Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Season Encore Performance is always a delicious look back at highlights of the past nine months plus a goodbye to and celebration of those dancers who are retiring. Each one gets to choose something they would like to perform in, whether they be a principal dancer retiring full of honors, or a corps member moving on to other careers.
It is a bittersweet moment to see the final performances here of principal dancer Karel Cruz, whose past 16 years with the company have been ones of steady rise to his current pinnacle. It’s always been a pleasure to watch him on stage, both in his solos—his ability to whip those long legs and arms around in leaps and turns which are also inherently musical—but also as partner in many pas de deux where he is always there for his ballerina, using his strength and understanding unobtrusively to highlight her gifts, give her more lift, steadier balance.
For Season Encore Sunday night, he danced in just two works: with his wife of nine years, principal Lindsi Dec, in the final pas de deux from Ratmansky’s Don Quixote, and with principal Lesley Rausch in Balanchine’s Diamonds. In both, he showed just those gifts mentioned above. In Don Quixote, the performance stopped halfway thanks to tumultuous standing applause from the audience (people may have thought it was the end) and then again at the finish. Dec’s rock solid 32 fouettées brought their own well-deserved applause, and at his solo bow, their tiny son, aged two, walked out on stage with aplomb and a tiny bunch of flowers for his dad.
The other three retirees, soloist Matthew Renko, and corps members Carli Samuelson and Nicole Rizzitano, each danced in their chosen pieces: Renko as a quick and quirky partner to a delightfully impish Angelica Generosa in Balanchine’s Tarantella, Rizzitano as part of the small corps in “America” from Robbins’ West Side Story, and Samuelson in the Sugar Plum Fairy’s pas de deux from Balanchine’s Nutcracker with soloist Ezra Thomson as her cavalier. Each received a bouquet of flowers along with solo bows at the end of their performances.
Both Samuelson and Rizzitano received career-transition education funding through PNB’s Second Stage program. Samuelson will intern this summer with former PNB dancer Kari Brunson, who now owns two food businesses (Juicebox and Frankie & Jo’s), and then will be attending culinary school this fall; Rizzitano is completing her Pilates instructor certification.
Rounding out the program were a couple of memorable moments from the past season: the debuts of principal Sara Ricard Orza and corps member Dylan Wald in a pas de deux from Swan Lake. Orza is always a pleasure to watch though she seemed not quite as steady as usual Sunday, while Wald is an up-and-coming dancer who imbued his partnering in this with a sense of tenderness. And it was sheer joy to see a reprise of Wheeldon’s After the Rain with principals Elizabeth Murphy and Seth Orza. It’s a mesmerizing slow and gentle unfolding of love to which these dancers give a flow and seeming ease which belies the extraordinary strength and control each must have to dance this well.
At the finish, after the grand finale of Diamonds with its disciplined corps of 16 men and 16 women, Cruz received enthusiastic plaudits not only from the audience but from Rausch and the entire cast behind him; then, with more flowers, from artistic director Peter Boal, music director Emil de Cou, his parents, his wife plus son, as the audience erupted and confetti and balloons showered down from above. Cruz will perform with the company in their multiple appearances at Les Étés de la Danse Festival (in Paris June 25 to July 7), but this was the last we in Seattle will see him at McCaw Hall.
Cover image: Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Karel Cruz takes his final bows amidst flowers, confetti, and balloons during PNB’s Season Encore Performance, June 10, 2018. (Photo © Lindsay Thomas)
