PNB Stages Sweet Coppélia Premiere
Last night Pacific Northwest Ballet premiered George Balanchine’s Coppélia to great fanfare, as their last repertory program of the 2009-10 season. Balanchine’s foray into storybook ballet, rarely seen outside of New York, here has been freshly reupholstered, drawing out the youth and charm at the heart of the ballet “comedy.” Planning on the production began two-and-a-half years ago, with the scenic and costume departments spending nearly a year building the ballet’s new, original pieces. With a budget of $1.3 million, Coppélia is PNB’s first full-length design commission in seven years.
Again we tramped down to the lecture hall to hear Our Favorite Dance Historian, Doug Fullington, talk about the ballet’s history and the back-story of bringing this production to the stage. (If Fullington recorded himself whispering hours of ballet facts, we would buy it, and play it while we slept.) According to Fullington, Coppélia “marked the passing of ballet supremacy from France to Russia.”
Divided into three distinct acts, Coppélia can be summed up as such: lovers quarrel, lovers unite. The first act, set in “A Village Square in Galicia” (a nondescript Eastern European town), is filled with spunk, with quick-footed mazurka and czardas folk dancing from the villagers and the betrothed Swanilda and Franz. Speaking of Léo Delibes’ score, Artistic Director Peter Boal says, “It works its way under the soles of your feet.” Yet the orchestra, last night under the direction of Nathan Fifield, seemed a tad sleepy in this act, lending the smallest amount of lethargy to otherwise energetic steps.
The lovers end up quarrelling after Franz blows kisses to the toymaker’s “daughter”, Coppélia, silently reading on her balcony. Dusk falls. Swanilda and her gaggle of neighborhood girlfriends discover the key to Dr. Coppelius’ workshop, and sneak inside. Rotten kids!
The second act takes place in the toymaker’s gloomy workshop. The set design is marvelously atmospheric, with spooky dolls and looming bookshelves stacked with tomes (spines stamped with the names of New Works donors). Coppélia is discovered to be a lifeless toy, and Swanilda secretly switches into her clothes, fooling the doctor into thinking his creation has come to life. The ballerina here gets to have some fun, employing the stiff, jostle-limbed look of a mechanical doll. Here also come irritatingly brief dancing bits by the Astrologer Doll, the Juggler Doll, the Acrobat Doll and the Chinese Doll.
We finally see a pas de deux between Franz and Swanilda in the third act, on the day of their wedding, the business with the doll all but forgotten. Several short solos take place amidst a charming corps de ballet of young ballet students, a uniquely Balanchine addition. Boal: “Balanchine offered these ten-to-fourteen year-old future ballerinas elegant choreography, never playing to their cuteness, but rather showcasing them with quality.” This herd of young women pattern onstage in grown-up pink tutus, their smiles infectious, their pride and excitement palpable. Kudos to Garielle Whittle for rehearsing these lovely ballerinas to perfection. Understandably, they got the loudest cheer of all as the curtain came down.
Overall, Coppélia embodies a fun, fresh romanticism, but it has the lowest percentage of actual dancing in any ballet we’ve seen, even compared to pantomime-heavy productions like The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. But the comic ballet is a crowd-pleaser, with the Opening Night audience alternately chucking at Swanilda’s mischievous antics (Kaori Nakamura, in her first time in the role) and sighing as each new set is revealed. Swanilda is undeniably the star of this show, so make sure to go when your favorite principle is dancing the role.
Through June 13th // McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer Street // $25 - $160
