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Depending on how quickly we post this, there are two more showings of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Laugh Out Loud Festival's Program B today, at 1 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $20-$80. We don't know about you, but with all the sleet and snow this weekend, we've been craving some silly indoor festivities. This fills the bill to a T.
Program B presents a light-hearted world premiere from the PNB's Olivier Wevers, "Shindig," with music by Anderson, Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schubert, and Stravinsky; the jumping-with-joyful-absurdity of "Ordinary Festivals" by Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig set to Italian folk music; the campy gigglefest "The Dying Swan," choreographed by Michel Fokine to music by Camille Saint-Saëns, and Susan Stroman's showstopper "TAKE FIVE ... More or Less" to the jazz standard by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.
We were at the Best of the Fest last night, which included all of the above. The evening is bookended by two works that showcase the unexpected, Wevers' "Shindig" and the Pearson/Widrig "Ordinary Festivals." In Wevers' piece, the music sets the anarchic tone, from "Flight of the Bumblebee" to "Plink! Plank! Plunk!" The costumes are just as gaudy and jumbled. Wevers has fun with a bumblebee leg extension for Chalnessa Eames (we'd never seen a leg buzz before), but the most giddily jubilant part is a dance-for-the-fun-of-it pas de deux for Lucien Postlewaite and Kaori Nakamura, who kept the complex lighter than air. Carrie Imler closed with a solo that Wevers gleefully admitted kept her rushing to catch up to the music, and included a series of spins that made us lose count on account of dizziness.
"Ordinary Festivals" is a piece for 16 dancers and 300 oranges. The costumes evoke an austere fascist-era Italy--and so does a PA address to the assembled at the beginning in which we think we heard the word "fascisti"--but the sober regimentation soon breaks down. A man and a woman compete to catch thrown oranges with knives; the woman wins but the man is announced the winner. A rug is brought in and danced, jumped, and rolled on. We're not sure how feasible it is to capture the gleeful anarchy that ensues, but the bizarre dance "fits" did make the audience burst into laughter more than once.
"The Dying Swan," danced by Joshua Grant is a short but hilarious bit of mockery in which a more-muscled-than-usual ballerina floats out en pointe, shedding feathers from her tutu, and suffering some alarming lapses in technique. Grant invests Katerina Bychkova with the strained nobility of the demented. At the curtain call, which goes on about as long as the work, all unpleasantness is forgotten.
We suppose it's possible to stink up the stage with Brubeck, but you'd have to work at it. Susan Stroman's "TAKE FIVE ... More or Less" just works. Watching it the second time, we realized it's a throwback in some ways, a Gene Kelly take full of fire and panache, and straight-up hoofin' (even a little slinky soft-shoe). The colors are bright, the ballerinas in equally bright, shimmery silk dresses, and the sexiness hits its height during a solo number for Kari Brunson, in fire-engine red. If there's a weak spot, it's that the work is so eager to please it pulls out all the stops for a big finish that's more Broadway than ballet. That's quibbling. Ballet, as an evening like this proves, can be a big tent.
Photos: (top) Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Lucien Postlewaite and principal dancer Kaori Nakamura in the world premiere of Olivier Wevers’ "Shindig." (bottom) Joshua Green as the ballerina Katerina Bychkova in "The Dying Swan." (© Angela Sterling)
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