Pacific Northwest Ballet dances Ulysses Dove at Jacob's Pillow

(Pacific Northwest Ballet in Vespers, choreographed by Ulysses Dove.)

Fri, Aug 21 - Pacific Northwest Ballet visited the northeast last week to perform a triple bill of ballets by Ulysses Dove at Jacob's Pillow (a place that I wish I had gotten the chance to visit much, much more often this summer - it's gorgeous up there and a spectacular haven for dance of all kinds during the summer). This program shows the imprint of PNB's artistic director Peter Boal, who, after taking the reigns at the company a few years ago, has added a significant number of contemporary and new works to the company's repertory. Boal originated a role in one of the Dove ballets on this program - Red Angels - which he danced while a principal at New York City Ballet (the performance was also broadcast on PBS several years ago).

Overall, it was a good program, even though I had previously seen two of the three pieces danced better elsewhere. In any case, Vespers, the middle work on the program, is such a well-constructed piece that it was still very satisfying and exciting to watch. The work is choreographed for a female ensemble and features chairs scattered about the stage. The music is a an incessant, percussive rhythm that builds to a climax as the dancing becomes more frenetic. Steps and movements are arranged in a sort of canon as the dancers climb, sit in and move around the chairs. It builds consistently towards an exhilarating climax. I first saw this piece performed by the Ailey company, which perhaps has Dove's movement more in settled the company's contemporary dance style. PNB's women did it well enough, and the same effect was still there at the end, but there were many moments where it did look like they were concentrating harder on just getting the steps done than actually dancing.

Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven was the program opener. Here, the dancers seemed a bit confined by the smaller space of the Ted Shawn Theater's stage (PNB usually performs on a larger stage at McCaw Hall in Seattle - and Dove choreographed this work for the Royal Swedish Ballet, who also perform on a larger stage). The Ted Shawn Theatre is also very intimate for the audience, so we could hear every step on the stage and see all of the effort and sweat involved in the dancing of what I imagine should be an effortless-looking ballet. Stanko Milov, quite wonderful in his featured part, also spun off a shower of sweat around him when he did pirouettes.

I was really looking forward to seeing Red Angels, which was such a memorable part of that PBS broadcast from several years ago. It was an odd experience seeing it a the Pillow: the music is performed by a single electric violin, and violinist Mary Rowell stood at the corner of the stage to perform it live. Trouble is, the music is so unusual and exciting that I couldn't help but want to watch her play it - so I kept getting distracted from the ballet to watch her create a one-woman rock band out of her violin. The dancing of the ballet was good too, but lacked the unbridled energy that the original cast showed on PBS. I guess it's hard to match that, especially when your company's director was in that original cast. Nevertheless, there was some sense of the ballet as it was originally, and it was still good to see.

PNB dances in New York City at the Joyce Theater this January. There was enough good in the company's performance here to make that engagement something to look forward to for the winter.

Performance photos by Angela Sterling: (1) The company in Vespers, and (2) Olivier Weavers and Ariana Lallone in Red Angels, both choreographed by Ulysses Dove.