by Sharon Cumberland

SGN Contributing Writer

Like many other Seattle dance lovers, I stopped attending live performances at Pacific Northwest Ballet after Kent Stowell's "Cinderella" on January 21, 2020. And though I prefer not to review videos of live performances (because virtual reality isn't real enough for most performing arts, IMHO), I made an exception for PNB's "One Thousand Pieces," an electronic summation of their wonderful 2020 season. That was on March 17 – the last day I went to a grocery store without a mask.

Like everyone else, the pandemic forced me to give up live performances of any kind – no PNB, UW Dance, Seattle Opera, Pacific Music Works, On the Boards, Seattle Shakespeare – not to mention museums, the aquarium, restaurants...

Instead, I devoted myself to working jigsaw puzzles, listening to audio books, and lamenting the loss of real, live artists doing wonderful things in the real world. My only chosen video consolation has been the Metropolitan Opera's free nightly streams of its formidable performance library (which is still ongoing, folks – check it out!).

There must have been hundreds of opportunities for me to stay active as a digital viewer and reviewer for the SGN, but I was in "arts mourning." And, to be honest, I was in such a desperate state of anxiety over the election, I could barely do anything but punch the Act Blue donation button every day.

But now, as the sun begins to rise on live performances again – thank you, Seattle, for being the most vaccinated city in the nation! – I feel Terpsichore has resumed her throne, along with the gods of music, drama, and visual arts.

So in tribute to the digital season I missed, here is a review of what I hope will be the last restricted-to-video performance at PNB, a selection of fascinating works by three of the dance world's most prominent choreographers: Christopher Wheeldon, Edwaard Liang, and PNB's resident choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo. I confess to getting a little verklempt when McCaw Hall's sparkling red curtain appeared on the screen. It was like seeing a beloved fairy godmother suddenly appear, waving her magic wand to take us back to the ball.

"Curious Kingdom" (2021 World Premiere)

Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon

Music: Maurice Ravel, Eric Satie, Edith Piaf

Of the three dances in this program, Wheeldon's is the most intriguing to me. Wheeldon shows us his genius for combining classical ballet movement with elegant, intense body gestures in this truly full-length dance, with nine sections of various solos, duets, and the ensemble. The opening sequence, with all five dancers moving in unison, lays out the universe of the entire dance, not only in terms of slow bending and flexing but in the constructions the dancers make with their bodies. There are very few of the leaps and twirls associated with classical ballet movement, yet Wheeldon fascinates the viewer with sinuous and graceful twisting, sudden turns, and constructs built from movements close to the ground yet elevated in passion and originality.

I'm hard pressed to choose a favorite sequence, because each one was fascinating. But the first duet, in which the man and woman (Dylan Wald and Leta Biasucci) share a single pair of hot pink opera gloves was the most clear statement of the ideas working their way through the dance. As the duo entwines themselves, freezes in a sculptural construction, then unwinds to form a new construction, the arms in the pink gloves create a shape inside the larger shape. The viewer sees two ideas at once: the large form of the duet and the small form of the pink gloves that act as a frame.

This idea was extended in sequences using short gloves, bathing caps, and fabulous chiffon scarves – all in hot pink. It was a simple, complex, surprising, and brilliant device.

This is one occasion in which the costume designers (Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme) deserve major kudos. The glossy unisex body suits and carefully selected pink accessories were essential to the brilliance of this wonderful new dance.

"Pacopepepluto" (2015)

Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo

Music: Dean Martin/Joe Scalissi

The real virtue of reviewing dance on video, I discovered, is the ability to go back and rethink your first impression – something you can't do reviewing a single live performance. In the theater, you scribble notes in the dark, then go home and try to figure out what your little scrawls and diagrams mean. With video you can look at the same thing again and again – a great pleasure as well as a check on your inaccurate first impressions.

So it's a good thing I could watch "Pacopepepluto" more than once, because on first viewing, I disliked it so much that the only positive thing I could say was that the guys (Christopher D'Ariano, James Yoichi Moore, and Lucien Postlewaite) looked great in their dance belts.

But on second thought, I realized that it wasn't the dance I disliked but the smarmy mid-century songs of Dean Martin and Joe Scalissi. I was a girl when "Memories are Made of This," "By the Chapel in the Moonlight," and "That's Amore" were popular, and I have vivid memories of how these suffocating images of love and marriage loomed over me and my sister like the theme songs to Housewife Prison. They reinforced widely held opinions about girls: "You will not be an engineer or a doctor; you will settle down and have kids and make casseroles for the rest of your life."

If this sounds absurd, just ask your mother (or your grandmother). It was a real thing – and Dean Martin, along with the "Rat Pack" he ran with, were famous for their misogyny.

So on first look, three solo dances by men in dance belts (i.e., mostly naked) flexing muscles to misogynist music was a real turn-off for me.

But on second look, and with a little self-analysis, I realized that he-men flexing muscles to smarmy music was an ironic comment on an antiquated point of view. Though Cerrudo is probably too young to have witnessed the glory days of male dominance over women as I did, he was born in Madrid, Spain – in a culture I love, but one that is also famous for bullfights, matadors, flamenco, and various expressions of male superiority.

Seen through the lens of Cerrudo's irony, these dances – featuring pinwheel arms, fifth-position posturing, and power moves – become humorous, and the nudity becomes humbling, as though men can never live up to the pressures male dominance places on them.

Only in the final sequence, set to "That's Amore," did the dance abandon irony and become a testament to crazy love. The near-naked man (Lucien Postlewaite), with his jittering torso and airborne leaps into space, evoked the lavish, over-the-top amore of Cupid.

"Veil Between Worlds" (2021 World Premiere)

Choreography: Edwaard Liang

Music: Oliver Davis

Edwaard Liang is a dancer-turned-choreographer who, in a long interview with PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal, described his artistic journey – from being a student at the New York City Ballet School, where he worked with Jerome Robbins, to stints on Broadway in Fosse and with Ji?í Kylián at Nederland Dans Theater, where he began to learn its choreographic style.

Given this exposure to the very best in modern ballet, it's no surprise that Liang's work displays his debt to George Balanchine's reworking of classical ballet movement, as well as Kylián's tight, sculptural dance forms. Since all Liang's masters rated music as the equal of choreography – dance anchored in music as opposed to "soundscapes" – it's no surprise that "Veil Between Worlds" has a formality as fresh as the silken veil that floats dramatically through this beautiful work.

I was impressed with how his large composition for ten dancers expressed a complex idea with a simple visual device. The idea is that we live in two worlds: our demanding, invigorating conscious lives, as well as a mysterious place, expressed here as a massive, billowing red veil that the dancers lifted, flung out, and disappeared through.

The mysterious world on the other side of the veil is the one we sense but normally can't see. The very best expressions in art can lift the veil and cause us to experience the vast, benign reality of that other place – an experience most dance lovers have had as an indirect and unlooked-for benefit of the artists' project.

Liang is very brave to announce his intention to show us this other reality. It's an old-fashioned idea of the work of the artist, like Handel's "Messiah" or Miton's "Paradise Lost." We can be grateful that he stepped up to the challenge, because he and his dancers have succeeded beautifully.

Though the time limit on seeing this video will have passed by the time you read this, there is one more digital performance, on June 18, to say farewell to dancers leaving the company this year.

Then, on September 1, McCaw Hall opens again for the first in the PNB 2021-22 season, "Singularity," a selection of Alejandro Cerrudo's most important works.