Excerpted from March 2012. Gunshots ring out in Studio C of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, but not a single dancer flinches. Most continue to stretch, encouraging their impossibly long limbs to get even longer, while a few bounce around on their toes like boxers shaking loose in the ring. As tough as they try to look, the toothy grins give them away. It’s not every day ballerinas get to warm up to hip hop.

“All I wanna do is (bang bang bang bang), and a (ka-ching!), and take your money.”

M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” blasts from a stereo, while visiting choreographer Victor Quijada looks on with his arm slung across a chair. He’s today’s DJ and director, the emissary of cool, clad in black Adidas pants and a red Umbro sport shirt boasting an allegiance to England. Is he a dancer or a soccer player? The svelte 36-year-old could pass for either, with a torso built for one-armed lifts and handstands. Quijada is often confused for someone, or something, else; he’s both a ballet dancer with a background in breakdancing, and a streetwise b-boy with a classical arts education. Right now, he’s a dance fusion expert teaching the PNB how to pop and lock.

“It’s obvious to me that this is the next wave of contemporary dance,” Quijada told the Los Angeles Times, “borrowing from the streets and putting hip hop on stage.”

Pacific Northwest Ballet is no stranger to new types of movement. Ever since Peter Boal stepped in as artistic director, the company has performed commissions by some of the world’s leading modern dance choreographers: Jiŕí Kylián, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky. And now, Boal has called on Victor Quijada to create a piece for PNB’s New Works showcase opening this Friday. It’s one of three premieres in an already diverse lineup featuring A Million Kisses to My Skin by British choreographer David Dawson, about the bliss of being a dancer, and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s tribute to a friend who died unexpectedly, Cylindrical Shadows. Quijada’s world premiere fits somewhere in the middle—a work still very much in progress when I sit in on rehearsal.

Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at Victor Quijada’s new work for PNB.

Pacific Northwest Ballet: New Works
Mar 16–24, $28–$168,McCaw Hall, pnb.org