Cover image: Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Sarah Ricard Orza with company dancers in Jessica Lang’s Her Door to the Sky (Photo © Angela Sterling)
The annual Director’s Choice program at Pacific Northwest Ballet (through March 26) is always an adventure for the audience and often for the dancers as well. This time Boal chose one work completely new to the company: David Dawson’s “Empire Noir;” one which the company performed a couple of years ago, William Forsythe’s “New Suite” (couldn‘t he have chosen a more interesting name for it?), and Jessica Lang’s “Her Door to the Sky,” which PNB co-commissioned and premiered last summer at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, but which had not yet been seen here.
While all these works were created in the past four years and are unmistakably modern in action and sometimes in music, their classical heritage is evident as well. All use dancers en pointe, the pas de deux is honored, and steps are largely classic. It’s the way they are put together and the use of the stage space which sets them apart and makes them so original in concept. Only a few movements are clearly of today, like the dancers running across the stage in the Dawson as though they were athletes running onto the field, feet flexed, arms pumping back and forth.
John Otto created the arresting set of Dawson’s piece, like the prow of a great ship seen as it rises from the ocean, all black and haloed with silvery light. Bert Dalhuysen lit the set and dancers indirectly, the dancers all in black body-hugging costume (Yumiko Takeshima). Together with Greg Haines’ steadily rhythmic music including drums and woodblocks, percussive but not irritatingly so, these all contributed to the work’s success. Dawson choreographed for five couples, essentially a fast-paced abstract work which never stops and with seamless, imaginative lifts and holds in which different dancers came to the fore. Joshua Grant unfolded his big body and long limbs fluidly here, Elle Macy and Jerome Tisserand with their different partners showed well (as they did together in the Forsythe).
In his “New Suite” Forsythe, no stranger to PNB, creates eight individual pas de deux, some quite short and all quite different to music as varied as Handel—three at the start and the last one—two by Berio and one by Bach. One of Boal’s hallmarks is his choice to cast dancers from the corps in solo roles, giving them chances to shine and show their individual abilities. It’s rare though for him to cast a company apprentice as he did in the Saturday night performance when Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan partnered corps member Christian Poppe as the second Handel couple. They both did well, and Poppe is coming up strongly.
Dylan Wald is another rising dancer, partnering an excellent Sarah Ricard Orza. In both Berio sections, the mood was much edgier and Emma Love Suddarth and Grant came across like a manipulator and a succubus. The final pas de deux was the prize, however, with Angelica Generosa dancing like a butterfly to Handel’s music and Kyle Davis a superb partner. Generosa, like Pantastico, is one of those you can’t drag your eyes from when she is on stage.
Lastly, the Lang work is a joy to watch. She took Georgia O’Keefe’s “Patio Door” series as her inspiration, and herself created a set which showed an adobe wall with eight small windows along the lower level and a big picture window opening above in the middle. Bradon McDonald’s flowing dresses are in desert flower colors and the light, well, it is desert light (Nicole Pierce). Set to Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, Elizabeth Murphy led a group of five men and five women, rarely dancing as partners but with a rushing flow of smooth, kaleidoscopic movement.
PNB’s orchestra was led by Allan Dameron for the Dawson and Emil de Cou for the other works, while concertmaster Michael Jinsoo Lim and Emilie Choi were the violin soloists in the Forsythe. As usual, the musicians and their leaders held up their reputation as arguably the best ballet orchestra in the country.
