"Gloria’s Cause" is choreographer Danya Hanson’s first full-bodied ensemble piece since her 33 Fainting Spells days, and she has packed it more fully, and dug more deeply, than anything she’s done before. If her early works with Gaelen Hanson were like dense short stories, and her later works with Hanson, Peggy Piacenza, and Linus Phillips were … [Read more...]
PNB’s Savory “Director’s Choice”
Every program, really, is Peter Boal’s “Director’s Choice.” It’s now six years into his reign as artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet and today’s audiences are reaping the fruits of his vision and labor. The risks Boal has taken in recent years (challenging his dancers/audiences with everything from live singing in the “West Side Story … [Read more...]
“Coppélia” gets a makeover from the pros
[slideshow] “Coppélia has been called one of the happiest ballets in existence . . . one of the triumphant comic ballets.” With that upbeat line, Pacific Northwest Ballet has been staging a massive advertising campaign for the Seattle premiere of George Balanchine’s 1974 version of “Coppélia.” It seems to be working: Opening night brought out a … [Read more...]
Plucking Dancers from the Corps
(First published on Crosscut.) In ballet’s caste system, the corps de ballet is the lowest rank and the largest body — at Pacific Northwest Ballet right now there are 25 corps dancers, which is more than the number of principals (13) and soloists (7) combined. Everyone knows it’s a grueling job. Corps dancers have to perform more frequently than … [Read more...]
Rufus Wainwright’s ‘Prima Donna’
Back in February, I had the opportunity to see the newly restored Technicolor print of "The Red Shoes" as it passed through Seattle on an international tour. It's a grand, dramatic film with a power that sneaks up on you. It heats so very slowly that by the end the unsuspecting audience finds itself suddenly submerged in a boiling cauldron like one … [Read more...]
3 by Dove (And 1 by Quijada)
Pacific Northwest Ballet Marion Oliver McCaw Hall March 18 – 28, 2010 This is just a quick note about the unusual program of Ulysses Dove pieces running at Pacific Northwest Ballet throughout the weekend. I saw it on opening night -- I imagine the program is just getting stronger and tighter as the nights progress. An African-American … [Read more...]
Salt Horse presents “Man on the Beach”
It is so damn hard to get allegorical storytelling translated into movement. Images fall flat, or feel overweighted, or just so free-floating and random that the stage becomes an endless crazy carnival written in an unknowable tongue. But here in Seattle, the legacy of great achievers in movement poetry (33 Fainting Spells, Pat Graney, Robert … [Read more...]
“The Sleeping Beauty” at Pacific Northwest Ballet
My most treasured book on dance is Leon Harris’ 1970 black-and-white photo essay, The Russian Ballet School. Though the school environs reek with Soviet-era drabness (stained floors, stitched clothing, barren concrete buildings in snowfields), there is also an elegant, Tsarist quality to the faces of the young dancers — haughty girls; handsome, … [Read more...]
Bruno Beltrão’s Grupo de Rua in “H3″
[First published on Seattle Dances.] I have been waiting all fall for the Seattle debut of Bruno Beltrão’s company, Grupo de Rua. From what I read, I expected to see dark, volcanic Brazilian street dancers performing hip-hop without the accompanying loud, rapping pulse -- to thus feel time stilled and movement writ large. Though hip hop started up … [Read more...]
Bruno Beltrão’s Grupo de Rua
At On the Boards, Fri - Sun Jan 28 - 31, 2010 @ 8pm. This ghostly, washed-out photo of Grupo de Rua, the contemporary Brazilian troupe run by Bruno Beltrão that's performing at On the Boards this weekend, is actually a good indicator of the luminous cinematic quality of H3, a 50-minute dance work for nine men. (Check Seattle Dances soon for a full … [Read more...]