The Pacific Northwest Ballet performs during Jacob's Pillow's last week of the summer. It takes more than a moderate climate, ocean breezes, and lots of rain for a ballet company to flourish, and the Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet yields a well-chosen repertory and dancers from all parts of the U.S. and beyond, who make skill and precision look chosen and invested in, rather than … [Read more...]
BalletBoyz® and Pacific Northwest Ballet
A company from London and one from Seattle visit NYC. History often appears less as a straight line than a looping, occasionally tangling collection of threads. Before Michael Nunn and William Trevitt founded Ballet Boyz in 2000, they were principal dancers with Britain’s Royal Ballet. That’s also the year that Christopher Wheeldon, formerly in that company, stopped dancing in the New York … [Read more...]
Cool Breeze from the West
Pacific Northewest Ballet performs works by Wheeldon, Cerrudo, and Peck in New York. There are forty-three dancers in Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. Unless I’ve miscounted, only nineteen appeared in the company’s season at the Joyce Theater, and the most people to appear in any of the three ballets shown was a dozen. Artistic director Peter Boal’s choice of works to bring to New York … [Read more...]
Fair Winds from the West
Lincoln Kirstein has written that while the New York State Theater (now the Koch) was under construction, George Balanchine wandered in and saw that the pit would hold no more than 35 musicians. He immediately threatened to withdraw the New York City Ballet as the principal designated tenant. The pit was redesigned to accommodate 70 players. Had Balanchine, to whom music was so important, … [Read more...]