Back to the Ballet! A Night out With PNB’s Resident Choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo!
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Dylan Wald and soloist Elle Macy in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Little mortal jump, which PNB is presenting on a triple-bill with two other Cerrudo works for PNB subscribers only Sept. 24 – 26, and streaming digitally October 7 – 11. For tickets contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
I have to admit that I love sitting in these, classic, theatre-style folding chairs.
In front of me in the distance, there is a huge red curtain and randomly,
every few moments or so, it catches the light just right and glistens like a giant,
almost blood-red field of stars. I know
that in mere moments the lights will drop and the night’s events with all their
magic, will begin.
And so the lights do drop.
And so the Curtain rises. And so
it all begins again, almost as though nothing before this matters, almost as
though none it ever happened. And so we
are all here and for a time, we forget that we are wearing masks, and that we
are all sitting “socially distanced” from each other and for a moment I am
transported to a world of dance and motion—and for an even more brief moment I
think to myself that perhaps this last five years—perhaps even that—was just a
dream and that life is more like this, with curtains and dancers and stages
filled with rain. But too soon I know
that the curtains will rise again and that this stage is actually the illusion
and that the blood-red curtain is a trickster and that art is a liar. A very
beautiful, extremely enchanting, almost mesmerizing trick of the light.
When I hear others describe PNB’s Resident Choreographer
Alejandro Cerrudo’s work I always feel a bit bad, even a trifle jealous. While
everyone seems to think that he is the "Second Coming" when it comes to
contemporary balletic and dance choreography—his work always tends to leave me kind
of flat and just a tad bit bored—like I’m watching someone’s exercise routine. I honestly do feel bad about disliking his work
as much as I do. Because of this I
really wanted to investigate what it is that makes me feel this way, and what has
made me feel like this all of the times that I have come across his choreography.
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Noelani Pantastico and Lucien Postlewaite in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Silent Ghost, which PNB is presenting in a triple-bill of works by Cerrudo, September 24-26, 2021 (for subscribers only) and streaming digitally October 7–11. Photo © Angela Sterling.
As I sat in my seat in McCaw Hall's PNB Theatre, I wrote
one phrase “Bodies in motion,” followed by another “catalogue of
movements.” It struck me that one of the
important, overriding aspects of Cerrudo’s choreography appears to be the
desire to keep his dancer’s bodies in almost constant motion—to just keep them moving—in
what others have described as an “intellectual” discourse between the
artist, the audience and all of his dancers—whether they be the "corps de ballet" or a "pas de deux"—his dancers are always seemingly trapped in a kind of intellectually motivated,
contemporary, perpetual motion machine—perhaps they are meant to be trapped in
a kind of Dantean "Hell" in which they can never stop moving. I don't know. At times, I wonder if a long enough piece of his would end with al the dancers dropping from sheer exhaustion—which aside from any
harm it might actually cause--might actually be kind of cool, I mean visually,
or conceptually speaking...not really, though.
On the other hand, it must be kind of a funny thing, that, for those of you that have been following my ballet reviews, art reviews, interviews, etc., over at the old Post Intelligencer Art blogs, and now here, that an intellectually motivated choreographer should seemingly be right up my alley. I mean, I love intellectual discourse of almost any sort—so what is my damage here? Why am I just not rocking to the beat that Cerrudo is putting down for us here?
Actually, though I, truthfully didn’t dislike everything—each piece of the night has its strengths and weaknesses (though the last piece of the night was a real mess) and while I feel like I’ve seen comedic dances and
giant blocks done before—looking back, I might actually be thinking of
Cerrudo’s own work from earlier PNB nights.
By far, however, looking over the dances of Singularly Cerrudo, the most
enchanting, cohesive and inviting piece was the excerpt dance from the ballet
“One Thousand Pieces,” bringing in influences from two of my favorite artists,
Philip Glass and the super talented, though problematic Chuck Close.
Here, dancers interact with water and the stage, and the dance rises above being a mere “prop,” or "gimmick" ballet. The water works well with Cerrudo's technique and,
perhaps—it is because of the fluidity of the water that the choreography
also takes on a less mechanical, intellectual turn and his ritualistic cataloguing becomes
more fluid, less methodical and begins to gain a kind of momentum that the
rest of the night just seemed to lack.
Yes, that’s it, Alejandro Cerrudo’s work, while it seems
like he wants to keep his bodies in motion seems, ultimately to falter and to lack sustained momentum. His bodies always seem to be moving from one very short,
one-two motion to another and what we get is a choppy, somewhat ungraceful, sportslike, mathematical cataloguing of
every movement that Cerrudo can think of--sometimes these moves are
interesting, sometimes humorous, sometimes even enlightening—but more often a kind of monotony slips in, just as he is always
already moving us onto the next one—each movement is already over by the time
that we become aware of it. They remind me of the idea that Jacques Derrida describes when speaking of the process of mourning, and his claim that every artist is already dead by the time that any of us even knows their names. None of Cerrudo's movements are given enough time
to glow, to shine, before we have already moved onto something new. Each dance
moves along piece-by-piece like a DNA strand, a series of lock blocks—or a game
of tag.
Pacific Northwest Ballet corps de ballet dancers Christopher D’Ariano and Leah Terada in an excerpt from Alejandro Cerrudo’s One Thousand Pieces, which PNB is presenting on a triple-bill with two other Cerrudo works for PNB subscribers only Sept. 24 – 26, and streaming digitally October 7 – 11. For tickets contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
Yes, a game of tag!
That is the best description of his choreography—and that is fine, but something is still missing—rather, it is a feeling of fluidity that is missing—a musicality within the
choreography itself is what is missing. As an artist myself, I see that music within
Butoh—or even in good writing—where you can almost hear a tune in the timpani of a
writers word choices. This becomes an artist’s
singular tempo that underscores, underpins and connects an artist’s oeuvre over
time--over their lifetime. And it may just be me, but I can’t find it here in Cerrudo’s work. Or
rather, I want to begin to see a more complex catalogue, set to a more complex
beat. Lose the props, lose the water or
the giant boxes and just pare down to the very basics and build up from there. Each of these dances, here, could easily be set to a
march or pretty much any simple tempo. I
want to see Cerrudo give us more fluidity and complex moves to a much more complicated and arresting tempo.
But from what I understand Cerrudo’s tenure with us is far from over—so perhaps there may still be time enough and room for some big surprises and perhaps I could still become a fan and figure out just what it is that everyone else is seeing in Cerrudo’s work—as long as it isn’t all just a trick of the light!
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