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Pacific Northwest Ballet corps de ballet dancer Lindsi Dec, soloist Karel Cruz and principal dancer Carrie Imler in the world premiere of Kiyon Gaines’ M-Pulse. (© Angela Sterling )
There is nary a tutu to be seen on Pacific Northwest Ballet's New Works program (through November 16, tickets $25-$155), which is an eclectic collection of dance pieces by Mark Morris, PNB's Kiyon Gaines, Benjamin Millepied, and William Forsythe. Not that we have anything against tutus. In fact, some of our best friends...but that's neither here nor there. We bring it up only to emphasize the leap that Peter Boal is making with PNB, in integrating so many kinds of new works into the company's repertoire.
The stand-out in this program is the world premiere of Millepied's Three Movements, to Steve Reich's 1986 Three Movements for Orchestra. Most everything is shades of gray, costumes and vertical swaths of backdrop included. A principal with New York City Ballet, Millepied creates a "city that never sleeps" excitement with this piece that summons memories of Jerome Robbins, finds a driving, lively urbanism in its minimalist score, and ends with the male dancers soaked in sweat, fitted shirts plastered to their chests. On one hand it's tricky and technically challenging, and on the other it brims with insouciance; Millepied's hectic ensembles are as engaging as the sultry pas de deux, danced here by Carla Körbes and Batkhurel Bold. And the costumes, by Isabella Boylston and Millepied, are all kinds of Euro-stylishly sexy.
Kiyon Gaines' world premiere, M-Pulse, suffers mainly from not having the electric Kiyon Gaines in it. Gaines' choreography is easy to watch, though, and entrancing. His dancers glide offstage in lifts that remove them from the floor but don't emphasize height so much as their languorous drift into the wings. They're en pointe, but also tap the floor as if considering a soft shoe. Interestingly, the ensembles don't pair off, but remain sex-separated, though the score by Cristina Spinei begins a bit like a Radiohead outtake, takes a slow jazz turn, and resolves the two. Gaines gives a smoldering Karel Cruz a threesome quandary, which certainly grabs your attention, though the costumes by Mark Zappone reminded us uncomfortably of Vegas Reno showgirls. We're looking forward to seeing and hearing this again.
One Flat Thing, reproduced sent more traditional ballet fans scurrying for the exits when Peter Boal first introduced it to PNB, and last night its power in that regard proved undiminished. Boal even took the extra step of printing a New York Times review that discussed the work's relevance to ballet in the program. "The partnering is grandly maneuvered, and the encounters grow increasingly dramatic. Nothing is static, everything is alive." Forsythe's work does indeed have a lot to recommend it, especially at a second viewing. The booming, distorted, cacophonic music by Thom Willems can't be friendly to hearing aids, but it also evokes an alien, forbidding, mechanized atmosphere that abets Forsythe's "baroque machinery" of dance. Seen from up close, you're sucked into the gears; from the second balcony, you can take in all 20 metal tables, watch the dancers slap the tops for timing, curl up underneath, or mirror each other across the whole stage while a ball of transferred movement occupies the center. As a balletic take on organizational theory, it's pure effrontery--but it also visualizes, in its human machinery, humanity's interdependence and that's oddly stirring.
It may be only in the context of this program that we were simply entertained by Mark Morris's A Garden. Richard Strauss's score reworks French baroque dance for the orchestra; Morris's choreography is deliberately rarefied and needle-pointy--the dancers' arms are held out in front, palms pressing lightly down, the steps are quick and perfectly placed, even the larger leaps are somehow dainty. The costumes, also by Morris, are simple, dark, earth-toned. You almost can't help finishing the title as A Garden...Party. It's also a case study in finding movement that speaks to the music, rather than that is announced by it, as is sometimes the case with M-Pulse. Luckily, in any event, the music builds as the piece moves along, so that it finishes with some vitality.
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