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Letter from Seattle, 7-12: Rites of Spring
From Balanchine to Fenley to Lowenberg at Pacific Northwest Ballet & School
By Renée E. D'Aoust
Copyright 2007 Renée E. D'Aoust
Photography copyright Angela Sterling
SEATTLE -- Post-modernists often deconstruct great
works of art, but in "State of Darkness," set to
Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps," and
performed May 31 - June 10 by Pacific Northwest
Ballet at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Molissa Fenley
doesn't concern herself with un-doing Nijinsky.
Fenley places just one dancer onstage. Instead of an ensemble, we see a
physically actualized dialogue of soloist and musical
score, which was conducted with verve by Stewart Kershaw,
PNB'S music director. (The acoustics of McCaw Hall are superb, and
apparently these performances were only the second time
"State of Darkness," created in 1988, had been
performed with a live orchestra.) In the two performances I
caught, Rachel Foster performed June 1, and James Moore danced the June 2 matinee. David Moodey's stunning lighting design involved dramatic shifts of
opaque white to midnight blue that seemed to syncopate
with Stravinsky's savage rhythms. The lighting often
foretold the movement, changing a second before the
soloist switched from walking a diagonal to carving a
circle, or when she transformed from bird to cat.
It is impossible to describe Fenley's piece without
reverting to animal descriptions. "State of Darkness"
has different movement themes that could just as
easily be thought of as different animals, yet the
human is always present. There is a signature
circling of the arms, and it occurs in three ways. In
one, the arms circle almost like a jogging warm-up or
a boxer readying to enter the ring; there is a
straight line, and we follow the line through the air
to form the circle. In another, the arms circle with
the elbows bent, so that the sensation of flight is
created. The hands are still up in the air, open in a
wide "V" -- a Fenley port de bras and a vigorous
invocation. And finally, the arms circle with the
elbows entirely bent, the port de bras no longer
moving from the shoulder or the back, the hands
clutched into the body, the wings now broken. It
hurts to watch.
On June 1, Foster coolly demonstrated her
ability to defy black holes by negotiating the pull of
emptiness. She is not sucked into darkness, nor
is she cornered by the exotic madness that is the
call of Stravinsky's high bassoon. Rather, she stands in the
central circular spot of white light, surrounded by
that midnight blue, and suddenly descends, one leg
bent, one leg straight to the side. The descent is
lyrical, powerful. Foster pushes gravity down, deeper
into the earth, elegantly revealing a way to negotiate
our earth-bound lives.
She sculpts and shapes the air around her body,
expressing through one sharp motion across her throat,
performed starkly and quickly, the very ordinary
strength required to face each day. The arm across
the throat repeats across the forehead, causing me to
think to myself, "This maiden might dance herself to death."
Fenley wouldn't succumb to such sentimental
weakness. She insists that our individual lives
matter. The dancer withstands the force of ritual, withstands the
force of darkness in our culture. This dance
dialogue with Stravinsky ends in with a virtuosic step
forward. Choreographer and interpreter show that no matter life's curves, it
is possible to breathe. The dancer's feet are
firmly on the ground, the movement is
recognizable, accessible, athletic, and as if
that weren't enough, Foster is full of grace while encompassing the
magnitude that is "State of Darkness."
At the Saturday matinee, James Moore performed a
different, no less important, more febrile
interpretation. The difference between the two
interpretations was not simply one of gender.
Moore's long torso and short legs are uniquely
suited to Fenley's work. He performs minute movements that
resonate throughout the theater. His listening
skill is amazing; the right palm cups over the top of
the ear, and he oils his eardrum. Of course, that's
impossible to witness, but I think you get the sense
of how I saw an interior organ on the exterior of his
body.
Fenley's choreography includes subtle allusions to
Nijinsky: the archaic arm briefly stopped mid-flow
and the slight, occasional protrusion of the buttock
muscles evoking a primitive sense of propulsion.
Closed movement that arises out of the small
performance spaces of a downtown choreographer are
present, but on McCaw Hall's proscenium stage,
and as performed by Moore, these smaller motions
weren't lost, merely writ with palpable ease,
particularly the crumbly contractions of the abdominal muscles and the
tiny, intermittent, scratching hand motions that
referenced and in some cases paralleled the abdominal
isolations. Yet if I describe these movements as
primitive contractions and isolations, I do not give
due credit to their refined, receptive, and rippled
qualities. Think of bird bones, which are laced with
air cavities, combining lightness and strength. Then
hear the pumping, barbaric rhythms of Stravinsky's
'Sacre.' Molissa Fenley crafts the body as a
hollow cavity; instead of blood coursing through
arteries and veins, Stravinsky's rhythms pulse through, making
emotions and the subconscious visible.
"State of Darkness" is audacious in its simplicity and
utterly bold in its ability to turn our way of seeing
the world into a spiral instead of a line. Fenley
choreographed the dance during earlier
desperate days of HIV/AIDS. Now in 2007, our "State
of Darkness" shows the dying gasps of American
Exceptionalism. What redeems us is not death, but
humanity in the presence of loss. We stay. We
live. We step out of the human ritual of war. It's
possible -- to stop. Writing in 1989 in High Performance magazine, Ann Daly called the work "an incantation: a rather desperate act of faith in
the future of humankind." The incantation is one
we still need to hear and to heed. (New York audiences will have the opportunity to do so in December, when Fenley's company performs the piece on one of her Joyce Theater programs.)
The other ballets on the program were also set to
Stravinsky: Jerome Robbins's "Circus
Polka," and Balanchine's "Rubies" and "Symphony in
Three Movements."
Does anyone else find the ringmaster's whip in "Circus
Polka" slightly freaky? It's a long enough prod to be
used on members of the Order Proboscidea, which is
fitting given that Balanchine originally choreographed
it for elephants in the Ringley Brothers and Barnum &
Bailey Circus. The whip snaps didn't bother the
gaggle of little girls in the cast as they gazed
adoringly at principal Christophe Maraval, who retires this season.
During Benjamin Griffiths's June 1
debut in "Rubies," he looked tentative with the superb
Noelani Pantastico, who articulates her fingers in
ways usually reserved for the spine. By the matinee the
next day, Griffiths had already matured and approached
Pantastico with the same abandon with which he
performs his jumps. On a similar note, the four men
surrounding Lindsi Dec looked intimidated by her luxurious développé and hesitant to rotate and stretch her leg. In general, the men in the corps
need a little more Popeye, a little less Olive Oyl.
Nevertheless, PNB is a must-see company of exquisite
dancers who combine heart and technique, elegance and
power.
 |
| Pacific Northwest Ballet's Kaori Nakamura and Jeffrey Stanton in Balanchine's "Symphony in Three Movements." Angela Sterling photo copyright Angela Sterling and courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet. |
"Symphony in Three Movements," conducted by Allan
Dameron, showcased the particularly strong partnership
of principal dancers Kaori Nakamura and Jeffrey
Stanton. I love the moment in the lyrical second
movement when Stanton cradles Nakamura from behind.
She covers her eyes with the back of her hand, and as
he lifts her into his chest, arching backward, her
feet stay flexed and her knees bend. Her partner only
feels the ridge-like bony protrusions of her
vertebrae. Likewise, the back of her hand, the bony
part, is what she feels on her face.
 |
| Pacific Northwest Ballet's Kaori Nakamura and Jeffrey Stanton in Balanchine's "Symphony in Three Movements." Angela Sterling photo copyright Angela Sterling and courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet. |
Part of PNB's stated mission is to "educate and
develop dance artists as well as enthusiasts" and
to evaluate how it's pursuing that task. On June 16 -- the day before what would have been Stravinsky's 125th birthday -- I
attended the annual school performance (in the
afternoon) and choreographers' showcase, also performed by students
(in the evening). Jean Georges Noverre once wrote (as cited by Mindy Aloff in last year's "Dance Anecdotes," from Oxford University Press): "As for the positions, everyone knows there are five of them.... I shall simply say that these
positions are good to know, and still better to
forget, and that it is the art of the great dancer to
neglect them gracefully." The upper level and
professional division PNB school students are
beginning "to neglect [those positions] gracefully."
In the choreographers' showcase, the breakneck
footwork and funky moves in Kiyon Gaines's
four-movement "Infinite Intricacies" were an all-out
blast. Stacey Lowenberg's "Rushed Goodbye" was a
promising choreographic debut; however, Lowenberg
doesn't need to rely on pop-music lyrics for emotional
impact. The impact exists within an
intricately-structured sinewy duet with intertwining
lifts and embracing arms, which at certain points hug
the air more than the lover. Partnered by Mark Wax,
Leah O'Conner, leaving the school to join the company
proper, already has the ability to let movement convey
the inner world of the heart.
The other pieces on the program -- all commissioned premieres -- riffed
off of themes of bully women, fashion runway culture,
really mad wilis, and (bear with me here) vaudeville.
In "Mad Maidens," set to the third movement of Francis Poulenc's
"Concert Champetre," does choreographer
Brian Reeder really mean to suggest that bullies
always win? While I appreciated the two all-female
trios set against each other with repeated motifs,
particularly a fantastic fall from a pirouette to a
collapsed fourth position on the ground with a
waif-like hand stretching back to the point of defied
gravity, the idea that the fall represented domination
by the competing trio really disturbed me.
Sonia Dawkins was careful in the
program notes to inform us that her "Cu Ture" (no 'L')
"is a fashion archetype dance, driven by heavy rhythms and
blues beat." Dances based on direct imitation are
hard to pull off without seeming superficial, I think,
and "Cu Ture" ended up looking more like a series of
poses without much dancing at all. I have trouble
when dancers are asked to perform ballet in a wham-bam
fashion, with lots of angry punch and not much
substance.
While the poses in Dawkins's piece were obvious, the
meaning of Melissa Barak's "Of the Name They Do Not
Speak" was impenetrable. That is, until the
lights went up and a dancer sitting behind me explained it to
his friends: "It was, like, the wilis on acid take
revenge." Once I thought about the never-explained
ominous diagonal light, I decided Barak might be
experimenting with a theme based on mad wilis.
Somehow, I just don't think Vivaldi's music is the
best choice for revenge.
Olivier Wevers choreographed a vaudevillian parallel
duet, "Liora and Andrew." The Charlie Chaplin
walk looks finicky and awkward in pointe shoes, but Andrew
Bartee gave the flexed-footed ramble a jaunty air. Bartee is studying this summer at the Royal Danish Ballet School in a brand-new exchange program
established by Peter Boal that honors the PNB school's
recently retired teacher Flemming Halby, a
former Royal Danish Ballet dancer.
While the choreographers' showcase is an opportunity
to premiere work, this one showcased the fine training dancers receive
at the PNB school from superb teachers such as Halby. The poise of each and every dancer -- no matter the level! -- was ultimately more important than whether
the wilis got their revenge or Charlie Chaplin learned
how to walk in pointe shoes.
While a dancer in New York City, Renée E. D'Aoust
trained at the Martha Graham Center and performed with
the Kevin Wynn Collection and other companies. She
subsequently graduated from Columbia University (BA)
and the University of Notre Dame (MFA). Her writing
has been published in literary journals and magazines,
and D'Aoust has received Idaho Arts Commission grants,
the Julie Harris Award for Emerging Playwrights, and
several other awards. A chapter, "Graham Crackers," of
her current book project, "Body of a Dancer," received
an Associated Writers Program nonfiction award and
a "Notable Essay" mention in Best American Essays
2006.
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