recording of 1000 Pieces was still a fabulous introduction to virtual arts seasons. Among the highlights of last year’s virtual season were Cerrudo’s Future Memory and the silly, gleeful Pacopepepluto. So yeah, a whole night of Cerrudo? That would bring me out in a pandemic, maybe even if I wasn’t vaccinated. (Which I am. And so should you be.)

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The In-Person Experience

Virtual arts have become my new normal, so I expected the in-person experience to be an uncomfortable change. And in a lot of ways it was. I wasn’t particularly nervous about infection; PNB’s health protocols are quite robust. All attendees were required to wear masks and show proof of vaccination with photo ID. *applause* I never skip Doug Fullington’s pre-ballet talk, but this time it was made available ahead of time as a podcast. The restaurant in McCaw Hall was closed, and concessions are no longer allowed in the auditorium. But you can still get grab-and-go drinks and snacks at one location in the lobby during intermission. Seating wasn’t quite socially distant, but the limited ticket sales did allow at least one empty seat between parties.

But I’ve written about my mask claustrophobia before, and going into the performance, my personal record for mask-wearing was two hours. Fortunately, the program was short, so I only had to keep mine on for two hours twenty minutes. It helped that we were seated in a cool, dark space with good ventilation. But regulating my breathing to head off a panic attack was still a distraction. Anything less captivating than Cerrudo probably wouldn’t have held my attention. I wore contacts so my glasses wouldn’t fog. But my prescription has changed since the last time I bought contacts, so I couldn’t see the dancers as clearly as I would have liked, especially since I got used to the clarity of camera close-ups.

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Flexing Old Muscles

I recently wrote an article on kids readjusting to in-person schooling, and my source talked about how they are having to reteach social skills from earlier to grades to kids who have forgotten how to deal with each other in person. Surprisingly, I felt some of that during the performance. Performance really is an interaction, and after a year of digital viewing, I kind of forgot how to watch people on stage without the camera telling me where to look. It felt strange to sit politely in an auditorium seat instead of lounging comfortably on my couch.

The flip side of that was that we were all really happy to be there together again. What the audience lacked in size it made up in enthusiasm, freely distributing cheers and standing ovations the way Seattle audiences did back when we were still just a regional arts center. Even if the energy was skewed by wearing a mask and sitting stiffly, there was still the long-missed air of immediacy. There’s no editing on the stage. Blink and you’ll miss it, because there is no rewind either.

Singularly Cerrudo

Given the celebratory feeling of finally being back in McCaw Hall, any program would feel special. But for anyone who missed the live performances, Singularly Cerrudo is especially strong, and absolutely worth watching digitally, too. This program brings back the big three of Cerrudo’s ballets in the PNB repertory: Silent Ghost, 1000 Pieces, and Little Mortal Jump.

Because I’ve already written at length about each of them, I won’t add much here, except to say that it was great to see once again the many dancers who weren’t involved in many digital productions last year, and to see the ones who were in different pairings outside their pandemic pods. It was also very interesting to see multiple Cerrudo pieces back-to-back. It’s so much easier to recognize common threads when you don’t have to think back two years to the last time you saw his work performed. He has some very specific vocabulary (Does anyone else do a lift where the woman balances on a man’s back in an inverted version of yoga’s king cobra pose? Is it even called a lift if the man’s hands are free?) and common themes (even if you can’t verbalize how, you never fail to appreciate that Cerrudo is working with profound, existential questions).

Silent Ghost

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

Even though the title references death and connotes isolation – both topics we’ve had plenty of in the last year – Silent Ghost feels like the ballet version of a healing anime. It’s a bit of an oxymoron and yet it’s true to say that Silent Ghost is both moving and calming.

Cast I Saw:

Noelani Pantastico
Lesley Rausch
Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan
Cecilia Iliesiu
Genevieve Waldorf

Lucien Postlewaite
Miles Pertl
Ezra Thomson
Price Suddarth
James Yoichi Moore

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One Thousand Pieces

Music: Philip Glass
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo

This was not the entire ballet, but just the central section involving a wet stage, which of course, is the part we were all especially interested in seeing live. Even after seeing it on stage, I have so many questions of the “how” variety.

Cast I Saw:

Yuki Takahashi
Luther DeMyer

Angelica Generosa
Kyle Davis

Elizabeth Murphy
Leah Terada
Elle Macy
Christopher D’Ariano
Dylan Wald

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Little mortal jump

Music: Beirut, Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, Alexandre Desplat, Philip Glass, Hans Otte, Max Richter, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo

Humor in ballet is rare, but Cerrudo really pulls it off. Little Mortal Jump starts out so funny, but it always leaves me gutted at the end. (At least this time my mask absorbed my tears before they could leave streaks on my face.) The really amazing part is that I can never quite pinpoint when the mood changes.

Cast I Saw:

Elle Macy
Dylan Wald

Angelica Generosa
Christian Poppe

Leah Terada
James Yoichi Moore

Leta Biasucci
Price Suddarth

Mark Cuddihee
Dammiel Cruz
Kuu Sakuragi

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Concluding Details

In-person tickets to the four performances of Singularly Cerrudo were only available to subscribers, although you can still buy $35 single tickets for digital access from Oct. 7-11. As a subscriber, I will get to see both, which I honestly think is the best way to go. Even though sitting in an auditorium with a mask on is really hard for me, Singularly Cerrudo was worth it. And it gave me the confidence to do it again for Beyond Ballet in November.

But these three ballets are incredible whether you watch them on the stage or on the screen. If you’re not a subscriber or you just don’t feel safe in the theater, I can wholeheartedly recommend digital tickets. There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach, which is why I say get you a ballet company that can do both.