It's been six years since Peter Boal took the artistic reins at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and this year he's made the Director's Choice program PNB's 2010-2011 season opener. The wacky Sechs Tänze (Six Dances) - from former Nederlands Dans Theater Artistic Director and choreographer Jirí Kylián - is a new aquisition for the company, as is Jerome Robbins' three-part Glass Pieces. Kylián's Petite Mort premiered in last season's Director's Choice program; you'll get the chance to see it again here. Jardí Tancat, from Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato, is an audience favorite, resurrected. Created within a decade of each other, the works in this program present a world-wide slice of dance innovation in the mid-to-late eighties. more ›

PNB's Director's Choice opened last night (through March 22 at McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St; tickets: $20-$150) with a mixed program that seemed designed to rouse sleepers and ruffle feathers. Seattle is not really a walk-out-in-a-huff town--it's more likely to seethe-silently-and-save-up-catty-comments. But still, we did see two separate people march out of William Forsythe's One Flat Thing, reproduced, secure in the knowledge that it was the last piece on the bill. more ›

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