Recent Stories with tag carla korbes

Special to The SunBreak by Scott Bernard.

Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker kicked off its 26th season last (Black) Friday night (it runs through December 30; tickets are $26 and up). The date was especially fitting, in that a successful Nutcracker production is to most ballet companies what successful holiday sales are to Nordstrom.

If you haven’t seen it, what makes this production different from others done in countless cities--and from the New York City Ballet/George Balanchine version televised on PBS this time of year--is its depth. With sets and costumes by Where the Wild Things Are author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, this production benefits from his tendency to embrace the darker side of childhood.

Napping on Christmas Eve, young Clara dreams of her godfather, Herr Drosselmeier, who conjures a valiant Nutcracker character to protect the lovely Princess Pirlipat from the evil Mouse King. That doesn’t go so well, the Nutcracker is defeated, and the Mouse King bites the Princess. Fail.

Later that evening at a Christmas party hosted by her parents, Clara receives the gift of a Nutcracker doll from the dysfunctional, eye-patch-sporting Drosselmeier. Her little brother Fritz is given a Mouse King doll, and doing what little brothers do when egged on by their bizarre godfathers, chases Clara, breaking the Nutcracker doll. Drosselmeier bandages the Nutcracker with his handkerchief, and dancing ensues. The guests slowly leave, but not before Dosselmeier whispers to Clara something that seriously creeps her out. (Where is Chris Hansen when you need him?)

When Clara gets out of bed at midnight to find her Nutcracker, she trips over and injures one of the little mice scurrying about. This ignites sectarian tensions between the mice and Nutcracker loyalists. Battle ensues, and the Nutcracker army wins (Mission Accomplished!) thanks to a shoe thrown by Clara. As a reward, the Nutcracker takes the suddenly adult Clara (sorry, Drosselmeier) to what looks to be one of Saddam’s palaces, where dancers from various countries perform for their viewing pleasure.

As young Clara, Eileen Kelly had the right presence and grace. Daniel Bryson-Deane was terrific as her little brother Fritz, bringing a genuine touch to the role without going over the top. As the adult Clara, Carla Körbes danced with technical precision, lyricism and feeling. Stanko Milov was a perfectly fine Nutcracker, although there wasn’t much chemistry between Körbes and Milov. Arianna Lallone danced the role of the Peacock in the way that only she can. (Hers are seriously tough pointe shoes to fill.) The excellent PNB corps was a bit out of sync in the snow scene at the end of Act One, but was tight for the Waltz of the Flowers, led by Mara Vinson....

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If you've only ever seen Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare's tragedy, bathing in the incandescence of its lyrical fireworks, you've seen only half the story that could be told. Pacific Northwest Ballet's Roméo & Juliette (at McCaw Hall through October 4, tickets $25-$160) takes the black-and-white of words, words, words, and transforms it into the technicolor of bodies in motion. That PNB can field the likes of Carla Körbes, Lucien Postlewaite, Olivier Wevers, Jonathan Porretta, and Ariana Lallone moves us into metaphorical HD territory.

Jean-Christophe Maillot's choreography would be arresting if you weren't so engrossed in simply watching it unfold the story of our two doomed lovers. As in the best musicals, when it feels somehow inevitable for a character to burst into song, with Maillot you feel flashes of recognition as ballet is reconstituted to mean something again.

When I first saw this production, I set aside Maillot's reworking of the role of Friar Laurence. On second viewing, I have to admit I was too caught up in the feverish spectacle the first time to see what Maillot is up to. His ballet, after all, begins with Friar Laurence, who will spend the intervening time until the tomb aiding and abetting love's course, and impotently trying to forestall tragedy.

He's a counterpart to the score by Prokofiev, in which every unchained melody hovers over an ominous, rumbling murmur from the pit. He's a counterpart to us, the audience. Opening the evening as he does, he returns with us to the scene of the trauma Western civilization can't seem to escape (we've been retelling the story for over 500 years). If you think about it, there's complicity embedded in the desire to hear the story one more time.

Perhaps that's why Maillot has given Friar Laurence (and the fiendishly talented Olivier Wevers) a modern dance vocabulary--attired like a Jerome Robbins escapee, Wevers ties himself in knots of conflicted aims. He floats in and out, darts between the two lovers like an interfering ghost, spirits Juliette away into a pas de deux of abnegation. In the play, a vial of poison sounds like a plan--in dance, it's a seduction.

It's hardly possible to make too much of the teenage heat thrown off by Maillot's Roméo and Juliette. It's not the airbrushed trapped-in-TV-amber artifact of the CW's 90210 retread (Future Anthropologist: "They fetishized a fantasy of recycled adolescence"), but is full of stumbles, stolen kisses, awkward strainings, and blind gropings. I did not stop to count the number of feels copped in the ballet, but you almost expect to see a separate grab-ass choreography listing. The crudeness is refreshing....

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