PNB’s Director’s Choice Showcases Dove, Forsythe & PNB’s Thomson

Cover image: Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Lesley Rausch and Lucien Postlewaite in Ulysses Dove’s “Red Angels” (Photo © Angela Sterling)

Every season, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s artistic director Peter Boal comes up with a program of (usually) contemporary works dear to his heart, called Director‘s Choice, and each year he chooses works new, new to PNB, or favorites of his we may have seen before.

The most exciting work on this season‘s program, which began Friday night at McCaw Hall and runs through March 25 (seven performances), is a new work by company soloist Ezra Thomson, a PNB member since 2010. It’s enormously to Boal’s credit that he encourages company members to choreograph, and then includes their works on programs starting with ones for NEXT STEP, the company’s choreographic showcase. Thomson has had six works premiered there since 2011 and has also choreographed for PNB’s annual school performance and for outside organizations.

His strong work, “The Perpetual State,” opened the program. It isn’t a story ballet, but Thomson describes a personal thread which binds it together—that of grief for the death of his father and love for his wife, both of which are perpetual states. He built it on dancer Leta Biasucci with Jerome Tisserand as her partner, and Karel Cruz as what might be identified as the late father figure and Sarah Ricard Orza as the wife. He also included a corps of twelve, two as leads. Thomson designed the costumes with the advice of PNB’s costume shop manager, Larae Theige Haskell, and the effective backdrop of hanging steel bars (salvaged from the demolition of the old PNB school on the Eastside). He chose Poulenc’s Concerto for two pianos as the music, for which the soloists were Allan Dameron and Christina Siemens, with the orchestra under Emil de Cou.

All of this would have been nothing without the strength of the choreography. As it was, Biasucci danced her prominent role as light as a fairy, with expressive use of her head and body delicately indicating sorrow, aloneness, vulnerability, and love. The body of the father, Cruz, clad in what looked like long underwear but might have been grave clothes, was alternately carried supine at shoulder height or, having come to life tipped vertical and dancing with his wife.

This was a bit bewildering, but Thomson’s mostly classical choreography had all four principals in fluid movement beautifully designed, sometimes mirroring each other, sometimes not. The corps choreography was terrific. He dressed them in black with dark red tops for both, leotards for the men and long skirts for the women, and created kaleidoscopic designs for them using the entire stage. None of it looked contrived, with the dancers seemingly just falling into these patterns, the whole effectively lit by Reed Nakayama, a PNB crew member also making his mainstage debut as a designer.

Two works by William Forsythe and one by Ulysses Dove made reappearances on the rest of the program. Forsythe’s “Slingerland Duet,” a pas de deux from his full-length ballet with music by Gavin Bryars (why did this have to be recorded music? It would have been more effective for this excerpt to have a live string quartet), is a gorgeous slow reminiscence, danced Friday by Laura Tisserand and Karel Cruz. They were rock solid in every beautiful moment, holding long enough to savor what looked almost like Chinese ideographs, one after another.

The other work was his unusual piece “One Flat Thing, Reproduced,” with 14 company members dancing around, over, under and on 20 folding tables, non-stop, and highly athletic. While it is clear only dancers have the kind of flexibility and stamina to do this, can it really be called ballet? Since Forsythe based this on his idea of the collaboration and split-second decision-making required by Scott’s Antarctic expedition, perhaps it was inevitable that the music, by Thom Willems, might sound like the grinding of icebergs crashing and clashing over subterranean creaking, rumbling, and grumbling.

In between came Dove’s “Red Angels,” with four dancers in red, lit by red and white light, dancing separately and together in pairs. All four, as in the previous pas de deux, are principal dancers in the company–Lindsi Dec and Jerome Tisserand, and Lesley Rausch and Lucien Postlewaite–and all showed their skills and strengths in this. Mary Rowell, chosen by Dove to premiere the music by Richard Einhorn on electric violin, came in to do the same for this performance. It’s scratchy music with a repeating pounding beat, which suits the dance effectively. The audience loved it, as they did the entire program, showing their appreciation with bravos and considerable applause for each work.