Inspiration, Quotation and Video Games at PNB's In The Upper Room--AfterTime, The Window--PNB's Best Choreographers and Twyla Tharp, Philip Glass!
Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in the world premiere of Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan’s AfterTime. PNB presents AfterTime on a triple-bill with works by Dani Rowe and Twyla Tharp, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall November 7 – 16, 2025. For tickets and info, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
Beginning with two Mad Max-type figures climbing out of the orchestra pit and onto a bifurcated stage--a wonderful effect achieved through scrim and lighting that creates a world within a world, separated into the lower/downstage--primitive humans and their center-and-upstage technologically advanced overlords. Visually, AfterTime is a bit of a cross between some 1990's low-rez video game and those bizarre, old, European, science fiction movies like Barbarella, Flash Gordon or Zardoz. Conceptually, this ballet is expertly narrative at almost every level. Structurally, it uses constantly quotational storytelling, and it is ultimately at its best when it becomes an abstract mélange with a very simple message of man versus technology. AfterTime relishes in those moments of conceptual pastiche, when it becomes a collage of ideas and a series of quotations plucked from today's contemporary world--showing us that the world we live in really is a continuously endless source of inspiration for contemporary ballet to draw from. This relationship between the ballet and the real world is reflected in the choice of living legend, Twyla Tharp closing the night. Tharp is generally regarded as making the first crossover ballet, wherein she created the ballet Deuce Coupe with her choreography to the music of the Beach Boys.
In fact, all three of the the dances in PNB's In The Upper Room speak intimately to the relationship between choreographers and their sources of inspiration, as well as how audiences respond to quotation--especially over time--and the successes and failures when ballet ventures out of the echo room of balletic history into the realm of the real world--and all the traps that that entails.
Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Elizabeth Murphy in Dani Rowe’s The Window. PNB presents The Window on a triple-bill with a work by Twyla Tharp, and a world premiere by Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall November 7 – 16, 2025. For tickets and info, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
The Window, choreographed by Danielle Rowe, ultimately fails the Bechdel Test, which we will talk about in a moment. But first, The Window is a ballet that appears to give us a classic narrative, split into several vignettes in which a woman (split into past and present selves,) reflects upon the passing of an important man in her life. Most likely her lover, the work integrates the language of classic ballet, and narrativity, employing a flash technique that recalls those "Sears Family Portrait" photos of the 70's and 80's, which would often superimpose images one atop the other or have a patriarch or matriarch of a family looking over her progeny in a sappy, nostalgic and wistful scenario. This helps to create a very nostalgic ballet that appears to be looking backward rather than forward, narratively, conceptually and structurally. The Window seems to find its inspiration in the past.
Sadly, this nostalgic sensibility finds its way into the manner in which Rowe deals with gender roles and leads to why I say that this work fails the Bechdel Test. For those that do not know--the Bechdel Test was created in 1985 by cartoonist, feminist and critical theoretician Alison Bechdel. They suggest a measure of representation, wherein there are three criteria--there must be at least two women in the movie, book or other artifact. So far, so good--The Window splits its main character in two, in essence, there are two women on the stage and they are having a conversation through dance and even across time. This fulfills the second criterion of the test--the two women must have a conversation. But The Window falls down on the most important aspect of the test--they must be talking about anything other than a man. This critic (i) feel/s as though this could have been amazing, would have been amazing and should have been amazing--if it had been about anything other than a man--the male of the species, so to speak. Imagine if the main ballerina had been thinking about her own future, of her dreams of her failures and successes--or even, just her cat!
But, honestly--that just means that there is still work to do, evolution to be made, pioneering to see.
Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. PNB presents In the Upper Room on a triple-bill with a work by Dani Rowe, and a world premiere by Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall November 7 – 16, 2025. For tickets and info, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.
The eponymous In The Upper Room was choreographed by Twyla Tharp in 1986, and it has not aged well. Living Legends Twyla Tharp and postmodern composer Philip Glass present us with a slow-motion strip-tease combining ballet, tap, and sprinting, wherein dancers divest themselves of their baggy 80's type Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour waiter/waitress' attire, throughout the dances.
In In The Upper Room, Tharp is inspired by the world of sports and athleticism. Personally, I must admit that I am not a fan of most ballets that are overly influenced by the worlds of sports--often they are too quotational, sacrificing beauty and flow in the process. Tharp's choreography here suffers from all the hallmarks of athletic ballet, the choreography is too loose and her choice of baggy outfits highlights this. The final effect of it all is that it along with the fact that most of Tharp's signature moves have been used and reused by others and have lost much of their excitement and glow and have now become objects of quotation themselves, they now remind us of the 80's or earlier depending on the ballet. This gives the choreography a comedic effect--five years after Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" video, which too, featured athletic comedy.
Still, no ballet can really, truly fail when placed against a roaring Philip Glass score--especially Glass in his prime when for a brief era he became zeitgeist in the late 70's and 80's after Einstein on the Beach, before 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof and hot off his performance on Saturday Night Live, which was also in 1986. But something was missing for me here. I mean, I generally, genuinely like Twyla Tharp and I absolutely adore Philip Glass, but for some reason it all was just not working for me. At one point I even decided that I needed to watch this on the small screen in order to catch that verisimilitude that comes from the alienation of reality. Later, PNB'S PR Manager told me, "Everything looks better on the small screen!" And you know what? He was absolutely right, it was! But what did this mean? Had I learned nothing from the warning of Aftertime? Would I have even preferred a smaller screen and to watch this on my phone with my wireless Bluetooth headphones? In the end, in the lobby of the Pacific Northwest Ballet had I realized that I, too had become part of the problem--had I so easily accepted my cog-space in the only-metaphorical-for-the-moment machine? Had I preemptively given in to the Terminator and started to love our AI oppressors? Definitely, after all of this, I had been left moved. Now I am more machine than man--not really, but I did have a moment when I worried a bit about it!
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