Season Encore Performance
Pacific Northwest Ballet
McCaw Hall June 8, 2025


The ballet season in Seattle comes to a rousing end each year when Pacific Northwest Ballet gives an encore performance featuring retiring dancers who are moving from one great career into another — whether as teachers, choreographers, or graduate students, or on to other new challenges. They are typically young, experienced, and ready to take their lives into new directions, so this kind of “retirement” is exciting rather than sorrowful.
This season’s finale was a wonderful sendoff for principal dancer Cecilia Iliessiu and soloists Price Suddarth and Miles Pertl, who will be greatly missed. Iliessiu’s performance in an excerpt of Balanchine’s Diamonds showcased the elegant grace and precision she brings to classical dance. The audience was riveted to her majestic presence in the arms of partner Dylan Wald, a perfect example of why so many people are entranced by the power and fragility of classical ballet. Yet the exposed drama and large gestures in choreographer Dani Rowe’s The Window showcased Iliessiu’s emotional investment into the full range of joy and loss for a young bride who becomes a widow. The powerful arc of feeling in her movement was truly unforgettable.

Suddarth has been known to the community not only as an elegant and energetic dancer but as a choreographer. An excerpt from his recent project, Dawn Patrol, inspired by pilots in WWII, featured ten dancers in complex, regimented movements, as well as compelling small groups and duets that expressed the commitment and grief of pilots and families in wartime. Suddarth also demonstrated his own magic in the solo Something’s Coming from Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story Suite — an affirmation of how a terrific dancer can develop into a great choreographer.

The wonderfully entertaining premier of Cavalier by Eva Stone was performed by Miles Pertl, who was of such humor and command that the audience was laughing and cheering at his clever mastery of Irish dancing and ballet. A hometown boy who began his career in the PNB dance school, Pertl returned after gaining experience in international companies. His good humor and powerful dancing has been one of the hallmarks of PNB’s magnetic troupe of male dancers who can lift anyone, perform anything, and display all the moods, from tragic to hilarious.

Both Pertl and Suddarth appeared alongside 37 of their fellow dancers in the grand finale — Crystal Pite’s Emergence —one of the greatest and weirdest contemporary dances in PNB’s history and repertoire. This is the third time I’ve had the gobsmacked pleasure of seeing the emergence of creatures who look like some kind of insect, who become a warren of male/female beings who dance in such rigid patterns and with such precision that the kaleidoscope of changing forms is as fascinating as the thrumming, humming sounds they make as they do it. It has to be seen to be believed.
It was a wonderful ending to a great season, as well as a fabulous launch into the future for three terrific dancers. Happy travels, Cecilia, Price, and Miles! The best wishes of many grateful dance lovers go with you.


See the Pacific Norwest Ballet’s 2025-2026 Season offerings at www.pnb.org .