Keeping the Faith

There’s a small moment in Rena Butler’s new “Cracks” that I think only could have become possible at Pacific Northwest Ballet, which commissioned it. At stage right, two tall dancers, both dressed like Catholic school students in pleated skirts and polo shirts, pas de bourrée and then rebound out of a sissonne into more pointe work. Both dancers have strong, well-shaped feet, compact hips, lyrically expressive torsos, and wide shoulders. Only after a few bars of music could I confirm that the dancers were Elle Macy, who is female-identifying, and Zsilas Michael Hughes, who is gender-nonbinary.

Performance

Pacific Northwest Ballet: Director's Choice, works by Rena Butler and Kiyon Ross

Place

Digital stream of performance in McCaw Hall, Seattle, captured May 30, 2025

Words

Rachel Howard

Pacific Northwest Ballet in Rena Butler’s “Cracks.” Photograph by Angela Sterling

Dancing in unison on pointe, they were breaking ballet’s gender conventions, but in a manner that seemed completely incidental and natural—because it was. Hughes, who prefers to dance on pointe, has needed to exercise patience over the last three years, being mostly cast in male-identified partnering roles while fellow company member Ashton Edwards, who is also non-binary but petite, has sparkled as everything from a “Sleeping Beauty” fairy to a swan. This role in Butler’s world premiere was a wonderful payoff. It proves that if you build a truly diverse company, as artistic director Peter Boal has, choreographers will come make use of that palette of dancers in ways that expand what ballet can be.

On a program titled “Director’s Choice,” Butler proved a great commissioning pick, if not a surprising one. As Boal put it in his program guide letter to the audience, “Rena Butler is everywhere.” A Q and A with her later in the guide reveals that Butler, a former Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Kyle Abraham/AIM company member, is currently in such demand that she works on five to eleven commissions simultaneously, and created “Cracks” in four separate week-long studio sprints spread out over nine months. Such a disjointed process doesn’t seem like it would make for a cohesive new ballet, but evidently Butler knows her prime working methods best. “Cracks” pulls you into an intriguing and emotionally rich world—so much so that, thanks to the instant rewind powers of PNB’s digital season stream, I watched it three times and kept finding new layers to engage with.

Clara Ruf Maldonado in Rena Butler’s “Cracks.” Photograph by Angela Sterling

The subject is toxic religion, immediately apparent both in those Catholic school girl uniforms (though Maleta Bukstaff renders them in shades of orange) and in the way an ensemble of 11 dancers frenetically mouths the lyrics of devotions, then doubles over with hands in prayer. A lighting scheme by Julie Ballard of an overhead grid, left exposed and inoperative by the ballet’s end, combines with a sound design by Darryl J. Hoffman of terrifying crumbling audio effects that crash in at irregular intervals. Neither of these elements transferred well to digital viewing, but it was easy to imagine their enhancement in person. What came across most clearly was the power of well-chosen music and the wisdom of a clear, uncluttered approach to movement. The result is a ballet that invites you to sympathize with psychological oppression and emotional overwhelm while still allowing the viewer space for her own feelings.

The Tudor Choir, a Seattle ensemble conducted by former PNB audience education manager Doug Fullington, delivered the choral selections, all of them sumptuous. From Michel Wackenheim’s forceful setting of the New Testament verse “Celui qui fera paraitre le christ au temps fixé”—roughly, “He who will make Christ appear at the appointed time”—“Cracks” moved with fearful hunched stompings and nervous shufflings through Faure, Vivaldi, Debussy, and Praetorius. In a choice ripe with irony, the emotional center of the ballet is a solo for Macy, dancing atop dappled stained-glass light to the only non-vocal selection of the soundtrack, a mysterious and wily waltz for strings by contemporary composer Lev Zhurbin (now known as Ljova). Her hair in schoolgirl double-braids, her movement slithery, Macy looks anxiously over her shoulder as she prays but then pushes her hands through the air, by implication breaking out of a dogmatic mental prison. She drops into a backbend and then the splits; she seems to grab a forbidden apple in the air to bite it. Finally, she bicycles through the ether with her feet, then spikes the floor with her pointe shoes, hips raised, as more crumbling sounds—old beliefs breaking down—are heard.

Noah Martzall and Madison Rayn Abeo in Kiyon Ross’s “ . . . throes of increasing wonder.” Photograph by Angela Sterling

In its other sections, “Cracks” is memorable in how it creates a unified ensemble yet showcases the distinctive variety of dancers. Christopher D’Ariano has an alternatingly slinky and fractured pas de deux with Clara Ruf Maldonado; they’re both entrancing. Sarah Gabrielle Ryan is a wide-eyed rebel in her dance with three men, full of spinning lifts. Jonathan Batista has a very different duet with D’Ariano as “Cracks” enters a passage of solace, promenading the taller man as he flutters one foot against an ankle a la Odette in “Swan Lake,” then bursts into entrechats, upper body defeatedly flopping. Corps member Luca Anaya is beautifully vulnerable in the final group section, which ends with the ensemble looking up warily at the shattering heavens.

The program began with “. . . throes of increasing wonder,” a high-energy but less interesting showcase for 24 dancers by PNB associate artistic director Kiyon Ross, set to gratingly generic minimalist music by Cristina Spinei. In person, the slate also included Twyla Tharp’s legendary “Nine Sinatra Songs.” Tharp wouldn’t grant the rights to record for the digital stream, but her inclusion makes me think of another Tharp work danced at PNB, “Sweet Fields,” set to Shaker hymns (also sung live by the Tudor Choir). Tharp comes at religion from a very different angle than Butler, presenting a world in which a certain rare strain of Christian faith, with its humble fixation on mortality, is unexpectedly liberating. Two contrasting varieties of American religious experience reflected in ballet—what a double-bill with “Cracks” that would be!

Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard is the former lead dance critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Her dance writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Hudson Review, Ballet Review, San Francisco Magazine and Dance Magazine.

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