New to PNB, Possokhov’s ‘RAkU’ Packs a Huge Punch

Cover image: Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Noelani Pantastico in Yuri Possokhov’s RAkU (Photo © Angela Sterling)

It was Noelani Pantastico’s night, there was no doubt; but also the creators who gave her such a vehicle in which to triumph: the choreographer of RAkU, Yuri Possokhov, and its commissioned composer, Shinji Eshima. A searing, moving work, RAkU received its Pacific Northwest Ballet premiere Friday night at McCaw Hall, as one of three ballets in this repertory program.

It’s not a story ballet, but Possokhov based it loosely on an incident which shocked all Japan, the 1950 burning of Kyoto’s ancient and beautiful Zen temple, the Golden Pavilion, by a disturbed acolyte. In RAkU (the spelling is intentional), a Princess and her husband, the Shogun, dance their love for each other in the temple environs, until he has to leave for war with his four soldiers.

Left behind, the Princess is stalked, assaulted and ultimately violated by an unhinged, predatory monk. The soldiers return, bearing the sword and ashes of her husband, killed in battle. Meanwhile the monk sets fire to the temple. With nothing left to live for, the Princess pours ashes on her head and crumples down, on the sword.

RAkU only lasts a half hour or so, but packs a huge punch. Friday, Pantastico as the Princess epitomized all the emotions in her movements, her happiness shining in her graceful arm and head movements dancing with her Shogun husband, Seth Orza, who reciprocated in a pas de deux. Her sense of loss at his departure was followed by her increasingly horrified, frantic efforts to escape the monk. Here her face, mouth open, eyes staring, her arms, flailing wild, her fingers spread like claws, riveted the eyes, while the monk, here Kyle Davis, fists clenched, head thrust forward, went after her, grabbed her and tossed her around increasingly roughly. She sank like a pricked balloon when he left, then gathered herself only to find desperately portrayed desolation as the soldiers deliver the ashes.

It’s hard to look elsewhere when Pantastico is dancing in this, but the choreography for each character is descriptive, original and pertinent, and each performer inhabited his role to the fullest. For the soldiers it is military, ceremonial: Guillaume Basso, Dammiel Cruz, Miles Pertl, and Dylan Wald moved together with precision in their close formation figures.

RAkU would be extraordinary on a bare stage in practice clothes, but both scene and costume designs, by Alexander V. Nichols and Mark Zappone respectively, add considerably to the ambiance, as does Christopher Dennis’ lighting. The backdrop is blowup photos of the actual pavilion, broken into sections, of the outside, the inside, and the cherry blossom, and then, when the monk, with flares in each hand, purposely sets each part alight and the whole erupts in flames, we see afterward the actual photo of the burned shell.

Zappone’s costumes suggest Japan sometime in the past. The soldiers’ garb might be chain mail with helmets. They and the Shogun have long skirts in back, open in front, while the bald monk is in black and the Princess in pristine white.

Eshima’s music is fairly spare and uses only Western orchestral instruments, but points to Japan with gongs, marimba, bells and drums, each part evocative of what is going on on stage. Emil de Cou conducted the PNB orchestra.

While RAkU was the centerpiece of PNB’s program, the other works were worth seeing and well performed, neither new to the company. In Alejandro Cerrudo’s Little Mortal Jump, several couples did fine work, particularly Dylan Wald and Elizabeth Murphy in the long pas de deux towards the end.

The final work, Crystal Pite’s Emergence, is another very strong work, enigmatic, dark. Although splendidly danced, it felt too much to have it follow RAkU, where perhaps something airier, more abstract, would have been easier to assimilate, to soothe our shocked senses.