All Lang at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Resident Choreographer Jessica Lang Proves She May Be Smarter than a Fox!

Retiring Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Elizabeth Murphy in PNB resident choreographer Jessica Lang’s Her Door to the Sky. Inspired by the work of legendary American painter Georgia O’Keeffe, Her Door to the Sky is being presented as part of a triple-bill of works by Lang, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall May 29 – June 7, 2026. For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling. 

This last Friday, Pacific Northwest Ballet presented All Lang their celebration of PNB’s current Resident Choreographer Jessica Lang’s work so far, culminating in three dances for us, from very different periods in the choreographer’s artistic career; beginning with 2016’s homage to Georgia O’Keeffe, 2020’s Ghost Variations, and culminating with the 2026 premiere of ZigZag—a potpourri of musical standards that could easily have been presented on 1950’s television or on the Cher or Donny and Marie shows of the sixties and 70’s.

It’s actually pretty odd, just one day after the production, as I start to write this review—I can’t remember much of anything worth writing about to describe the night. I will try to be kind, because—aside from the opener, nothing in this eclectic, all-over-the-place grouping of performances, was strictly speaking bad, very little was amazing, but very little seemed to be pushing the boundaries of what Ballet can and should be—and for those that regularly read my reviews, you know that that is what I am always looking for.  But here, even in her 3-minute overview of her tenure as Resident Choreographer and her introduction to the night’s performances, Jessica Lang simply came across as someone who had very little to say and oddly very little praise for PNB.

The opener, Her Door to the Sky, is a clunky, gawky affair, centering around a large, tan blocky sculpture that is either meant to evoke, Georgia O’Keeffe’s centralized paintings or the historic New Mexico Ghost Ranch where she lived, either way this stagecraft leads to a very static ballet that leaves the dancers forced to interact with an immobile, centralized monstrosity, that  just gets in the way.

As this piece opened, I noticed that there appeared to be no sense of joy, no jouissance, no frisson exchanged between the dancers or between them and the audience. I was, immediately surprised by this since, I imagine that it must be an exhilarating and exciting experience to work with a choreographer at the height of her abilities on one of her own dances, but for the most part each movement just laid there, the dancers seemed to be really trying to connect to something, anything, but that something, just seemed to be missing. That something seemed to be the thing that should have brought them together, that indefinable something that I in this article, was left searching for, and that keeps pulling me away from, if not all of Lang’s choreography, at least all of the pieces from this night. 

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Angelica Generosa (front) and Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan in PNB resident choreographer Jessica Lang’s haunting Ghost Variations. Set to the music of Robert and Clara Schumann, Ghost Variations is being presented as part of a triple-bill of works by Lang, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall May 29 – June 7, 2026. For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.

Luckily, things became much better when retiring Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Elizabeth Murphy took to the stage, truly stealing every scene she appears in. On the PNB homepage, Murphy describes her time in the world of ballet, thusly, “As my 20-year career begins to come to an end, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for all the people who have led me here. To those I’ve had the privilege of dancing alongside and learning from, to those whose thoughtful care has held me together, to the many talented departments that make up PNB, and to all those who chose to invest and believe in me – I am forever grateful and blessed to be a part of this community.”

The second dance, Ghost Variations, created in 2020, was my favorite of the night and it shows that while Lang might not be particularly interested in stretching the forms of ballet, might not have a particularly engaging vision for the directions that contemporary ballet should take, does not seem to come to ballet from any strong ideological position—it is clear that she does love dance, she knows, or has learned to entertain and the last two pieces of the night are both very entertaining, solid, and clever showstoppers.  And, that if you are not particularly interested in or worried about changing the world, they should just about suffice. 

 

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Lucien Postlewaite and Christopher D’Ariano in PNB resident choreographer Jessica Lang’s haunting Ghost Variations. Set to the music of Robert and Clara Schumann, Ghost Variations is being presented as part of a triple-bill of works by Lang, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall May 29 – June 7, 2026. For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.

These last two pieces, Ghost Variations and ZigZag, are pretty light pieces, with, aside from some small homosocial moments are pretty meaningless, but maybe it is here that Lang actually does have a point of view. Maybe it is here that Lang is actually smart as a fox, she might  even be smarter than all the rest of us who remain in the room, sitting on our hands.  Maybe Lang has a better reading of the room than any of us. Certainly better than I do. Maybe, in a world that is shifting, in which even entertainment is not free from criticism and attack—maybe this is when the safest thing to do is to make work that has no easily discernible agenda—maybe recreating the Donny and Marie show, or the Little Rascals’ Flory-Dories on the PNB stage is where we are all heading anyway, so why not do it while you can still call it art and not just self-protection. They say that at times like these, artists make the best work of their lives, and who knows maybe this is Lang’s best work—it will certainly allow her to make more of it—and that is, at least to a very real extent--the name of the game!

 

Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers (L-R Christopher D’Ariano, Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan, Dylan Wald, Elizabeth Murphy, and Noah Martzall) in the Seattle premiere of PNB resident choreographer Jessica Lang’s ZigZag. Set to the songs of legendary singer Tony Bennett, ZigZag is being presented as part of a triple-bill of works by Lang, onstage at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall May 29 – June 7, 2026. For tickets and information, contact the PNB Box Office, 206.441.2424 or PNB.org. Photo © Angela Sterling.