Cover image: Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Elizabeth Murphy (center) with company dancers in ‘La Source,’ choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust (Photo © Angela Sterling)
All three ballets on Pacific Northwest Ballet’s current repertory program, performed through June 11, are new to the company, very different from each other, and ones it will be exciting to see again.
Balanchine’s classically designed “La Source” to music by Delibes is a showcase for a top-notch ballerina, which it received Saturday night in the form of Noelani Pantastico. In a salmon red tutu, she was poetry in movement and as light as a feather. It was hard to take eyes off her, except to note the excellent partnering of Kyle Davis. Balanchine later added to the piece a second ballerina, here danced by Elle Macy, and eight corps women. While they were all perfectly adequate it had to be hard for any dancer to follow Pantastico’s performance. The contrast was noticeable.
Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in Alexei Ratmansky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (Photo © Angela Sterling)
Jerome Robbins’ “Opus 19/The Dreamer” was originally created for Mikhail Baryshnikov, and it is unlike any other Robbins work we have seen in Seattle. Most have been sassy, fun, often impish, like “On the Town.” This one is serious, essentially about a loner who connects with women but only temporarily. The choreography is often angular, sharp-edged, sometimes dreamy, evocative of the protagonist’s state of mind, and matches its music, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1.
Benjamin Griffith did a masterly job of conveying the emotions attending the role while triumphantly achieving this tricky and demanding choreography, requiring strength, timing, and agility, often at speed. As his sometime-girlfriend, Rachel Martin had some problems feeling the music as clearly. Her timing was often not together with Griffiths, nor was she always together with partners in the subsequent ballet. Robbins gave most of the dreamier states the music conjures to the corps of six men and six women, the feel mirrored by the simple, graceful shifts the women wore.
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Rachel Foster with company dancers in Alexei Ratmansky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (Photo © Angela Sterling)
There was no set for either of these works, but for Alexei Ratmansky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the backdrop was Kandinsky’s “Color Study Squares with Concentric Circles,” with partial deconstruction or reconstruction in projections designed by Wendall K. Harrington.
Mussorgsky’s “Pictures,” using the original piano score and payed here by Allan Dameron, is familiar to many as a stroll through a picture gallery with musical promenades from one drawing to the next, and then musical commentary on several of them. Ratmansky did not follow this outline, but used the ten dancers in different combinations and numbers, with the music as starting points for his imagination rather than dictated ideas.
Each section, seamlessly following the previous one, was different in style—some abandoned, some in lines, some totally unexpected, some very classical, some couples—and in energy, with different dancers coming to the fore in different parts. A pas de deux by Elizabeth Murphy and Karel Cruz stood out for the exquisite flow and grace of her dancing, and fine partnering by Cruz. Costumes for the women were short floaty loose tunics in the Kandinsky colors, with the men in leotards echoing the same colors.
The whole was absorbing, fascinating to watch as was indeed the entire program. Dancing was on a high level the whole evening from all the company.