We Review: Director's Choice @ PNB

If you didn't know that Ulysses Dove's Vespers was inspired by memories of his grandmother and the chapel where she met with other women to worship, you'd probably still get, from the upraised imploring arms, the simple black dresses, a sense of religious devotion. But the ferociously unrelenting percussion score by Mikel Rouse is what elevates this from simple pictures of piety. It begins with a woman and a chair; she stands on it, leans from it, walks away and comes back. Another woman comes in and tries to move the chair. That won't do. It's put back. Later there will be more than enough chairs for everyone (the terrific ensemble of Rachel Foster, Carrie Imler, Noelani Pantastico, Kaori Nakamura, Lindsi Dec, Jodie Thomas); in fact there will be two sets on either side of the stage. But instead of two women, there will be two groups of three, holding arms upraised, slashing one-armed slaps, resting their feet on the chair. This is not PNB's typical fare, but the dancers took to it unreservedly with the kind of pop and hustle that we see more often at Spectrum. The woman behind us said to her friend, "That's the best thing I've seen here in a long time." About One Flat Thing, reproduced, which hasn't been put on before by an American company, Moira Mcdonald said:

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.

"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."

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.

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.