Seattle Blog Dance

For a ballet built on the dichotomy between two worlds—an idyllic sunlit village by day and eerie moonlit forest by night—Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Giselle is a production of mesmerizing harmony. Despite its 19th-century roots, the Romantic ballet still captivates with its themes of love and heartbreak, brought to a modern audience with haunting elegance under Peter Boal’s artistic direction.

It had been years since I’d seen Giselle when I took my seat in McCaw Hall, but by the time I left, it had risen to the top of my favorites ballets. Unfolding against Jérôme Kaplan’s whimsical sets and French composer Adolphe Adam’s score, the ballet follows Giselle, a charming peasant girl who unwittingly falls in love with a disguised duke, Albert. When her jealous suitor, Hilarion, reveals Albert’s true identity, Giselle dies from heartbreak, only to rise at night as a Wili. Led by their merciless queen, Myrtha, the Wilis are the ghosts of jilted brides who beguile unsuspecting men into dancing to their deaths. Yet Giselle’s love for Albert persists—a love story so compelling that the ballet, too, has persisted for over 180 years.

Duck Pond is a high-flying acrobatic mashup of the beloved ballet classic Swan Lake and the fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling.” Performed by Circa, a very talented group of Australian circus acrobats, Duck Pond captures the drama and emotion of trying to find your place in the world through stunning acrobatic feats. 

The hopeful Ugly Duckling catapults her way into the Prince’s party, seeking to gain respect from the court and the attention of the Prince. She catches the Prince’s eye, but also the critical gaze of the court. Her friendly gift of a tower of pillows ends with a pillow fight and her being left alone to clean up a feathery mess. Abandoned by the glamorous court, the Ugly Duckling is consoled by her loyal tribe of mop-wielding, oversized-overall-wearing duck companions. Hilarity ensues. When the Prince comes to find the Ugly Duckling, he is captivated by a new arrival: the elegant and dangerous Black Swan and her solitary aerial acrobatics. Fueled by her desire for belonging, the Ugly Duckling throws herself into a group of swans and attempts to fly. She tries again and again until the swans accept her and she takes flight, discovering she has been a swan the whole time. Then, in a twist from the anticipated storyline, the Black and White Swans choose each other over the Prince, leaving him confused and self-pitying. The show pares down the plot of the original ballet to focus on daring acrobatic feats, which show inner dialogues and passionate emotions between the characters. Just when the plot seems to be  resolved, an unexpected third act begins with an acrobatic swan fight. After this, the performers dismantle the set and perform a series of delightful circus acts entirely unrelated to the story.Circa in Duck Pond. Photo by Pia Johnson.

Firebird, an ode to Russian folklore, showcases iconic Slavic characters and the passion of its creators. The ballet originated in the early 1900s as a vision by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, a shrewd producer who brought together leading artists to stage works celebrating Russian culture. It was intended to showcase Russian folklore and music and highlight its unique design and character. This is obvious through the show's set design and music. The backdrop draws from classic Slavic illustrations and archival art, while the score by Igor Stravinsky features folk-inspired melodies and rhythms that heighten the ballet’s emotional arc. Vivid costumes animate the stage, most notably the Firebird’s fiery red plumage, inspired by Léon Bakst’s original designs. These visual elements often communicate more than the narrative itself, and together with the dancers’ portrayals, transform Firebird into a living piece of transported culture.

The ballet consists of four scenes and lasts a mere 30 minutes. Adapted as a slightly more modern interpretation of the 1910 dance, it first acquaints us with our protagonists, Prince Ivan and the Firebird, when the sparkling rhinestone curtain of McCaw Hall's stage lifts. In true folk-story fashion the prince is depicted as a vague figure who is the son of a ruler from a distant unknown kingdom. Firebird, a fierce character danced by Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan, is adorned in red and gold as she fluttered across the stage with precise skittish movements. The plot functioned more as a framework than a focal point: Ivan falls in love with a princess, she is captured by an evil sorcerer, and he ultimately rescues her with the Firebird’s help. This outline is meant to be representative of an average folktale.

Some stories feel like you’ve known them forever. “Cinderella” is a story that will always be associated with certain images: a clock that won’t stop ticking, a family whose cruelty has no bounds, a shoe that only fits one, and a humble wish for kindness to be enough. Often called a tale as old as time, the story is rooted in origins beyond glass slippers. One of its earliest known versions appears in the story of Ye Xian in ninth-century China, where a young girl’s lost golden shoe becomes her exit out of hardship. Across centuries and continents, many cultures have retold this story of hope. Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Cinderella, choreographed by Kent Stowell, adds a sparkle that grounds the story’s familiar magic in memory and motion at a human scale, reshaping the fairy tale as inner transformation.

Before the characters even appear on stage, the word “Cinderella” is spotlighted across the lowered curtain, acting as both an invitation and a subtle warning. The title glows with familiarity, and when the curtain rises, Act I places the real world and the dream world side by side: one in which Cinderella is pushed into servant work by her stepfamily, and another that draws us into her interior life. Act I’s palette leans into dusty blues and faded earth tones, grounding her world in something restrained and practical.

Localities / An Odyssey Part 2 is a fascinating performance that revolutionized my understanding of the boundaries of dance. Localities was choreographed by Donald Byrd as the second part of his project based on his unpublished memoir. His art often focuses on themes of social justice, and this performance was no exception. 

The first thing I noticed was the venue. I had been expecting an ornate, traditional opera house. Instead, I saw the performance on closing night in the small, intimate setting of the Tricia Stromberg Studio Theater. Localities was an amazingly beautiful and personal experience.

The Nutcracker is one of the most notable holiday staples in all of ballet. Through its angelic symphony, classic choreography, and its magical touch of the Christmas spirit, the Nutcracker is a show you won’t want to miss during the winter season. 

But it’s not merely a Christmas tradition, it's a crucial aspect of the Seattle community. At the Vashon Center for the Arts, the performance was built on the extensive efforts from community members, truly supplying the foundations of the magical wonderland that makes the Nutcracker so special to so many families around the Seattle area. This beloved holiday tradition, due to its magical Christmas setting, its role in popularizing German nutcracker toys, and its function as a family tradition introducing generations to ballet and classical music, is regarded as a cultural fixture in the holiday season. It is beautiful and heartwarming to see parents who once attended the ballet as children now bringing their own, demonstrating just how vital this cultural cornerstone is to Seattle families.

The red curtain sparkled with tiny bedazzled gems, shining like tiny stars, as it opened to reveal long green tutus which sparkled in front of the audience who stared in awe even before the dancers began to move. A little while before entering the theater, I overheard an elderly woman talking about how she thought that the world needed more pure beauty in it; something uncomplicated and idealistically happy. In a world so obsessed with finding meaning in every little thing that it is killing us, maybe what we need is just to see something beautiful for the sake of it being beautiful. After seeing the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of Jewels, I understood what she said. A lot of people need to connect to seeing joy in art, and this is part of what makes Jewels such an excellent ballet for both new and returning audiences to the PNB.

George Balanchine’s Jewels is a rare gem of a plotless ballet. One should not discount it on account of its lack of a plot, however. Its focus is on the diversity of beauty and how, even in a specific art form like ballet, there can be many ways to express emotion and beauty. The entire ballet is split into three acts that work as smaller ballets: Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds. Each ballet has a main color scheme associated with it incorporated in the costumes and background: dazzling green for Emeralds, a roaring red for the unapologetic joy of Rubies, and a classy white with light undertones of several other colors, like pink for Diamonds.

Whim W’him’s Spring ‘25 left me wonderstruck. The show consisted of three sections, each choreographed by a different artist–Olivier Wevers, Mark Caserta, and Lauren Edson, with Olivier being the founder and artistic director of Whim W’him, a contemporary dance company. The talent of the company’s seven dancers–Jacob Beasley, Owen Fulton, Stella Jacobs, Aliya Janov, Daeyana Moss, Ashley Rivette, and Kyle Sangil–is incredible. From their technique and facial expressions to their execution, they are a treat to view. This show was my very first contemporary dance show, and I was so excited to watch it. Dance is such an expressive and engaging art form, and Whim W’him made my love for it grow. When I left the theater, I felt the need to dance again. 

The first piece, Rituals for the Mother, choreographed by Whim W’him founder and Artistic Director Olivier Wevers, was contemplative, peaceful, and spiritual. The dancers were dressed in deep green long-sleeved shirts and formal pants, and the women wore their hair in tight buns. The music was full of percussion and engaging rhythms. The dancers moved together like waves in the sea: frantic yet calm, curious yet peaceful. There were moments of control, playing, and fighting. Throughout, the dancers continuously tormented one of the male dancers. This dancer was the only dancer who was dressed differently (he wasn’t wearing a shirt). They held him above the ground as he struggled to run away, moving in tandem, keeping him confined. The scene transitions to a rectangular white light on stage while everything else goes dark. There were two men on stage (Beasley and Fulton); the first was the one who was being controlled (Beasley), standing in the light, and the second was one of the controllers, standing in the dark. Sometimes they performed synchronized with identical moves, while other times the man in the dark (Fulton) only watched the man on the inside. The two swapped places several times, changing the dynamic of the scene. At first, it seemed like a mirroring effect, but as they went on, it was more watching and interacting with one another, together or apart. No matter what they did, the light was there, though it occasionally changed angles. At one point, they were both together, then back-to-back and separated, dancing to their own rhythms–but once again, they found each other. Whim W'him Spring '25. Photo by Jim Coleman.

Inherently, the ballet Coppélia by Leo Delibes is a very silly story. The events following a boy mistakenly falling in love with a doll are undeniably absurd, and they offer a brand of comedy far from the stiff-upper-lip that many associate with ballet. These comedic elements can distract from the fact that Coppélia is an incredibly demanding ballet, with difficult choreography, complicated and multi-faceted roles, a larger-than-usual amount of high energy group numbers, and lots of unforgivingly uptempo songs. Balancing Coppélia’s comedy and technicality is a challenge for any company performing it. Olympic Ballet Theatre gracefully took on this challenge with just the right amount of whimsy, humor, and pure talent to perfect the classic fairy tale, which its company performed May 10 and 11.

OBT dancer Jacqueline Iwamura and guest artist Guillaume Basso fully embody the two leading characters, Swanilda and Franz, right from the jump. They were played with immense energy and sass pouring from both. Iwamura’s Swanilda was sweet, social, and delightfully impish. While Swanilda relishes in the mischief she causes across the story, she is still full of love and energy, wonderfully demonstrated through Iwamura’s buoyant and springy steps in her first variation that teem with joy. Basso brought the perfect energy to Franz, playing him as a boyish, lovable yet absent-minded dope. While the unfortunate situations he gets himself in are entirely predictable and avoidable, one can’t help but pity him with how genuine, open-hearted, and foolish Basso portrays him. 

My stomach fluttered with anticipation as I entered McCaw Hall. Attending Pacific Northwest Ballet performances has been a special tradition for my family since I was six years old. Now, I was going to see the world premiere of one of the most ambitious productions PNB has ever undertaken: their reinterpretation of The Sleeping Beauty. Would it meet my expectations? I’m happy to say that PNB delivered all the spellbinding glamor and grace I hoped for, along with some unexpected twists.

In the classic fairytale, Princess Aurora, cursed at birth by the spited fairy Carabosse, pricks her finger on a spindle during her 20th birthday and falls into a 100-year sleep. The only one who can wake her up is the dashing Prince Desiree with a true love’s kiss. In addition to preserving the original storyline of The Sleeping Beauty, PNB incorporated elements derived from the original 1890 production: the work of Russian choreographer Marius Petipa and Tchaikovsky’s swelling score. However, artistic director Peter Boal worked to contemporize the ballet by giving Princess Aurora self-agency, personalizing its setting to the Pacific Northwest, and incorporating Northwest Indigenous Coastal designs into the production.

The first thing you hear at the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s performance of The Seasons' Canon at McCaw Hall, and the thing that sticks with you throughout the rest of the performance, is the sharp and dynamic choir that begins Twyla Tharp’s Sweet Fields, the first of three works. Constructed of eleven voices, the choir accompanies the ten-part operation with religious hymns from the 18th and 19th centuries. The songs are simple but elevated by crisp tenor voices, later joined by the winding sopranos and altos. Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in Twyla Tharp’s Sweet Fields™. Photo © Angela Sterling, 2024.

Due to the power and excellence of the music, the linked dances sometimes feel like they accompany the score, instead of the other way around. The choreography is creative, switching between blue-toned, lighthearted vignettes and brooding, funeral-march-inspired processions. Visually, most of the dances work quite well. Tharp’s fast-paced, complex actions are sometimes lost in their technicalities, but the overall, folksy theme and the duality of celebration and death make for a series of enticing pairings.

In the 21st century, the possibility of supernatural disasters constantly looms above us. Each year, we are subject to more and more unprecedentedly catastrophic events, an aspect of environmental collapse that threatens the livelihoods of thousands. It’s almost surreal, except for the fact that it isn’t: this is the new world we live in. These devastating occurrences, along with how people and the media react to them, are part of what’s examined by slowdanger’s SUPERCELL. An hourlong quintet performance that questions human attraction and passivity towards environmental events. I was lucky enough to partake in the self-reflection involved in watching the show, presented by Velocity Dance at 12th Avenue Arts from March 21 to 24, and the experience left me contemplative, to say the least.

My journey began in a crowded foyer filled with chattering Seattleites. As the sun set, we made our way into the theater, and the change was drastic. In an instant, we were transported from the brightly lit, corporeal world to a hazy realm of darkness. Two sheets of sheer cloth hung down from the ceiling and the yellow-tinged shine of a pale red cast mesmerizing shadows through them. On the stage, five performers lay together in the shape of a star, each bearing a large, see-through sack full of what seemed to be water, connected to those beside them by a complex entanglement of rope.

Aside from the ferry’s foghorn, there’s rarely a reason for things in Edmonds to be loud. It’s a quiet suburban town with overly nice drivers and a median age ten years above the national average—that is to say, it’s not the place you’d expect to find an experimental dance/theater/martial arts performance on a Saturday night. But there it was: a half-full house at Edmonds Center for the Arts and Radical System Art’s eight-person cast who brought more energy than this writer’s ever seen in her sleepy town.

The show, Momentum of Isolation began, even before the brief curtain speech and the extinguishing of the house lights, with a man typing at a desk. Unbeknownst to the audience at that point, he’d soon become the main focus of the show, the continuing plot that tied together other seemingly disparate stories. One scene included a depiction of online dating, followed by one dancer trying to woo another, providing brief comedic relief. Another featured the ensemble falling in and out of step with each other. Going into the show with no clue of the performance’s themes, it was at times difficult to parse the significance of scenes or moments. One had the sense that things were supposed to be profound, that the audience was supposed to feel something or react a certain way, but at times the jarring effects and mixture of movements seemed blended beyond coherency. Until checking the website and finding that this performance was “centered around the themes of loneliness and social isolation,” I struggled to describe the overall sense of the show. Photo Credit: Emilie Bland

For this month, TEDS Aamina and Kyle have a special treat for you. An April Editorial in the format of an NYT game of Connections (Learn about the game here)! See the key below to see what events the Newsroom is covering this month.

Youth

The sun’s coming up in Seattle. As the evenings grow lighter, cherry blossoms bloom, and March brings us closer and closer to the equinox, now is the perfect time to step out into the near-spring air and go see some art with your TeenTix pass. This month, the Newsroom’s slate of reviews covers gothic theater, pluralistic choreography, classic musicals, and local comedy: a plentiful and varied spring spread!

Over at Dacha Theatre, Mikhail Bulkakov’s “gothic Soviet fairytale” Master and the Margarita is coming to the stage. Opening on March 22 and running at 12th Avenue Arts on Capitol Hill, the play is perfect for audiences who want to be entranced by magical realism and pulled into hilarious satire. A perfect partner to Dacha’s production is The Moors at Seattle Public Theater. This play, running from March 22 to April 14, promises even more gothic goodness, this time entrenched in the mystery of the English moors. Between unexpected arrivals and the secrets of old houses, The Moors will bring a rush of intrigue into your month.

This February, in honor of Groundhog Day, the events that the newsroom is reviewing shed light on the dilemmas that have come to define the human experience: Who am I? Does joy come from continuity or change? Will there be another six weeks of winter? Though the fact that we continue to struggle with these questions can feel disheartening, we can also relish the fact that we, like so many of our ancestors, have the opportunity to untangle the complicated web of human existence.

Joy Harjo will be at Seattle Town Hall on February 27, a poet known for her writings on reconciling the past with the future as we all ask ourselves, how do we remember the past and our heritage without idealizing the pain in our history? Also taking inspiration from history, ArtsWest is running Born With Teeth from February 1 through 25. The play depicts queer, fictionalized depictions of William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, capturing the conflict experienced by all queer people and the erasure of their history while celebrating queer joy and excellence.

It's wintertime! Even in Seattle's bleakest months of the year, vibrancy and inspiration are definitely not gone from Seattle’s arts scene. This month our writers will be putting on their explorer hats and experiencing art from around the globe. So join them on experiences ranging from Indonesian Gamelan to Nordic sculptures to contemporary Seattle experimentation.

Seeking to disrupt and reinvent, NextFest NW 2023 at Velocity Dance is a celebration of experimentation. Northwestern artists Maximiliano, Kara Beadle, Danielle Ross, and Sophie Marie Schatz present a singular yet cohesive experience from dancing, movement, and light. NextFest runs December 7-9 + 14-16, so don’t miss the contemporary event of the season at 12th Ave Arts.

At On the Boards’ show Make Banana Cry, the audience is part of the stage. It is an uncomfortably post-modern, avante-garde performance disguised as a simple dance and fashion show, set on a runway stage. Performers strut down paths patterned with Buddhist swastikas, in various states of dress and undress, holding a collection of props and using them in different ways. Sometimes they march slowly—sometimes to the point of unmoving—and sometimes they are explosively radiant in their color, movement, and expressiveness. Under the helm of producer/performer power duo Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson, the six performers are accompanied by an ever-changing set of soundtracks, consisting of everything from Miss Saigon to frantic pop songs to what seems to be the rhythmic beating of helicopter propellers. This collection of sounds and cues is not random but very intentional, for the show is meant to be an out-of-the-box method for paralyzing a largely white audience with symbols and themes commonly associated with the appropriation of Asian cultures. The auditory design and wild costume choices enhance the discomfort put upon the audience. However, as the show experiments with imagination, it also discovers that entertainment and creativity do not always go hand in hand.

Upon walking into the theater, audience members are handed plastic foot covers so their shoes don’t scuff the stage; these remain on for the entirety of the performance. Then, the audience examines various items such as Chinese checkerboards and towering sculptures of oversized cup noodle packages before taking their seats. The audience then sits in silence as the performance slowly begins, and then rapidly escalates. The performers march, run, or crawl down the runway toting a variety of different props and wearing strange costumes that bend the definition of clothes. The costumes are continuously weird and eccentric—sometimes coherently so and sometimes like a jumble of the strangest outfits ever worn. The actors confront, speak to, and hand things to audience members, who are scattered around in clusters of rows throughout the stage. The goal of the actors throughout these interactions is to challenge the audience’s beliefs and ideas via motifs. However, the boldness, force, enthusiasm, and nakedness of the performers often serve less as vehicles for metaphor and more so as a visceral shock to the “universal Western prejudice” mentioned by the show’s program. As the show veers off the rails, the performers’ goals are put on display: to illustrate a history of racism against Asian cultures and to boast their own Asian-ness in pride. The show’s themes are pleasantly startling but the execution of them is ultimately unsustainable.

This November, as the clocks fall back and the rain keeps falling, we at the TeenTix Newsroom are turning our attention to tradition: maintaining beloved ones and forging others that are fresh and new. With a TeenTix pass this month, there’s plenty of time to both return to classic stories and explore contemporary ideas.

At Seattle Rep, Little Women runs from November 10 to December 17, a staging of Louisa May Alcott’s adaptation of her own 1868 novel. Following the aspiring writer Jo March and her three sisters throughout each of their lives, Little Women centers on the joy of family. But the cozy community fun doesn’t stop with the play itself; the run includes dates with a Winter Market taking place in the Rep’s lobby, a double feature date in collaboration with SIFF Uptown, and more.

The stage is dim– lit only by a soft white glow. Nine actors breathe in a haunting, rhythmic chorus. Their bodies sway to the chugging of the train. The rise and fall, the side to side, calls to mind deep-seated nostalgia, the feeling of travel that, as a child, felt never-ending. As Passengers progresses, the Seattle Repertory Theatre stops feeling like a theater. The acrobats stop being just actors, their daring stunts transform from just circus spectacle. The audience is pulled into a heart-wrenching and deeply human story, told masterfully with the bodies of the performers. Circus is used as a creative device, where the stunts come second to the story. Passengers is one of the most uniquely beautiful things I have ever seen.