Artistic Director, Peter Boal

Twyla Tharp -- Week 6

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:41:54 -0700

Week six of Twyla Tharp’s Seattle residency included a 90-minute lecture-demonstration presented on the stage of the McCaw Hall with orchestra. The house was ticketed for 1600, though I don’t know the exact number in attendance. We never expected such a crowd. Twyla is great at these. She did one for NYCB on the creation of Beethoven Seventh with a handful of dancers. I was one. I remember the tense moment when she asked me to execute five pirouettes on the right. Not a problem. She then made the point that no one can turn right and left except Peter Boal. Asked to prove her point, I offered five adequate, though not spectacular, pirouettes on the left. Twyla’s foil in our lec-dem was PNB’s amazing guest artist, Charlie Neshyba-Hodges. Charlie demonstrated phrases from In C, a series of movements created to Terry Riley’s minimalist composition. When asked to alter fronts, reverse, phrase, and mix, Charlie offered art.

On a large projection screen, we were given a glimpse of Twyla’s copy of the score for the Brahms quintet, with meticulous colored pencil markings denoting entrances and exits of different dancers. We saw what looked like hen scratches obsessively mapping out patterns of movement. Videotape from 1996 showed Twyla creating phrases in a London studio. Step by step we were introduced to the choreographer’s creative process over more than a decade leading to next week’s premieres.

Twyla cleverly used this demonstration as an additional opportunity for a run-through for the dancers and the musicians. It also served as a perfect opportunity to test audience response. Fascinated by this unprecedented peak through the keyhole of creativity, I could hear gasps and giggles and roaring applause. Twyla can be insightful, educational, and downright funny. When asked how the dancers were able to slide on the stage, she responded that the stage was “slippery as shit, that’s how.” She then demonstrated a bumpy slide. Hodges was summoned to the stage to really glide.

Saturday night we presented our season opening performance with five works. Twyla unveiled the third and fourth movements of Opus 111. This served as an appealing tease, but nothing like the impact of the complete work. To date, very few have seen Afternoon Ball, the darker and more intense of the new works. Watching the work, with its street kid costumes and desolate lighting, leads me to realize that it exists in its own realm, almost otherworldly, yet firmly grounded on the pavement outside.

Thursday is the culmination of hours of work and years of planning. No doubt Thursday will bring rewards, but the true rewards have been in the process as I’ve watched everyone at PNB do their finest work over these past weeks. Mark Zappone’s costume designs have shifted and molded time and time again to find the ideal tone. Rico Chiarelli’s light has created mood, while hovering anonymously behind choreography. I don’t remember our dancers committing so completely to a choreographer as they have to Twyla. The respect and appreciation are tangible in each rehearsal. We look forward to these premieres, but we have already found success in the daily grind. We are a better company composed of better artists for having lived through the creation of new work. As with all artists, it is the food that makes us grow. Twyla has brought out the best in PNB.

Twyla Tharp -- Week 3

Tue, 2 Sep 2008 23:10:13 -0700

Twyla’s third week ended with dancers seated on the floor of Studio C in their street clothes. Jonathan Porretta brought wine, cheese, crackers, and yogurt-covered raisins. Twyla called this a town meeting and all were gathered to hear her talk about the early years of her career. Jordan Pacitti volunteered to do background research and provided a wealth of information, including names of works and dates of creation. We talked about the three-and-half-minute Tank Dive―that was all she had to say―and the very experimental Re-Moves, where dancers were concealed from view inside of a box.

The audacity and honesty of Twyla’s work became evident to the group with the constant balance of shunning commerciality and needing it to pay the rent. There were moments of incredible laughter during our conversation. An early tour to Europe needed production values such as unique lighting effects, so the dancers carried flashlights. Costumes ranged from the brilliant to the hysterical and utterly controversial. From time to time, recollections sent Twyla into fits of laughter, causing the rest of us to join in. A portrait emerged of a choreographer wanting to make a statement while needing to earn a living and never veering from course. Regardless of success, nothing was ever taken for granted. Our impression of the choreographer gradually became more real and human.

At this point in the rehearsal process, we can see both works. Next week, staff will be invited to watch run-throughs. This has a way of ramping up the dancers’ performance while informing and inspiring the staff. Curiosity has been remarkable around Twyla. She gives a lecture with dancers and orchestra on the 18th of September, two days prior to the preview of Opus 111. Ticket sales for the event are currently at twelve hundred, more than some of our performances.

Rehearsals are now done with a mock design of the set for Afternoon Ball, and several costumes appear here and there for both works. Stewart Kershaw is attending rehearsals regularly. Creative advertising is complete and posters are mounted on the front of the building. Ads hit the radio next week. Also coming up, Twyla will speak with our staff at my request about her work with us and throughout her career. She has been unbelievably generous with time and information. On to week four.

Twyla Tharp -- Week 1

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:18:11 -0700

Twyla Tharp arrived last Saturday night. She had arranged for a series of meetings on Sunday with set and costume designers, videographer, ballet master, conductor, PR and marketing staff, and, of course, me, artistic director. I was impressed with the preliminary work our staff had done. Our technical director offered a perfect three-dimensional representation of the art of Giorgio de Chirico. Our costume designer patched together gritty street deconstructions with traces of epaulets and urban chic. This was the beginning of our eight weeks together which culminate with two world premieres on September 25. After a year and a half of planning, I was pleased to be mere hours away from our first rehearsal.

The dancers returned from the Vail International Dance Festival on Saturday, having performed three programs at 8000 feet above sea level. Twenty-five were called to the first rehearsal on Monday. The mix of excitement and nerves in the room was palpable. Twyla cracked the tension with humor but quickly set the tone of focused work. She understands dancers and recognizes the extraordinary power of creation within studio walls. She’s been doing it for decades and I would bet that being in a studio with dancers tops her list of life’s greatest moments. I watched as the dancers’ intelligence and conviction met Twyla’s intricate phrases. Eighteen months of anticipation and preparation reached fruition. The brilliant dancer, Charlie Hodges, working as a rehearsal assistant, offered clear movement and insight as a vital connection between the choreographer’s thought and physical reality. Twyla was not afraid of jumping up to further articulate a movement. Later in the week, she would leap onto Charlie and clutch like a koala as Charlie maneuvered her around his body like a baton. We tensed as Twyla’s head swung inches from the floor―an introduction to the thrill and potential peril of contact improv.

Six hours passed in a flash. Dancers barely had time to register the pain and fatigue stored in muscle. Minds were spent and some uttered that it was one of the best experiences they had known.

Providing the dancers with a rewarding experience is always a priority, but the education affects so many others. I was pleased to see faces pressed against our studio windows as parents and students watched. A steady stream of staff members stopped by, as did members of the press and Board of Trustees. Curiosity is infectious. Our largest studio offers a balcony that allows visitors to enter the space without disturbing it. On Thursday, photographer Marc von Borstel moved through the space capturing images more like an eye than a camera.

As the week progressed, both works took shape, as did the casts. This is never easy, but I was impressed with Twyla’s clarity as she carefully explained her decisions to each individual.

Giorgio de Chirico wasn’t quite right either―in mood, yes, but not in palette. Twyla referred to the familiar intimate portraits Irving Penn took of Balanchine, his muses and collaborators. Gray is the operative color for the Martynov work. The triangular wall in the Penn portraits intrigues Twyla. It is the unnoticed presence in the image, casting claustrophobia and futility like a long shadow. The week ended on Saturday as Twyla and our technical director set out to look at concrete walls in Ballard.

Week one went well.

Summer Course

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:55:54 -0700

We feel summer course before a single student enters the building. During prior weeks, faculty members pour over lists of incoming talent, pointing out familiar names from previous summers and remembering various arches and extensions. Palpable excitement awaits the first day. What amazes me is every teacher is early for their first class---not just on time, but standing by the piano reading names from attendance folders and watching as nervous students stretch and quietly converse.

We bring 240 students to Seattle for our five-week summer course, following a 21-city audition tour. They come from 35 states and 104 ballet schools. Of course, the primary focus for the summer course is the intensive work in the studios expanding education in dance. Classical ballet training includes technique, pas de deux, pointe, and variations. We broaden the scope of the students’ training with modern, jazz, character, and mat classes. This summer we are pleased to have the fiery Sara de Luis with us to teach flamenco. To be a well-rounded classical dancer today, each of these pieces creates the whole.

Fundamentally, summer courses are so much more than great classes. They are the total experience. Two of our Company dancers are offering a cooking class specifically designed for young students living on their own for the first time. Lectures on nutrition, dance history, and Pilates educate the mind as well as the body. Our advanced students observe Company rehearsals as we prepare for our summer tour to the Vail International Dance Festival. Each of these extracurricular activities makes the time in Seattle rewarding. Of course, nothing has topped last year’s midnight opening of two early edition boxes of Harry Potter’s latest.

There is one essential ingredient to this summer educational experience that we cannot take credit for and that is the marked realization that so much talent is out there. So many of our students arrive knowing that they are the most talented and most promising student that year from their hometown school. In a raw sense, they are the competition winner and their reward is to be surrounded by other winners. I think the word “competition” is often perceived as a negative term, but it is so often the opposite. The competition at our summer corse is consistently positive, and progress over the five-week period is obvious to the eye. Our advanced students perform variations and repertoire to loud ovations of peers and parents on the final day.

As a policy, we don’t recruit students from our summer course for our winter course. Each student must approach us first with an application to be considered for the fall. Unfortunately, according to our students, this is not the case at other schools. After our first two weeks, 45 students were interested in returning. Generally, we are hoping for 30, so this summer one of our most popular. I sit down with each of them and discuss the pros and cons of returning for a nine-month period. My first questions inevitably are whether or not a student has discussed the move with family and with his or her current ballet school. I want kids to know that the rush of a summer course can be different than the steady progress of a winter course. Despite painting the most accurate and realistic picture, students know what they want, and most of them are there ready for the next chapter to begin in early September.