Results tagged “pacificnorthwestballet”

After twenty-five seasons as Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Music Director, Stewart Kershaw tendered his resignation Tuesday in a letter to the company, effective immediately. In his announcement, Kershaw stated, “Please understand that I am now 68, have been a professional ballet conductor for the last 43 years, and recently completed 25 seasons as PNB's Music Director. It is also exactly 20 years since my efforts to create the PNB Orchestra were rewarded in October 1989.”

We have come late to the Nadeau appreciation society--after 17 years, that bandwagon has left the station and steamed from the harbor--but it struck us that there was something extraordinary in a 45-year-old ballerina pulling Forsythe's Urlicht out of the hat for a retirement program.

• A part of University of Washington football history was lost over the weekend, when former UW coach Jim Owens (yes, he's the statue in front of Husky Stadium) died at the age of 82.
• Sporting many shades of pink, thousands were out to "Race for the Cure." Grand Marshaling the quest was SPD Lt. Robin Clark.
• Tiny dancer Louise Nadeau took the ballet stage for the last time on Sunday, as she finished her 19-year career at the Pacific Northwest Ballet with a program that naturally concluded with Swan Lake.

       

PNB's exuberant festival hits you with what you've been missing--the panache of feeling good and knowing it. Before each ballet in its Broadway Festival (through March 22, tickets $25-$160), Pacific Northwest Ballet rolls a clip--for Jerome Robbins' West Side Story Suite it was a trailer for the West Side Story movie. As the Jets began snapping their fingers, the audience in McCaw Hall snapped theirs right back. No laughter, just snap...snap...snap.

We have to start here by jumping in and saying that this is easily one of the most exciting weekends of theatre we've seen in town in months--two festivals running, genre-breaking opera, ballet crossing over into Broadway show tune territory, two shows that have had their runs extended (, you've lost your bloody mind. It doesn't get better than this!

       

It's admittedly contrary of us to be looking for a way "in" to George Balanchine's Jewels (TM). Jewels are meant to be looked at. That's why we've put the photos up at the top of this post. Why type our fingers to the bone when you can just take a gander online and decide if that's your kind of thing?

The moon always seems to be full in Maurice Sendak's illustrations. He's done some 90 children's books, two of them cherished icons (Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen), along with one ballet. As it happens, Seattle is the beneficiary of this unique venture into set-and-costume design: the wildly popular Nutcracker, which celebrates its 25th season this year.

      

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.

Pacific Northwest Ballet has been putting on a terrific series of educational events the last few weeks: there was the Twyla Tharp-narrated rehearsal of her two new works, and then Doug Fullington gave us firsthand foreign policy experience by showing us real Russian choreography.

WAMU'S KRAUSS PLANT: Tonight's the night: some old dude named Robert Plant is appearing with the angelically voiced Alison Krauss. They're touring for the album Raising Sand, which Rolling Stone praised for its "relaxed, smoky harmonies and reverbed midtempo rockabilly." All ages. Or you could go see Great Big Sea with all these people.

Tomorrow night the "All Tharp" program begins at Pacific Northwest Ballet (and runs through October 5--tickets here).

Rudolph Valentino. Ray Charles. Jerry Lee Lewis dancing on pianos, for God's sake! Dance in Seattle had anything but a boring 20th century. We were prowling around the internet this morning and discovered that today is the anniversary of the date the city banned a really bizarre but popular 1920s and '30s fad called "dance marathons" within its city limits. That was enough to pique our interest, and we've spent the day researching what was happening in the world of dance during the 20th century. Here are some of the highlights, thanks in large part to our favorite local history website: HistoryLink.org.

      

On Monday Bumbershoot was a smoldering guyville. And we have the photos to prove it. Who knows why the festival was so testosterone heavy, but if boys were your thing, you had a grab bag to choose from.

       

Macho, moody, and whimsical, PNB's All Robbins program is a stand-up triple, if not a home run (at McCaw Hall through June 8; tickets: $20-$150). Actually the Mariners could learn a lot from the raw athleticism, discipline, and teamwork on display. Opening night's Fancy Free sparked and fizzed erratically; conductor Stewart Kershaw, swinging the baton sans panache, kept Bernstein's charged score sounding off-kilter. But PNB rallied during In the Night, and by the time The Concert wrapped up, even the golf-clappers in the audience were on their feet cheering.

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.

    

If we learned anything at Pacific Northwest Ballet's Laugh Out Loud Spring Festival last night, it was that pointing your fingers while dancing en pointe is hee-larious. Ba-dum-ching. We'll be here all week. The fest, another genre-busting divergence from the norm by director Peter Boal, aims to celebrate all that is wacky and funny about ballet. They mean funny "ha-ha" but there's some funny "strange" thrown in as well.

    

"Ah, this is ballet," sighed one white-haired woman to another. And then, for emphasis, "This is ballet." Originally choreographed by George Balanchine, this is Francia Russell's staging of the master's A Midsummer Night's Dream (at McCaw Hall through April 13, tickets $20-$150). It's "real" ballet in the way that a Cheever short story signifies the New Yorker. But we're not here to beat up on oldsters, according to our parole officer--and neither is the Peter Boal-led Pacific Northwest Ballet, which approached the work with a captivating intensity, driving straight for its muscular, passionate heart.

First we heard that principal dancer Casey Herd was moving to Amsterdam to join the Dutch National Ballet; now we learn that 27-year-old Noelani Pantastico is spreading her wings to join Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, which is led by Jean-Christophe Maillot. We totally would not have praised his choreography so much if we'd known he was going to steal one of our dancers.

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.

We'll tell you right now, there is just not going to be a better Valentine's Day-ish gift than this Roméo et Juliette.

Do dancers hibernate in winter? There's an explosion of dance activity coming up as January draws to a close. Had we but world enough and time, we'd go to all these shows, but time's chariot won't permit us to make up all the stops. Here's the wealth you have to choose from:

For a quarter century, Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, artistic directors of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, stood at the summit of Seattle's cultural elite. Russell founded the company's ballet school and still travels widely as a consultant. Among his many achievements, Stowell choreographed Seattle's holiday favorite Nutcracker before stepping down three years ago. So what's he going to do for an encore? Hold that thought.

Until the day after Thanksgiving, Seattlest hadn't seen The Nutcracker -- probably the world's most famous ballet -- in years. But we had a solid image in our head of what it looked like because when Seattlest was a little kid, our mom made an annual birthday tradition to see it every year on opening night. For much of our childhood, this meant getting all spiffed up and walking a few blocks to Lincoln...

Seattlest went to the opening night of Pacific Northwest Ballet's Contemporary Classics last night for two favorites: Kiss and Caught. PNB has wisely brought these two pieces into it's repertory fold, continuing to signal Artistic Director Peter Boal's commitment to exploring choreography that is traditionally outside the realm of most ballet companies. Overall, PNB rose regally to the challenge.

Opening tonight, and running through the 11th, Pacific Northwest Ballet presents "Contemporary Classics." If you have a friend or loved one who you wish to convert to ballet compatriot, take them to this performance. They will think that this is how ballet always is, and thankfully now that is the case in Seattle. Hats off to you Mr. Boal.

Two-thirds of Pacific Northwest Ballet's "All Balanchine" show is surprising and exciting. Showcasing three ballets spanning the career of George Balanchine, the leading American ballet choreographer of the 20th Century and famously the co-founder of the New York City Ballet, PNB manages to both remind audiences of how adventurous dance can be, while at the same time reinforcing the sense that major ballet companies have to carefully balance the experimental with the traditional in order to keep audiences coming.

Ballet Imperial: it's tutus and tights and corps-de-ballet clockwork, but Balanchine's choreography is nothing to sneeze at. Maybe just that one scissor-kicky thing we secretly call "the Snoopy Dance," and therefore have trouble taking seriously. Otherwise, if the dancers were wearing skis, it'd be a black diamond run. This one shows up in the All Balanchine program that starts this weekend.

As we were saying, there's a lot more at Bumbershoot besides the music. You've got the comedy, the literature, the theatre, the dance -- and the people-watching, the sideshows, the side sideshows: yesterday we ran into Craig and Victoria doing a violin-and-flamenco act behind a tent; they say they'll be back today, roaming around, so look for a swirl of red.