The only question about Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Modern Masterpieces program (at McCaw Hall through March 24) is at which point your soul may incandesce. My instinct is that this is likely to occur in the second half, during Ulysses Dove’s Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven or Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, with its spectacular use of the “fog of minimalism.” Continue reading PNB’s Modern Masterpieces Lives Up to the Hype
Where Apollo is restrained asceticism, Carmina Burana, by contrast, is on the other end of the spectrum. As the curtain opens, audience members gasped at the sight of the Seattle Choral Company suspended upstage above the stage, as set designer Ming Cho Lee’s ginormous “wheel of fortune” looms above the rest of the stage. Continue reading O Fortuna! PNB’s Pits Apollo vs. Carmina Burana at McCaw Hall
For some of us, it just isn’t the holiday season without The Nutcracker (tickets still available for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production, now through December 27 at McCaw Hall). Having worked for a regional ballet company, I’ve seen probably over 100 Nutcracker performances. And for some reason, I keep coming back–it’s part of the holidays for me. New traditions have also been added, such as watching Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, but this one endures. So what do I get out of seeing, say, my 104th Nutcracker performance? Continue reading No, You Can’t See PNB’s Nutcracker Too Many Times
