PNB's Broadway Festival Hits Its Marks and Then Some

We said Pacific Northwest Ballet's Broadway Festival was an enormous amount of fun, and it sounds like plenty of you figured that out for yourselves. Artistic director Peter Boal just sent out this "Next round's on me!" email: "With 5,250 tickets purchased to date, we have broken the old record for single tickets sold for a mixed repertory program. It is also the highest grossing mixed repertory program in our company's history, surpassing the old record set by Valentine in 2006." Two shows left: Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.

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By MvB in Arts & Events on March 20, 2009 8:20 PM

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Gary

I didn't look up the background of the performers, but they look great doing ballet. In this show there were parts of the tap that were performed turned out. I know it takes many years of study to get that hip flexability for ballet, but it needs to be turned off for tap. And the dancer in the West Side Story bits that needed to be grounded still floated over the stage like ballerinas. Though they had voice coaches (and I know one of the singers who was brought in to sing from the pit) still just about the only word I could understand from the dances singing was the word "America". I'm disappointed because I know Seattle has tap/jazz talent - I've seen them on the stage at 5th Avenue. With the generally high quality of PNB productions and diverse audience they can pull in, I wish they could use the top tap and jazz talent in the city for this show rather than getting what tap & jazz they can out of the best ballet dancers.

MvB

Okay, I won't argue about what you mention here. That's why I described it as "Broadway-style" ballet--there are some standouts in the cast that take to Broadway hoofing more than others, but there's no question you're watching ballet dancers. (Let's not even get into vocal chops--I was just hoping it wouldn't be painful and it mostly wasn't. Though I had no problem, from where I was sitting, hearing "America.") To me, it was interesting watching ballet translate Broadway--but I can also see the appeal of a more mixed-talent cast.

MvB

I enjoyed the show quite a bit. As for the tap, you're incorrect. Jeffrey Stanton studied tap and jazz dance for 10 years, in addition to ballet. If this is the worst thing you've ever seen on a Seattle stage, my god, count yourself very, very lucky.

Gary

Did you go see this show? I have season tickets to PNB and this was not only the worst thing I've seen them do, but possibly the worst thing I've paid to see on a Seattle stage. When you have group of great ballet dancers who have never learned to tap and likely never taken a class in Fossie why choose to perform something your cast cannot do well? If I want to see dancers who are great in their style try to learn and perform styles they don't do, I'll watch So You Think You Can Dance. I feel like PNB showing inferiour quality Broadway work to as large of an audience as they get (many of whom don't know they're not seeing a true eaxmple of the promised style) is doing more harm than good. This had all the quality of a high school production.