Pacific Northwest Ballet is starting their 2019/2020 season
with a powerful pair of 20th century ballets: George Balanchine’s Agon
and Kent Stowell’s Carmina Burana. Paired with crowd-pleaser Carmina
Burana, Agon tends to be a bit overlooked. But as any reader of
fiction knows, it’s never a good idea to overlook the quiet ones.
Pure Dance
As I mentioned before Agon is a dancers’ dance. It’s contemporary ballet stripped down to the essentials. There is no sense of narrative or even character. The dancers wear black leotards with white tights or white ones with black pants. There are no sets and even the lighting is straightforward.
With nothing else going on, you are forced to concentrate on
the movement, which does not lend itself to interpretation. Agon is
really about geometry – dancers move through lines and angles ending in interesting
shapes at pauses in the music. It’s like the world’s most beautiful math class.
Agon gives us surprise and asymmetry rather where classical ballet
offers harmonious balance and satisfied expectations.
Challenging Music
Stravinsky said he was inspired by a 17th century manual of French court dances when he wrote the music for Agon. I will have to take his word for it, because I can’t find the sonic connection. The program booklet describes the score as a
…fiendishly – and to him [Balanchine], delectably – difficult score
-Jeanie Thomas, PNB program
I’m not sure about delectable, but it is certainly difficult
for the listener. I’m open-minded – I don’t think music has to be pretty. In
fact, I’m listening to the new Blood Red Throne as I
write this. Even so, I would have to say the music of Agon is rather
more grating than challenging.
I would never listen to this without the accompanying ballet.
But that’s okay, because the two were (literally) made for each other, and the
score would be pointless without the ballet. When people first start watching
ballet, they often expect each physical movement to tightly bound to each
musical note, as if the dance were the literal physical translation of the music
into movement. As much as it is physically possible to do so, Agon
actually does this. It’s like the section of Fantasia where the oboe is
a squiggly, pink line.
Intellectual Humor
So, yeah, Agon is a ballet more for the head than the
heart. But surprisingly, it also has a lot of humor. Scattered throughout all
the dramatic and elegant shapes are movements that are just – silly. Granted,
the opening night audience was pretty high-energy (Artistic Director Peter Boal
even commented “We got the party crowd tonight” when he came out on stage to address
the audience) but chuckles rippled through the audience several times during Agon.
Sometimes they were in response to funny movements like prissy little hand waves
while walking en pointe. But sometimes the laughter expressed sheer delight and
surprise, like when Lesley Rausch moved from a classic ended up in this iconic
pose in a movement so quick audiences could hardly see how she got there.
Pacific Northwest Ballet is starting their 2019/2020 season (their
47th, for anyone keeping track) with a powerful pair of 20th
century ballets: George Balanchine’s Agon and Kent Stowell’s Carmina
Burana. Both ballets had their PNB premiere in 1993 (the same year I
started attending regularly) but otherwise, they could hardly be more different.
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.
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.
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 20th 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.}
The final program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s regular season is Themes & Variations, a mixed rep of four ballets that finishes with the title piece, George Balanchine’s Theme & Variations. It’s common for PNB to end a mixed rep program with a very traditional Balanchine piece. Balanchine is the foundation of this company, and his more classical pieces are sure to satisfy audiences at the end of an eclectic program, especially one that contains works like The Moor’s Pavane that aren’t for everyone. Theme & Variations is what people think of when they think of ballet.
True Tutu Ballet
Even if you’ve never seen it before, you can tell from the
title that it will be a classical tutu ballet with taxing, academic choreography.
It’s what nonballet-types are afraid they’ll end up watching if they go, and the
sort of thing that beginner balletomanes yearn for as “true ballet.” For the
longest time, I had the sophomoric impression that this sort of ballet was like
being tricked into watching the dancers practice a set of drills. Lots of
technique, but very little choreography – and therefore, kind of boring.
I hesitate to say I’ve graduated into some sort of ballet expertise (because I’m sure I’d be wrong). But for the first time in a long time, I was really able to appreciate the structured choreography of a classical ballet for the way it highlighted the dancers’ abilities. The fluid movement of contemporary dance draws attention away from the effort required to perform it. Those dances ask you to think about other things, and any number of mistakes can be made to look intentional. But classical ballet is naked in its predictability, and, like the X-Games of dance, it invites us to marvel at the dancers’ mastery.
True Beauty
And marvel I did. A lot of the time, classical ballet is more about lines and shapes than combinations of movement. When you allow yourself to focus on the images, there is exquisite beauty in the sculptural poses the dancers hold and in the patterns in which they are arranged on the stage.
If I could stand in Mountain Pose with as much stability as Lesley Rausch does vertical splits on pointe, my yoga teacher would be so proud. Jerome Tisserand seemed almost to disappear when partnering, only to burst into view with bold straight lines and powerful spins when it was his own turn to shine. The corps de ballet, even with the new variation in heights and body types that PNB used to avoid, all molded themselves into synchronous uniformity, fluttering on pointe for ages. Individual expression is very important, but there’s also something very stirring in military precision.
And sometimes, it’s comforting to know what should come next and to trust that the dancers can deliver it.
The final program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2018/2019 season is Themes and Variations, a mixed repertory of four short ballets broken up by two intermissions. In writing, people often talk about the messy middle. You know what you need to make a strong beginning and a dramatic ending, but how do you connect the two? In Themes and Variations, that’s not a problem. Seeming unrelated at first glance, Tarantella and The Moor’s Pavane are the two strong links connecting Price Suddarth’s Signature to Balanchine’s Theme & Variations.
As I wrote before, I’m a little prejudiced against folk dance in ballet, even though it’s ubiquitous and I love high/low juxtapositions in other contexts. So Tarantella is never going to be my favorite ballet. But in this program, it’s a fun follow up to the more elegant celebration in Signature, and a good way to transition from that dance’s expressive movements to the more academic styles that will follow. And for the record, everyone else loves Tarantella – my 15-year-old especially, but also the rest of the dance world.
The Music
There’s some history to the music. According to the program, Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle, written about 100 years before the ballet’s premiere, was probably the first work for piano and orchestra ever written in the U.S. In an interesting twist, the New Orleans-born composer did most of his work outside of the U.S., while the choreographer who used his music came from Russia to compose quintessentially American ballets.
The Characters
Without going so far as to tell a story, there’s a sort of premise about Tarantella that the two dancers are street performers from the region of Naples, drawing a crowd with their dancing chops. Like street performers, the dancers have to have big personalities, with as much humor and charm as dancing skill. Balanchine supposedly wrote this ballet for specific dancers. I don’t know who they were, but if the dance wasn’t dated 1964, I could easily believe he wrote Tarantella for Angelica Generosa and Kyle Davis, who performed it on the day I attended.
It [the music] is a dazzling display piece, full of speed and high spirits. So, I hope, is the dance, which is ‘Neapolitan,’ if you like, and ‘demi-caractèr’. The costumes are inspired by Italy, anyhow, and there are tambourines.”
George Balanchine, Balanchine’s Stories of the Great Ballets
Throw in a bit with a dog and you’ve got a hit, right? Anyhow, Tarantella is classic Balanchine – virtuosic technique with a dash of sass. If you’ve ever wanted to see a ballerina en pointe, hitting a tambourine with her other heel, now is your chance. You can watch it ironically if you want, but it’s all in good fun.
The Moor’s Pavane
(Variations on the theme of Othello)
Music: Henry Purcell (The Gordian Knot Untied, Abdelazer, or The Moor’s Revenge), arranged by Simon Sadoff Choreography: José Limón Direction and Staging: Alice Condodina Costume Design: Pauline Lawrence Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli Running Time: 24 minutes Premiere: August 17, 1949, José Limón Dance Company PNB Premiere: November 12, 1986
No humor here, even though it looks kind of funny at first. It’s quite the counterpoint to the Tarantella, which is fitting, I guess, because the choreography is all about equal and opposite reactions. A distillation of Othello told through the courtly dance (hence, pavane) and the choreographer’s own “Limón technique,” it really doesn’t look like anything else you’ll see on a ballet stage. It might sound pretentious to say so, but if Balanchine’s choreography bookending it was academic, The Moor’s Pavane was intellectual.
Even though I love Shakespeare adaptations and I’m usually all about the new and unusual in dance, I really didn’t like Moor’s Pavane the first time I saw it. I don’t remember who the dancers were, but “His Friend” (the Iago to “The Moor’s” Othello) was genuinely creepy. And I found the gravity-driven movement off-putting.
Today I have very little patience for tragedies about men driven to jealous murder, especially when they hinge on the irony of false accusations (because murder is okay if she’s guilty?!) Those stories can only succeed when you accept the underlying assumption that women are cherished material objects rather than, you know, actual human beings with agency and a right to live.
But I have a lot more patience for learning about dance that doesn’t fit my expectations than I used to. Even learning a little bit about the Limón technique helped me make sense of the dance. And the weird movements, alternately jerky and pendulous, reminded me of medieval puppet shows (much like the one in Hamlet). Even though the ballet was written in 1949, the elaborate costumes, 17th century music, and puppet-like quality of the music dovetailed into a beautifully coherent interpretation of a centuries-old story that, for better or for worse, still has modern relevance.
Cast I Saw
The Moor Joshua Grant His Friend Steven Loch His Friend’s Wife Lindsi Dec The Moor’s Wife Elizabeth Murphy
All four dancers were performing these roles for the first time.
Details
Remaining performances: June 6 – 8 at 7:30 pm and June 9 at 1:00
pm
Tickets ($30-$187) are on sale online, by phone – 206.441.2424, or in person at 301 Mercer Street at Seattle Center. Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to show times at McCaw Hall.
{I attended Themes & Variations courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. The tickets were theirs, but the opinions are mine.}
