We Review: Director's Choice @ PNB
PNB's Director's Choice opened last night (through March 22 at McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St; tickets: $20-$150) with a mixed program that seemed designed to rouse sleepers and ruffle feathers. Seattle is not really a walk-out-in-a-huff town--it's more likely to seethe-silently-and-save-up-catty-comments. But still, we did see two separate people march out of William Forsythe's One Flat Thing, reproduced, secure in the knowledge that it was the last piece on the bill.
Paul Gibson's Sense of Doubt, with music by Philip Glass, had its world premiere at Pacific Northwest Ballet last April. At the time, we said: "The minimalist repetition suits the repetition of gesture, while seeing the dance accompaniment humanizes the music," and pronounced it "weirdly entrancing." Taking another crack at describing it, we'd say it's like watching random scenes from a very moody movie. A classical ballet piece without narrative or much in the way of bravura moves (this picture aside), it summons an abiding uneasiness, washed in heavy shadows and beams of light. The opening duo (Carrie Imler and Casey Herd), despite having a thriller-movie soundrack loop to dance to, were oddly tentative. A solo by Noelani Pantastico (PNB's "it" girl, so far as we're concerned) blinked out into darkness, and everyone sighed. But, yes, we were less entranced this time around.
Edwaard Liang's 2006 pas de deux Für Alina is short, but packs a punch. We've said before that it's "an unsettling combination seething desire and cool restraint, all on top of Arvo Pärt's bare-wire piano piece," and here we stand by that. We saw Miranda Weese and Batkhurel Bold, and once again were overcome by the feeling that we were watching the personal play out in real life, a dance equivalent of confessional poetry. Weese and Bold circle each other, caress, pull back, grapple, lift, anchor--and run away, but as if tied by elastic bands. There are some modern dance gestures for contrast, but we're still on firm balletic ground, technically. When Bold, who is as solidly built as a Mack truck, hits the floor, it's startlingly emotional. When Weese weakens near the end, drooping, it's a death scene without histrionics.
While PNB has some experience with Forsythe's hard-edged, contemporary movement (his "Artifact II" and "In the middle, somewhat elevated" have been in the company's repertoire for some years), "One Flat Thing" is a different kind of movement.That "from" is key; we're pretty sure people would argue that "from" ballet is not necessarily ballet. That said, on its merits as dance, we were sold. A work for fourteen dancers and twenty tables, the score is by Dutch composer Thom Willems, deep rumblings and electronic static-noise, squealings and gratings, that aren't all that ear-friendly. At the opening, the twenty polished aluminum little tables get dragged onstage, arranged in larger rectangle. The dancers, outfitted in bright street clothes (if you wear velour leggings on the street), then hang back as two or three approach the tables, jump on top, get slid across, fall underneath, or generally express feats of limberness that fall under the category of "attention-getting." There seem to be rules about who engages and does what when, but the result is a baffling cacophony of organized motion. At its peak, all the dancers are up there, flailing around in rigorously defined ways...and then it all begins to subside. It's one of those things you have to see to believe."It's even different from Bill's other dances, though it still comes from classical ballet somehow," said Johnson. "Trios, with tables, taking so many visual cues from other dancers, too, just the inner mechanism."
1) Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Chalnessa Eames in Paul Gibson’s Sense of Doubt. 2) Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in the PNB premiere of Ulysses Dove’s Vespers. 3) Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in the PNB premiere of William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing, reproduced. All photos © Angela Sterling.
