Culture Fiend

Is Pina One of the Greatest Dance Movies Ever Made?

The director dissects his Oscar-nominated documentary at Cinerama.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 10, 2012 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Pina isn’t just a dance movie, in the same way The Red Shoes wasn’t about footwear. In this Oscar-nominated documentary, director Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club) composes a visually stunning eulogy of German dance pioneer Pina Bausch, who died of cancer shortly after she and Wenders started preproduction on the film in 2009. Wenders, in turn, pays tribute by documenting four of Bausch’s most elaborate pieces, performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch company members. In The Rite of Spring dancers crisscross a stage covered in dirt; for Vollmond they splash through a sheet of water. They also take Bausch’s choreography outdoors, spinning through meadows and in front of factories.

Now imagine all that…but in 3D. Impossibly long limbs look even longer—it’s a much better use of the technology than, say, Piranha 3D. “This is a stunning work of art, and we are proud to introduce it to our community," said Seattle Cinerama operator Greg Wood in a statement. Cinerama screens Pina (3D) for a limited run starting today; after that, it moves to SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. And the best part: On February 17 at 8pm, Wenders will attend a Cinerama screening, followed by a Q&A with Spectrum Dance’s Donald Byrd. It’s the director’s first appearance in Seattle in 15 years, and sure to be mobbed with dance and film fans alike. Tickets ($30) are on sale now.

Pina (3D)
Feb 10–16, Seattle Cinerama
Feb 17, 8pm, screening and Q&A

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Tags: Dance, Film, Seattle Cinerama, Oscars 2012

Behind the Scenes of Don Quixote, the $3 Million Ballet

Pacific Northwest Ballets presents the U.S. premiere of this updated classic.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 02, 2012 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Photo: Courtesy Dutch National Ballet.

What’s your story? Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky chants this like a mantra, asking it of each dancer during a recent Pacific Northwest Ballet rehearsal for Don Quixote. In this case, principal Seth Orza is being coached on the story he’s telling with his oversized red cape—a surprisingly unwieldy prop he bears in the role of Espada, a self-satisfied toreador. He whirls it up and over his head, once, twice, three times.

“And up! And up!” Ratmansky urges. Orza looks like he’s going through a CrossFit workout. “Use more of a swing, see how it flies… You should look like you’ve been doing this your whole life!” Clap, clap, clap, clap. Ratmansky signals Orza to stop, and the dancer doubles over, panting.

“I just whipped myself,” Orza says, laughing. They’ve been doing cape work for about 20 minutes, and though spirits are still high, this speaks to the ambition of Ratmansky, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet and the man behind this $3 million update of the classical Petipa and Gorsky ballet (originally created for the Dutch National Ballet). The devil’s in the details—a story to be told with every whirl of the cape and flutter of the fan.

So when PNB presents the U.S. premiere of Don Quixote this weekend, the attention isn’t solely on actor Tom Skerritt, who’ll play the tragicomic hero, or the five different principal couples, or the lavish sets and costumes by Jérôme Kaplan. It’s a package deal. This is one of the most opulent productions in PNB’s history, with 46 company members and 24 PNBS students performing, 280 costumes, 46 wigs and hairpieces, one smiling moon—and one very discerning choreographer who’s breathing new life into the classics.

Don Quixote
Feb 3–12, Pacific Northwest Ballet, McCaw Hall

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Tags: PNB, Dance, Seattle Center, McCaw Hall

Win Two Tickets to Whim W’Him This Weekend

Seattle’s hottest new dance company debuts three original works by Olivier Wevers.

Posted by: Seattle Met staff on Jan 19, 2012 at 11:30AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Bamberg Fine Art / Whim W’Him.

Lucien Postlewaite and Chalnessa Eames rehearse thrown before its January 20 debut.

Enter to win two tickets to see Seattle modern dance troupe Whim W’Him in its season opener, Cast the First Rock in Twenty Twelve, on Saturday, January 21, at 8pm.

Since leaving PNB stardom last year, former principal dancer Olivier Wevers has been winning awards nationally for his playful, provocative choreography. With his new dance company Whim W’Him, which made its debut in January 2010, he’s placed familiar Seattle dancers in new contexts— swapping gender roles, breaking classical ballet lines, and donning neo–tutus. “It would be great if there is someone who discovers a new path to ballet [with these shows],” Wevers told Seattle Met in 2010. His latest work is equally evocative. Cast the First Rock in Twenty Twelve features two new comedies— La langue de l’amour and Flower Festival with an all-male pas de deux—and and the premiere of tragic thrown, invoking a stoning with sets by local sculptor Steve Jensen.

To enter to win tickets, email SeattleMetTix@gmail.com with “Whim W’Him” as the subject, and a reason why you want to see the show, by Friday, January 20, at noon. The winner will be notified by email shortly after the deadline.

Whim W’Him: Cast the First Rock in Twenty Twelve
Jan 20–22, Intiman Playhouse, $25

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Tags: Dance, Intiman Theatre, Whim W'Him

The Week in Review(s)

Misfits and oddballs ruled our cultural calendar.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Sep 30, 2011 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Washington Ensemble Theatre.

Boys will be boys Tim Smith-Stewart as Emory in MilkMilk Lemonade.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Photo courtesy Washington Ensemble Theatre.

Boys will be boys Tim Smith-Stewart as Emory in MilkMilk Lemonade.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Photo courtesy Angela Sterling.

PNB principals Karel Cruz and Maria Chapman dance Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain pas de deux” in 2011.

Pick of the Week Book-it Repertory Theatre should take more chances, like it did adapting Olympia novelist Jim Lynch’s Border Songs. While there’s an inherently juicy narrative about guards patrolling the Washington–British Columbia border for drug smugglers, illegal immigrants, and terrorists, that’s not what this story is about, and certainly not why we care. We’re in it for Brandon Vanderkool. Played by Patrick Allcorn, Brandon is a 6’8, dyslexic, bird-loving Border Patrol agent who’s as quirky as a Miranda July film. You’re expected to write off Brandon as a nitwit—but there’s something special about this gentle giant. Are all border guards this misunderstood? Closes Oct 9.

Rolling in the hay’ With a few more dance routines, Washington Ensemble Theatre’s MilkMilk Lemonade could be It Gets Better: The Musical. Inside the barn on a lonely chicken farm, two fifth grade boys play house. Like adults. They don’t really know what sex or sexuality is yet—life’s truths are simpler at this age. Like: Effeminate little Emory will get beat up if he sings show tunes at school. Pyromaniac bully Elliot can’t tell anyone he likes Emory. And someday Emory’s best friend Linda—a talking chicken—might end up on his dinner plate. Despite learning early on that life is f’n hard, this lovable cast of misfits, led by adorable grown-up Tim Smith-Stewart as Emory, empowers us to hold our heads high during a choreographed ribbon dance. Closes Oct 10.

Ballet’s “It Boy” Now I know why Christopher Wheeldon is one of the most in-demand choreographers in modern ballet. On opening night of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s All Wheeldon program, I left enamored by two completely different performances: the spare and tender “After the Rain pas de deux” by Maria Chapman and Karel Cruz, and a gleeful one-act comedy ballet that goes behind the scenes of a dance rehearsal. Wheeldon understands both nuance and parody, creating kooky prima ballerinas (Laura Gilbreath) and lasting images. I likely won’t forget Chapman, bent over backwards and frozen in place, carried across the stage like a prop by a bare-chested Cruz. Closes Oct 2.

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Tags: Review, Theater, PNB, Dance, WET, Book-It Rep

TONIGHT: Meet Ballet’s “It Boy” Chris Wheeldon at PNB

The choreographer is in house for a special preview of his new work.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Sep 21, 2011 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Chris Wheeldon

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon has been called “the boy wonder of classical ballet,” “one of the hottest classical choreographers of his generation,” “one of the world’s most in-demand ballet choreographers”… You get the idea. And he’s only 38.

He receives raves for his wit and imagination, taking works like the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and using the corps de ballet to recreate the actual carousel. The native Brit has crafted works for everyone from the Bolshoi to New York City Ballet, and starting September 23, the Pacific Northwest Ballet will showcase four short pieces from his repertoire. (By the way, this All Wheeldon program is one of our top Fall Arts Picks.)

Even better: Wheeldon is in Seattle today for a special preview of some of his latest work and a Q&A with the audience at McCaw Hall. Tickets are still available at pnb.org (I just checked) and are $10 for PNB subscribers, $20 general admission. This is a rare opportunity to chat with Wheeldon; he won’t be in town for very long, so if you’re a dance fan, consider skipping whatever TV show you planned to watch tonight for this event. It’s from 6:30 to 8.

All Wheeldon is at PNB Sept 23–Oct 2.

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Tags: PNB, Dance, Seattle Ballet, Fall Arts Preview 2011

Mark Morris’s Hard Nut Canceled, Replaced with Another Morris Premiere

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Aug 17, 2011 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Susana Millman.

Mark Morris Dance Group performs Violet Cavern.

Mark Morris’s Hard Nut, a swingin’ ’70s send-up of The Nutcracker set to (finally!) make its Seattle debut this December after 20 years on stage, has been canceled, according to Seattle Theatre Group. No nuts for us.

“Funding challenges led both organizations to a mutual decision to move Hard Nut to a future date,” public relations manager Amanda Bedell said in a statement. (That’s typically code for “the sets are too big and there are too many dancers to schlep across the country this year.”) “But STG remains committed to Mark Morris Dance Group and presenting Mark Morris’s work.”

Scheduled in its place is a Mark Morris repertory program that includes the Seattle premiere of Festival Dance, a new work this year in honor of the group’s 30th anniversary. Romantic chamber music—a piano trio by Mozart protégé Johann Nepomuk Hummel—sets the tone for the cheery pastoral, with six couples enjoying the bliss and gaiety of social dance. The piece also features MMDG principal dancer and Seattle native Aaron Loux.

Also on the bill: Violet Cavern (2004), an art-dance collaboration that debuted here in 2005 with its dancers spinning beneath kaleidoscopic panels to an original score by improv jazz trio the Bad Plus.

Mark Morris Dance Group performs at the Moore Theatre December 1-3. More info on tickets to follow.

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Tags: Moore Theatre, Dance, Mark Morris

Today’s Summer Guide Pick: Dancing ’Til Dusk

If you can’t dance with the stars, at least you can dance under them.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jul 19, 2011 at 09:30AM 0 Comments

Photo: Alexandra Notman.

Rob Gardiner had never danced a day in his life until he came to a Dancing ‘Til Dusk event. Now…well, he’s doing just fine.

From the Seattle Summer Events Guide:

Learn to swing, salsa, tango, and waltz from a pro (for free!) before trying out your new moves at one of the Dancing ’Til Dusk nights. The annual outdoor dance sessions kick off tonight at Westlake Park. This evening’s swing lesson lasts from 6-7, and according to last year’s instructor Ari Levitt, “If you can walk and hold hands, then you’re already halfway there.” Kevin Buster’s Lunch Money plays the blues and swing until 9pm, but if it looks like rain, call ahead: 206-264-5646. All are welcome.

Dancing ‘Til Dusk runs through Sept 15 at outdoor sites across downtown Seattle: Westlake Park, Freeway Park, Occidental Park, and Olympic Sculpture Park. For the complete schedule, visit danceforjoy.biz. Want to see what it’s like? Check out our slideshow from last year’s swing night.

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Tags: Dance, Outdoor Events

NW New Works Festival Expands Some Horizons

On the Boards presents a new wave of entertainment.

Posted by: Annie Rose Favreau on Jun 09, 2011 at 04:00PM 0 Comments

SLIDESHOW: Two dancers “steel themselves against the unstable ebbs and swells of absence” in Part and Parcel’s (choreographer Allie Hankins) new piece “By Guess & By God.” Photos courtesy Tim Summers.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

SLIDESHOW: Two dancers “steel themselves against the unstable ebbs and swells of absence” in Part and Parcel’s (choreographer Allie Hankins) new piece “By Guess & By God.” Photos courtesy Tim Summers.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Alice Gosti’s “Spaghetti CO” begins with a simple setting: three performers around a dinner table and a huge bowl of spaghetti. The project’s aim is more complicated: it “seeks to investigate the relationship that individuals and families have with food, and the memories that are attached to certain tastes and smells; for example the capability that food has the ability to make one feel at home or very far from home.”

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The Blank Department (Drew Dillhunt, Jed Dunkerley, Jenelle Greninger, Mike Katell and Jason Puccinelli) is an “art rock band that wanted to enlarge the scope of its performing experience beyond playing motley sets of music in clubs and bars.” Their act “Orders of Magnitude” includes original animation, the band’s opinions about the extinction of dinosaurs, and three actors performing silent vignettes.

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Paige Barnes’s “War Is Over” was “Inspired by the spirit and physicality of boxing,” Exploring the idea of self-sabotage, the dance looks at the desire to win a three-rounding boxing match…with yourself.

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Finger is Julie Baldridge and Jeppa K Hall’s (a.k.a. Queen Shmooquan) musical duo. They perform “haunting madrigals about sex and death,” that recall “old-fashioned murder ballads, folk music, and avant-garde death metal.”

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Choreographer Jessica Jobaris’s “You’re the thing that sets me free” centers on “how we hasten healing through the five ‘opiates’ of suffering: endurance, denial, transcendence, revenge and escape.” It promises to include athletic movement, ancient indigenous practices, psycho-therapy, and Celine Dion in a matador’s suit.

“It’s the place where you can see tomorrow’s innovators today.” That’s how On the Boards’ Jessica Massart describes the 28th annual NW New Works Festival. Sure, it’s a little cheesy, but it’s also kind of true: The fest has previously featured cutting-edge organizations and artists like Catherine Cabeen, tEEth, Waxie Moon, and Implied Violence.

“It really serves as a laboratory for Northwest artists and an opportunity for artists to incubate a new idea or foster a sense of original work,” Massart explains.

This year, the two-weekend event will showcase 16 experimental performance pieces from local artists (the word local is used loosely: performers hail from Oregon, Washington, and Canada), in mediums ranging from dance and theater to puppetry and film.

So, when you hear the words “experimental art,” do you imagine a naked lady performing interpretive dance to a soundtrack of atonal flute music? If so, you may wonder what these audiences are getting themselves into.

“The artists are definitely playing with the boundaries of their genres,” Massart admits. “But they’re actually doing this to communicate more clearly to the audience what their ideas are. Audiences can expect to see pieces that are thought-provoking, conversation-starting and fun, in addition to experimental.”

Click through the slideshow above to get acquainted with a few of the groups performing in the festival. (Warning: the last photo is not for sensitive eyes.)

The NW New Works Festival is on Friday through June 19 at On the Boards.

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Tags: Theater, Dance, Festivals, On the Boards

PNB’s Season Encore

Last chance to toast eight dancers departing from Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Posted by: Annie Rose Favreau on Jun 08, 2011 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Ariana Lallone’s will dance in Lambarena for her final performance with PNB.
Photo courtesy Ben Kerns.

Hands down, my favorite description of the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s annual Season Encore Performance —which reprises some of the company’s most knockout acts—comes from Seattle Dances’ Rosie Gaynor: “Think of it as dim sum for dance: a bit of this, a bit of that, super tasty, not too pricey.” There’s something for everyone.

Despite the Encore name, this year’s one-night-only event features just a single piece from the past season, Jiri Kylian’s Petite Mort (You know, the six-guys-and-their-six-swords piece. Oh, the blatant metaphors.)

Instead of including repeats, the lineup appears to have been crafted to celebrate the eight dancers who are leaving the company. Just don’t say they’re retiring, PNB’s Gary Tucker warned: “The dancers are not moving on to the old folks’ home!” Chalnessa Eames, Barry Kerollis, Ariana Lallone, Stanko Milov, Josh Spell, Jeffrey Stanton, Stacy Lowenberg, and Olivier Wevers will all continue on to dance, teach, or choreograph elsewhere.

The evening will include several departing dancers performing signature roles in numbers like Twyla Tharpe’s intoxicating (or should it be intoxicated?) “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” excerpted from Nine Sinatra Songs; and Lambarena, a rich collision of ballet and Bach with traditional African dance and music. Crowd-pleasers like Rubies, Carmen, and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue will also make an appearance alongside new choreography like Rushed Goodbye by Stacy Lowenberg, and the first pas de deux from Olivier Wever’s Monster.

PNB’s Season Encore Performance shows June 12.

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Tags: PNB, Dance, Preview, Seattle Ballet

A World Premiere of Giselle at PNB

Dancing, death, and drama at the ballet.

Posted by: Annie Rose Favreau on Jun 01, 2011 at 10:30AM 0 Comments

Amanda Clark is one fly corpse bride.

Photo courtesy Angela Sterling.

Here’s what the ballet newbie should know about Giselle, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s next production: It’s the story of a peasant girl who, after dying of a broken heart, struggles to save her lover from hordes of creepy Wilis—spectral would-be brides who force men to dance until they die.

In other words: drama, drama, drama.

Even if you’re a Giselle aficionado, PNB is premiering a version you’ve never seen before. As he points out in his program note, artistic director Peter Boal was initially stumped by how to incorporate Giselle into PNB’s repertoire. “I looked at impressive contemporary productions and time-honored traditional ones, never finding one that was right for us. I wanted to do more than recreate another company’s production and I didn’t want to choreograph one myself.”

The solution? While most modern productions take their cue from a 19th-century Russian adaptation by Marius Petipa, PNB chose a different route. Teaming up with dance historians Doug Fullington and Marian Smith, Boal drew on original French and Russian sources to reconstruct the ballet’s earliest Parisian choreography.

This month marks the 170th birthday of Giselle. If the preview below is any indication, she’s still looking pretty good for an old lady.

PNB’s Giselle premieres June 3.

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Tags: PNB, Dance, Preview

Jerry Seinfeld, Kathy Griffin, Anthony Bourdain Make STG’s 2011–12 Lineup

Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 16, 2011 at 02:00PM 1 Comments

“All right, hey, you’ve been great! See you at the cafeteria”. –Jerry Seinfeld

Wonder what Jerry Seinfeld’s been up to lately (aside from producing the so-bad-it’s-good TV show The Marriage Ref)? He’s not planning a Seinfeld reunion anytime soon, that’s for sure. “My show business philosophy is: don’t give the audience what they want. They’re just going to want more cake, until they throw up,” he told the Herald Sun recently. Instead, Seinfeld’s on the road doing stand-up—new material, from what we hear—and he’s coming to Seattle on October 1 as part of STG’s 2011–2012 lineup.

Also on the schedule:

Comedian Kathy Griffin does two nights of celeb bashing at the Paramount (Nov 4 & 5).

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company performs seminal works by the late Cornish alum—including his 1968 Andy Warhol collaboration Rainforest and 2007’s Xover—in the final year of the Legacy Tour (Oct 27 & 29). Following a New Year’s Eve performance in NYC, the company will disband in accordance with Cunningham’s Legacy Plan that he set before his death last July.

Mark Morris Dance Group’s send-up of the Nutcracker, The Hard Nut, celebrates its 20th year in production and makes its Seattle debut; Seattle Symphony accompanies (Dec 1–4).

Foodie bad boy Anthony Bourdain and friend Eric Ripert, chef of three Michelin-starred Le Bernardin, dissect the restaurant business at the Paramount (Feb 11, 2012).

And then there are all those Broadway shows coming to the Paramount.

For the ever-growing STG season lineup, go to stgpresents.org. Subscriptions are on sale now.

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Tags: Paramount Theatre, Dance, Comedy

Catherine Cabeen Goes ‘Into the Void’

Inspired by French painter Yves Klein, the choreographer’s new work is a “painting in time and space.”

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Apr 28, 2011 at 10:30AM 0 Comments

Photo: Michael Clinard.

Catherine Cabeen creates “a painting in time and space” with her new dance Into the Void at On the Boards.

When I spoke to choreographer Catherine Cabeen this winter, she already had a blueprint for her world-premiere performance this weekend at On the Boards. Emphasis on the “blue.” Into the Void is dance-theater inspired by the artwork of postmodern painter Yves Klein, who patented a brilliant shade called International Klein Blue [IKB] and employed naked woman as living paintbrushes. Cabeen, a feminist scholar, is less interested in having women roll around in toxic paint and more in the metaphor.

Why Yves Klein?

I first saw Klein’s work when I was a child. My mother is a visual artist so I grew up going to contemporary art museums all over the world… Klein found that, when he would paint a surface, it would be really shiny and luminous and beautiful, but as it would dry, it would become extremely matte. It would lose its excitement. So he figured out a chemical process to suspend aquamarine blue pigment in a sort of resin, which meant that when it dried, it stayed just as luminous. The color is really striking. I always really enjoyed that, and when I found out how it was made, I got excited by the metaphor that exists within it: because by suspending the pigment in the resin, he keeps each grain of pigment whole. One color made up of a million individual tiny parts, and that’s very much what I’m interested in in my dance company. I want to create a whole evening’s-length work that is one cohesive piece, but I’m interested in working with dancers who are very strong and powerful individuals, and also with other collaborators [an installation artist, digital media artist, and kora player among them] who are strong and powerful individuals. I don’t want to approach the choreographic process in the way paint is traditionally made: to grind up the pigment into a powder and dissolve it in oil. I would like to create a whole where each piece is its own individual whole.

Paint a picture of the opening of Into the Void.

A completely empty space. Klein had a very famous installation called The Void where he literally whitewashed a whole gallery and advertised this event so well that 3,000 people showed up to see nothing. In his mind, in his words, they were coming to see a positive energy which he had infused the space with, but some cynics saw nothing. So I’ve really been thinking about the idea of emptiness.

There will be a white floor that runs under the feet of the first row of the audience to the back wall, and then straight up the back wall. Sort of like a photographer’s seamless paper, so there will be this clear space in the middle. To either side of that, the space will be draped in black, so the central void will also hopefully be a gateway or door.

One of the reasons we’re using the white floor and backdrop is that we want to really saturate the space with an approximation of IKB. The lighting and digital media artists are experimenting with that color, and there will be three dancers who will use their painted bodies to dance. To create a painting in time and space.

Into the Void is at On the Boards from Apr 28–30.

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Tags: Dance, On the Boards