The Future is Bright and Wide Open at Pacific Northwest Ballet's Newest Emergence!
Sometimes the whole of something can be very different than the sum of its parts and sometimes a ballet can read very differently than the intentions of the artists and choreographers of the works presented. Emergence—as a whole, not just the eponymous Crystal Pite work, is one of those cases in which, because of incredible curation, and because of placement, becomes something completely different than the stated intentions put forward for each individual work.
Emergence, consists of four very different dances. Dawn Patrol choreographed by Price Suddarth is a world premiere for the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Afternoon of a Faun, is a bit of a Frankenstein monster, beginning as far back as 1876 with a poem by Mallarme'—the choreography in this iteration by Jerome Robbins dates from 1953 and is a stripped-down modernist version. Mopey by Marco Goecke dates from 2004 and Crystal Pite’s Emergence, for which the program is named, dates from 2009 and premiered at PNB in 2013. This wonderfully imaginative set of dances work as a kind of syllogism, setting a thesis question that then answers itself in dance.
Before I really get into this, let me say that because of
such incredibly thoughtful curation, placement, and the choice of these dances this is one of
the best nights of ballet that I have experienced in my ten-plus years of
reporting on PNB. If you get a chance to see it—I absolutely recommend this night at the ballet, you will not regret it!
Dawn Patrol, the opener, is actually a very pleasant little piece, with music by contemporary composer Alfonso Peduto, it sets the stage for the night by lulling us into a sense that everything here is normal, that we are not going to be asked to stretch our expectations or sensibilities and can relax. This ballet, by Price Suddarth is contemporary ballet as a continuation of what has gone before it, not quite banal, but rather, instead, just safe. It feels like ballet holding onto the past, its choreography seeming to speak to and of the preterit and alluding to a kind of conservativism in scope, design and imagination. The dancers in this set of routines seem small, dwarfed by a generic, if overwhelmingly large fabric, overhead sculpture.
This is nostalgia hitting the stage, but something has changed for us, something here is very much awry and what we have long counted on--classically inspired ballet, has lost its rhythm and seems odd to our contemporary sensibilities, it feels like a conversation that we can no longer quite understand, can't quite make-out; one that has lost its original function becoming, at best, a kind of mimicry of the past.
Because of
this, the author's intended paeans to the ideas of heroism, world war, and sacrifice are lost, and the work feels
inauthentic, hollow—not terrible, but more like those hotel paintings, the ones that we just ignore. Like
background noise—not challenging us, but instead like Joseph Buey's inauthentic allusions to a war he was never a part of or Erik Satie’s Musique
d'Ameublement (Furniture Music) it is background meant to set the stage for
something else. It tells us as viewers that we are meant to think of this in
association with the dances yet to come tonight, something is being put into motion,
furniture is being organized, and a scene is being set.
This setting-up is completed by the second work in Emergence,
Afternoon of a Faun, built upon one of my favorite pieces of music by Claude Debussy,
as I said before this is a bit of a Frankenstein monster, created out of all the versions and scraps that have come before it. This rendition, choreographed in 1953 by Jerome
Robbins is a mirror, like the one that its male-presenting lead dancer perceives as he
preens and poses directly to the audience when he awakens from his pre-stage slumber. Is this ballet
a dream? Are in fact, each of the pieces in Emergence meant to be perceived as various kinds of dreams or nightmares?
If "Afternoon" is indeed a nightmare, it is one which belongs to the audience. It is one in which the
audience finds itself becoming increasingly horrified. "Afternoon" is an amazing little piece and
does something pretty incredible in a very short amount of time. This piece,
because of some very specific choices, made in 1953 and continuing into the present, manages to become a mirror of our own sensibilities. It manages--and I believe that it will continue to manage to
problematize directly everything about the ballet—and I do mean everything.
It takes the placid, nostalgic world that is presented in the first piece and turns it completely on its head—to absolutely mix a metaphor. Here, all the traditional tropes and traditions of the past, the very gendered interactions that we see in a Giselle or in a Swan Lake are problematized once we strip down the stage--when we minimize it and evoke a contemporary background as Robbins does. He recontextualizes all the tropes of past ballet into today’s world—via the fifties, yes!—but it is a fifties without any of the tropes of that era—instead, his setting, here, is a minimalist ballet studio. You can easily picture this in your mind's eye and it is something that as of yet has not changed at all--possibly since the beginning of ballet. It remains very nearly the same as it ever was. Now as it was in 1953, it is contemporary in the truest sense.
This makes what follows into a kind of nightmare as a ballerina unwittingly dances into the public space and the male dancer is aroused from his reverie. As soon as he sees this female dancer, alone in the studio, he rushes to her side and proceeds to do what every male dancer has ever done over the course of the history of Ballet and he takes her by the waist, proceeding to toss her around—but this time something seems different. Something seems off! Our response here is the very opposite to when we are viewing a traditional ballet and borders on a kind of revulsion, becoming extremely problematized.
What is happening here? This is not the fantasy
space that we are used to wherein anything can happen and we just accept it—suddenly
there are real world repercussions to the Ballet stage.
It is almost as though the first two works are telling us that, perhaps Ballet itself has changed in the last few years. That it has evolved into something that has become problematic. These dances, despite themselves, beg a huge, unsettling and unexpected--even unwanted question. They show us that if we look back and replicate the past, the product of this may not meet our expectations. Instead, it just may be seen as clichéd and inauthentic and may no longer speak to us as we expect it to, as it has a thousand times before—and at its worst it can become extremely problematic to our contemporary sensibilities.
In these first two dances we are left with
the question—can the ballet even exist in the contemporary world? Have our
sensibilities become such that we cannot even look at modern ballet without
problematizing it into absurdity? Do our sensibilities inure us to the form? Is
there anything left to inspire and invigorate it in the contemporary world? Is this,
in fact, the end of Ballet?
Luckily, the answer to this is not very far away! In Mopey by choreographer Marco Goecke—we are presented with one possible answer to this question. Mopey strips everything down to the very basics. One person, in this case a man, though I am certain this could have been and should be performed by any one--I mean anyone that is physically able--but that is an issue for another article, altogether. Ableism is rampant in the proscenium arts and is not dealt with here.
At least at the beginning of Mopey--we are shown that this is something different, something playful and maybe even a little dark. At least at the beginning, there is no sound, no nothing. This void, this vacuum is filled only by the body, just a body in motion, with only minimal clothing, this is a body stepping away from cliché, stepping away from history and stepping away from any of the traditional movements, choreographic tropes, theatrical conventions, and any of the platitudes of the past. This is as pure as movement can get.
Mopey, takes its movements from everyday life, from the streets, from comedy, cartoons, karate, and even exercise routines--but everything here becomes a whole unto itself--attempting to defy reference. The sounds that we hear in the very first movement of Mopey and to a certain extent, throughout the whole set, come primarily from dancer Kuu Sakuragi slapping himself about his face and torso--and it is exciting like punk music and mesmerizing to see!
Then suddenly all hell breaks loose on the stage and everything that has come before is forgotten. Suddenly the room is filled with the Gothabilly, post punk, loud, electric sound of the 1980's Goth band--the Cramps!
Like an ever-loving bolt out of the blue, hope suddenly fills the air and Kuu dances his heart out!
In one crashing moment a bomb explodes—and suddenly, it seems—anything is possible, and the ballet is alive again!
Suddenly a clap of thunder completely changes the tenor of the night—the sound of anarchy and punk fills the air and just as I imagine it must have felt in the days of Catherine de' Medici, or when Anna Pavlova or Martha Graham first took the stage—there is a sense that anything can happen! Ballet feels again, as though it can be anything and there are no limits, that even from something as simple as a lone body on the stage, with or without music--that true magic can and does happen!
Finally, Crystal Pite’s Emergence seals the deal, finishing this whole thing off with a massive, felling, one-two punch! On the face of it, at least according to Pite, this is a ballet based on the systems of the beehive—but what we get here is so much more! The dimly lit work speaks to so much else, mining systems, and movement from places that are quite often strange, haunting, horrible, magically cinematic and complex! But above all else, this all just feels very new to ballet--even now ten-or-so years after we have first experienced them, they glow with vibrancy!
Pite's Emergence feels like we have been sent into a horror movie or even one of those really scary, contemporary video games filled with mysterious creatures, frightening music and an almost abstract narrativity! Herein the artist is in complete control of what we see and feel--and we are absolutely unsure of what might happen next. This is an artist creating worlds that aside from some traditional tutus—is a galaxies away from something like Dawn Patrol—during the course of this night's events we have definitely been on a journey from Dawn to this! Pite tells us clearly that there are actually billions of new forms for ballet to mine. That there are an infinitude of new questions for ballet to ask. Both Pite and Goecke show us that inspiration is endless—from pat-a-cake simplicity, exercise, insects, crabs, aliens, horror, even science fiction and fantasy--the list just goes on and on! In actuality both of these last two dances tell us clearly and without reservation that everything is cool, everything is fine, the future of ballet is in good hands and the landscape is wide open! We can all breathe freely now!
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