Two highly anticipated, top-draw Nutcracker productions that premiered on the West Coast last season -- Peter Boal’s new setting of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, and Alexei Ratmansky’s 2010 “The Nutcracker” for American Ballet Theatre, now relocated to Costa Mesa -- had somewhat soft landings their … [Read more...]
The Consolation of Concert Dance
After the multiplying images of Japan’s natural disasters of the last week-plus, is there any way to ram some sort of grounding stick into place? In this glass-walled age where one nation’s disaster is seen and felt by people around the world, how does the imagistic snowball ever stop rolling? How does one hold tragedy’s drowning force and time’s … [Read more...]
Cinderella’s Closet
[This piece originally ran on Crosscut.] When a three-quarter-length tulle ballet skirt hits a certain sweet spot on the calf, it evokes one of the most pleasing iconic ratios — think of the lip of a bell encircling its clapper or the curving girth of a willow tree around its trunk. Fill a stage with a perfect storm of these swirling, swaying … [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...]
“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...]