Pacific Northwest Ballet Emergence Review
March 27, 2025 | Digital
In its latest showing, the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet flexed its repertorial range with a satisfyingly edgy quadruple bill featuring four different tutu-less, smile-less, and largely colorless contemporary ballets joined under the title of the program’s premier work Emergence.
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Pacific Northwest Ballet Emergence Review
The program opened with Price Suddarth’s brand new 30-minute ballet Dawn Patrol. Drawing inspiration from two fronts of heroism – the harrowing experiences of dawn patrol pilots during World War II and the more modest selflessness of everyday living, Suddarth leverages bold, unconventional phrasing to build a highly elegiac, intensely affective piece that pulses with themes of connection and resilience rather than tell a decisive story.
The emotionality of this decisively stamina piece is buttressed by scenic and lighting design (Chrisoula Kapelonis and Reed Nakayama, respectively) and costumes (Mark Zappone) that are in perfect symbiosis with Suddarth’s choreography.
While you never knew exactly where the piece was going, the scenes advanced easily like cursive.
Most compelling was that during which a commanding line of dancers marches into view from the upstage shadows like an unsuspecting tide, their unity contrasted by the anticipation of an impending rupture.
Up next came Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun, a more modern, realistic interpretation of Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1912 ballet of the same name. While Afternoon of a Faun, danced by Lucien Postlewaite and Clara Ruf Maldonado, might not have demanded the marathon power of Suddarth’s Dawn Patrol, it was no less enthralling.
Quintessentially Robbins, Afternoon of a Faun is grounded in highly skilled simplicity. The semi-narrative unfolds not through overt storytelling methods or bravura steps but through subtle glances, purposeful angles, and nuanced expressions that make the audience look (really look) at what’s happening on stage.
And that’s exactly what Postlewaite and Maldonado achieve. The former’s catlike slinkiness combined with the latter’s incredibly cool, almost aloof demeanor worked to pull the audience into a dream-like trance.
The third piece, Marco Goeke’s Mopey, was a slightly disconcerting solo work performed with verve and clear relish by Kuu Sakuragi.
The choreography, while a flurry of seemingly compulsive, ardently un-academic movements, was also very precise and somehow seemed to follow its own logic. It keeps you on the edge of your seat.
The program concluded with the much-anticipated return of Crystal Pite’s beehive-inspired Emergence. The brilliance of this piece lies in how it seems to exist on the edge of entropy, almost but never quite there.
It’s technically rigorous, visually stunning, and absolutely unforgettable.
A proper power finish, Emergence represented the company at the top of its game.
Featured Photo of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s company dancers in Crystal Pite’s Emergence. Photo by Angela Sterling.
