Best of the West
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” so began Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities.
FREE ARTICLEWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
Reading up on the backstory of how Alejandro Cerrudo’s “One Thousand Pieces” finally made it to the stage at Pacific Northwest Ballet, one is struck by the epic commitment the company lavished upon an epically scaled dance.
“One Thousand Pieces” is 70 minutes long, composed in three parts and 35 sections. Prior to the performance at PNB, it had been performed only one time, at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2012. In order to perform the mélange of Philip Glass compositions live, PNB’s orchestra invested two years of chasing down copyright permissions and locating rare scores. Finally, there’s the epically disrupted timeline of the work’s rehearsal journey in Seattle. Originally slated for a 2020 company premiere, “One Thousand Pieces” was the last work PNB ran in dress rehearsal before Covid-19 shut down theaters. The company then danced one section of it for a digital stream release in 2021. But only this March, a year after Cerrudo wound down his stint as PNB’s resident choreographer, was the work finally danced in full.
Performance
Place
Words
“Uncommonly intelligent, substantial coverage.”
Your weekly source for world-class dance reviews, interviews, articles, and more.
Already a paid subscriber? Login
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” so began Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities.
FREE ARTICLEElphaba (Cynthia Erivo) steps down the steps, rests her hat on the floor and takes in the Ozdust Ballroom in Wicked. She elevates her arm, bringing her bent wrist to her temple.
Continua a leggereThe Sarasota Ballet does not do a “Nutcracker”—they leave that to their associate school. Instead, over the weekend, the company offered a triple bill of which just one ballet, Frederick Ashton’s winter-themed “Les Patineurs,” nodded at the season.
Continua a leggereI couldn’t stop thinking about hockey at the New York City Ballet’s “Nutcracker” this year, and not only because the stage appeared to be made of ice: there were a slew of spectacular falls one night I attended.
Continua a leggere
comments