Pacific Northwest Ballet All Balanchine
Not long after Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Three by Dove program had closed, one of the dancers confided to me his relief that the company had moved on to George Balanchine’s dances. “I feel like a netted fish that’s been released back into the sea”, he said. No doubt many longtime audience members felt that same sense of comfort when PNB opened its All Balanchine program on April 15th. While I count myself among the fans of choreographer Ulysses Dove, it was evident with the Balanchine evening that Pacific Northwest Ballet’s company members were back in their natural element.
George Balanchine’s work has been the bedrock of PNB’s repertoire ever since Kent Stowell and Francia Russell assumed the company’s artistic reins in 1977. And Peter Boal, who took over the Artistic Directorship in 2005, spent his dancing life at the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet, the institutions Balanchine founded in the mid-20th century, and from where he created the dances that revolutionized ballet. Since Boal’s arrival in Seattle he has consistently pushed the dancers in new directions, often with stunning success. But he maintains that Balanchine is still the spine that supports all of PNB’s other work.
With All Balanchine, Boal presents three of the choreographer’s classic works: Serenade, originally choreographed in 1934 for Balanchine’s new American dance pupils; 1957’s Square Dance, and The Four Temperaments, created in 1946. All three dances have been in PNB’s repertoire almost since Stowell and Russell arrived in Seattle. All three were handled competently, sometimes thrillingly, on the program’s opening night.
When the curtain rises on Serenade, 17 ballerinas in pale blue tulle skirts greet us. They are angled stage left, their right arms extended. Into this forest of dancers wanders Mara Vinson. She finds her place in the front row, lifts her arm, and the ballet begins. Serenade, we are told, wasn’t conceived around a particular plot or story. But it’s easy to imagine Vinson as a spurned lover. After a lyrical duet with Lucien Postelwaite, who then leaps and spins masterfully through his solo and off the stage, Vinson seems bereft. The lovely Kylee Kitchens leads Bathkhurel Bold to Vinson’s side, but he’s no replacement for Postelwaite. Serenade ends as three men lift Vinson to their shoulders, and carry her slowly through the blue tulle forest, to the rear of the stage. Vinson, Postelwaite and Kitchens in particular, mastered their roles. But watching the corps women, I couldn’t help but wonder how these blue sylphs looked when Balanchine created the dance. Were they more uniform in appearance and performance? I hope so.
Square Dance had none of Serenade’s mystery or ambiguity. Balanchine said when he choreographed it, his intention was to meld the idioms of ballet and American folk dance. Square Dance is sweet and sassy. That lightheartedness almost masks some of its fiendishly difficult passages. Carrie Imler showed, once again, her stregnth and ability to execute intricate jumps and spins without betraying how hard she’s working. Although Square Dance is set to music by Antonio Vivaldi and Arcangelo Corelli, as I watched it I couldn’t help but think of Antonin Dvorak. Like Balanchine, Dvorak came to the United States and found inspiration in the folk art of the new world.
The evening ended with The Four Temperaments. This was George Balanchine’s first major presentation of a dance style that melds classical steps with a lean, stripped down look. There are no tutus, not even the flowing tulle skirts of Serenade. Instead, the women wear black leotards and white tights and toe shoes. The men are clad in black tights and white shirts. This ballet was inspired by the idea that human beings are made up of four different humors, inspired by the four elements. Balanchine commissioned German composer Paul Hindemith to write the score. More than sixty years later, the dance still has the power to leave viewers intrigued, sometimes awed, by its bold movements, its physical interpretation of music, and its ability to present, from start to finish, a complete artistic vision.
Principal dancers Jonathan Porretta, Olivier Wevers and Ariana Lallone shone in this work. Porretta, as the Melancholic, arches his back, lifting his chest to the ceiling. He is as taut as one of the strings on the piano played so ably by Christina Siemens. Porretta leaves the stage moving backwards, slowly. His chest is still lifted, his arm, extended behind his back, leads the way. You hold your breath as he glides out of sight. Wevers, the Phlegmatic, performs with a trio of women. Our medieval ancestors may have considered a phlegmatic soul to be unemotional and passive, but in Wevers’ skilled hands (and body), there’s a touch of whimsy here as well. As accomplished as the principals in this dance were the supporting corps members. It was particularly nice to see Kiyon Gaines return to the stage after too long an absence.
The opening night audience was thrilled with All Balanchine. Indeed, why wouldn’t they be? The orchestra, under the skilled hands of three separate conductors (respectively, Alastair Willis, Allan Dameron and Judith Yan), sounded good, the dances were intriguing and, on the whole, well performed. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to see these dances when they were new. The critic Edwin Denby, we’re told, was spellbound on first viewing of The Four Temperaments. Did he know he was watching a revolution in progress? Were others in that audience shocked, perhaps appalled by Balanchine’s creation? And was the response similar to the less than enthusiastic greeting some in Seattle have bestowed on performances of Ulysses Dove, or Victor Quijada or Marco Goecke? In fifty years time, will the world look at William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing, Reproduced as the harbinger of a new era of dance?
The dancer who feels like a fish out of water when dancing Dove, the audience that craves more Balanchine, they know a good thing when they see it or perform it. But given the enormity of George Balanchine’s influence, one wonders how and when the ballet world will be able to give itself the distance and space it needs to discover the art form’s next revolution.
