theatre

Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Serenade: Three Ballets About Moving as One 

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Beauty is truth, truth is tulle. Photo © Angela Sterling.

Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2026–27 season kickoff brings us three reasons to live in the form of Serenade, a trio of ballets including a world premiere from PNB Resident Artist Jessica Lang, another look at Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and, of course, the titular offering from George Balanchine, the father of American ballet and chief finger appreciator.

The program runs through October 4 at McCaw Hall.

As usual, PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal picked three ballets that speak volumes to one another. This time, they’re talking about connections and disconnections, which made for an evening full of subtext and — in the case of Lang’s premiere — actual text. Together these ballets reveal the power of the collective moving as one, the brilliance of the multitudes that each of us contains, and the unique signature that only we will leave behind on the page, the stage, or the canvass. 

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Dylan Wald with PNB company dancers in the world premiere of Jessica Lang’s Pages. Photo © Angela Sterling.. 

First up, Balanchine’s Serenade set the tone. This ballet showcases the company as a corps, challenging the principals and soloists to move as one. Though this piece does contain some impressive solo moments, it’s the collective ones that shine, such as the complex quintets and the geometric runs that looked like monochromatic kaleidoscope patterns. Christmas for those of us in the nosebleeds.

To the degree that any narrative shapes this modernist masterpiece apart from Tchaikovsky’s score, it’s famously neither linear nor particularly clear. A quick summary might go something like this: a company of dancers is born, then boy meets girl / girls, and then girl ascends to the heavens because she died a little bit? 

The lore tells us Balanchine incorporated into the narrative a bunch of little mistakes that actually happened during rehearsals for the original production — a dancer arriving late, a fall — so it’s loose on purpose to keep the focus on the steps. Best to think of Serenade as one of those beauty-is-truth-truth-beauty ballets that wow you with a lot of impressively synchronized group numbers.

Three moments stood out on opening night. First, the stunning opener: a stage full of dancers hold their right hands up in exactly the same way, as if in defiance of the morning sun — all in updated, feather-light, sky-blue tulle tutus by Karinska. Woven from what looks like air, the long tulle skirts hovered after each leg extension, a ghostly third limb tracing lines across the stage.

Second came the moment I stopped taking notes: perhaps emboldened by new protections recently passed by the Seattle City Council, a handful of dancers let down their hair from high buns and performed as a kind of platonic polycule with Soloist Dammiel Cruz-Garrido. 

Third was the moment everybody talked about during intermission: the femme quintet, where the dancers elegantly entangled their limbs, ran together, jumped together, and bowed together—all of it evoking some lost myth about the birth of sisterhood.

Throughout, PNB’s dancers demonstrated their command of this challenging material. There are not enough flowers on planet Earth to throw at Principal Leta Biasucci, who simply refuses to lose a step. In an early duet with Principal Christopher D’Ariano, she appeared to float across the stage as she executed a series of bourrées without making a sound or breaking a sweat. And in the concluding moments, when the crew lifted her into the air to deliver her to the afterlife (I guess?), she seemed to weigh nothing, standing stick straight as if she weren’t balancing on a couple of outstretched hands. I’m beginning to suspect that she made some kind of reverse Little Mermaid deal with a burlesque octopus, and I will be investigating this further.

Soloist Leah Terada also deserves a lot of foliage for her performance on opening night. She was effortlessly regal and mesmerizing in Serenade, and then she switched gears to lead the company in Lang’s world premiere, Pages, where she jumped three or four feet into the air onto boxes, moved at the speed of thought, and gave herself wholly to her character, fully embodying the artist-as-creator/artist-as-vessel psychodrama that drives the piece—but more on that later.

And it was impossible to miss corps de ballet dancer Melisa Guilliams entering the most elegant beast mode imaginable as she took on key roles in all three of these high-intensity numbers, showing off her considerable range, speed, and power. If I’m still writing “corps de ballet” next to her name around this time next year, I’m going to be PISSED.

Not pictured: a white chair hanging from the ceiling, giving Lang’s Pages a dreamy Chagall vibe. Pictured: (L-R) Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers Christopher D’Ariano, Melisa Guilliams, and Dylan Wald in the world premiere of Jessica Lang’s Pages. Photo © Angela Sterling.

Lang’s Pages trades Tchaikovsky’s high Romance for more contemporary and urgent symphonic music paired with a voice-over of a woman listing things she feels, thinks, and does when she’s alone. Her sentences overlap and run into each other like an inner monologue. After a while, the voice begins to feel like an incantation, but its candid, occasionally humorous observations keep the whole thing from sounding too stuffy.

Balanchine’s blues yield to Lang’s white costumes, which are printed with letters, words, and punctuation marks. Each dancer seemed to represent a stray thought bubbling up, sinking down, bouncing around, or racing through the speaker’s lonely mind as she contemplates art creation, music volume levels at the house, etc.

And whereas Serenade often showed off its symmetries, such that everywhere you looked was supposed to look the same, I didn’t have the slightest clue where to look during Pages. At any given time, there were two or three groups of dancers doing different stuff, a chair hanging from the ceiling, and random clanging sounds drawing attention to the wings. I couldn’t imagine a better metaphor for trying to create art in a world of endless internal/external distractions. The whole thing looked like a dream I’d want to dream again.

Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Yuki Takahashi and principal dancer Dylan Wald in Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Photo © Angela Sterling.

After Lang’s whiteout dream, Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition bursts onto the stage with bright splashes of color drawn from Wassily Kandinsky’s Color Study, Squares with Concentric Circles.

If Serenade celebrates the collective as one, and if Pages celebrates the multitudes in one, then Pictures at an Exhibition reasserts the individual’s prowess in a series of colorful, electric dances. In this ballet, the dancers variously move like Kandinsky’s brushstrokes and Modest Mussorgsky’s keystrokes, sometimes more in line with the music and sometimes more in line with painting.

It’s fast, it’s fun, but after the first three or four paintings, it does feel as if you’ve been walking around in an art museum a little too long.

Apart from that, 100,000 points to PNB Principal Company Pianist Christina Siemens, who handled Mussorgsky’s famous score with aplomb. And shout out to Soloist Luther DeMyer, whose hyperenergetic performance in the second promenade sequence made me sit up in my chair and say, “Now who the hell is that?” Incredible work.

Go see it! You can find affordable tickets! The high-up seats are good for this one!

PNB’s Next Step Presents Six Brilliant, Pocket-sized Ballets 

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Pacific Northwest Ballet School professional division students in Zsilas Michael Hughes’ PUSH, presented during PNB’s 2026 NEXT STEP choreographers’ showcase. Photo © Lindsay Thomas.

It hardly seems fair that Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers could be good at anything besides breathing new life into the old repertoire and shaping the roles of the canon to come, but the company’s Next Step program, which ran over the weekend, very much proved otherwise.

Next Step offered a handful of PNB dancers the chance to try their hand at creating an original performance piece, allowing them to draw on the company’s Professional Division students for onstage talent.

It was a win-win-win situation. The show gave the company’s farm team real experience building new work with a budding choreographer; it gave the dancers the opportunity to start exploring one of the career paths available to them once they hang up their pointe shoes; and it spoiled audiences with six brand-new ballets sprung from the minds of the country’s top performers.

The dancer-choreographers certainly rose to the challenge, producing a little kaleidoscope of ballets small enough to fit in your pocket, aesthetically diverse enough to keep you on your toes, and rich enough to stick with you long after the dancers took their bows.

Given the workshop nature of the program—which PNB reinforced this year by staging the performances in a practice studio space inside the Phelps Center rather than at On the Boards or in McCaw Hall as they had in previous years—what follows is not so much a full-fledged review of the show so much as my notes, impressions, and daydreams from the performance, though regular readers may find a distinction there without much difference.

Hues of You — Ashton Edwards

Pacific Northwest Ballet School professional division students in Ashton Edwards’ Hues of You. Photo © Lindsay Thomas

PNB soloist Ashton Edwards’s Hues of You started with a full cast of dancers gathered onstage looking like one big lotus flower. When some spacious electronic music kicked on, the dancers scattered like windblown petals and formed small groups. The movement that followed unfolded like the dialogue in a Robert Altman film: compelling fragments that nevertheless cohered into a whole world.

Edwards juxtaposed angular and curvilinear movement, large and small scales, and intimate and more public-feeling moments to give shape to this impressionistic work. The little duets and trios featured ambitious contortions executed with varying degrees of success, though when they landed they really landed—as when one dancer appeared to fly on the back of another. Overall, a very pretty thing to look at.

For the end of time — Luther Demyer

Pacific Northwest Ballet School professional division students in Luther DeMyer’s For the end of time. Photo © Lindsay Thomas.

Edwards’s soft, flowing number yielded to this dark, stark, and remarkable piece from soloist Luther Demyer.

Demyer dressed his dancers in formal wear and arranged them as if they were figures in a Renaissance funeral painting. Some dancers sadly embraced, others held their heads in their hands, and one held another up pietà-style. As sad violin and piano music played, the dancers came to life and performed slow, acrobatic movement that culminated in a mass rapture followed by a mass resurrection. A pretty spot-on interpretation of how I feel reading the morning paper.

In its staging and tone, For the end of time strongly recalled PNB resident choreographer Jessica Lang’s Let Me Mingle Tears with Thee, serving as a kind of amuse-bouche for PNB’s next production, All Lang, which opens May 29.

In general, the vision was clear, the Professional Division dancers were on their game, and the piece seemed pretty close to being finished. Good stuff. 

To Echo — Elle Macy and Dylan Wald

Smart, mesmerizing, and simply beautiful to behold. To Echo, from PNB principals Macy and Wald, ranked among the evening’s top contributions, thanks to the ballet’s sophisticated structures, its moving score, and the quality of its performances. 

In the opening, a dancer hatched into silence. Then the music kicked in — warm piano minimalism from Michael Wall, who played (and whistled!) the score live. Then the rest of the dancers began to hatch, launching into the world with lots of big-arm extensions and clean, bold lines — but all done quite lightly.

At first they all ran back and forth, east to west, across the stage on separate tracks, meeting each other seemingly at random and dancing briefly together before parting ways. It was an elegant metaphor, a reminder that we’re all just passing through, touching each other briefly before moving on.

At one point the dancers broke the east–west structure, formed a horizontal line across the stage, and then started heading north–south. Some faced the future and some turned around to face the past; as they all advanced, some took steps forward and some took steps back, creating another metaphorically resonant moment that spoke to some of us in the middle of our lives who are doing just fine right now, actually, thanks, now let’s just move on.

This grid structure eventually dissolved into a couple of lovely, well-paced duets—one romantic and soaring, the other more platonic and yoga-intensive. PD dancers Zoe Paris-Carter and Hollis Serson deserved flowers for their performance in that closing duet: really controlled, clean, thoughtful movement. I immediately wanted to watch it again. 

from colors of sun and steel — Leah Terada

Pacific Northwest Ballet School professional division students in Leah Terada’s from the colors of sun and steel. Photo © Lindsay Thomas.

Soloist Leah Terada generally excels in all roles, though her artistry tends to reach its fullest expression in wildly contemporary work that bucks ballet’s more uptight conventions, so it was no surprise to see her turn in the moodiest, freakiest, most unhinged piece of the program.

Three dancers in white dresses moved across the stage swiftly, precisely, and unpredictably as warm, plucky music piped through the speakers. The movement vocabularies came from all over the place—insects, Indian classical dance, horror-film body language (at one point the dancers were seated with legs extended, somehow scooting forward while dragging their hands behind their backs)—but it all looked cohesive.

The relationships between the dancers shifted over the course of the performance, but not in any linear way: sometimes two dancers excluded the third, sometimes they all moved independently, sometimes they supported one another. The word that came to mind most often was conjuring. These dancers appeared to be conjuring something, which seemed fitting given the piece’s final push, where all three dancers seemed to lose themselves in some kind of hyper-kinetic ecstasy, like three witches circling a cauldron in a dark wood. It was enthralling and a little alarming.

Special shout-out to PD students Daisy Bayard, Lyra McDonald, and Hollis Serson, who seemed to thrive in this intense, improvisational environment. Extra points to Bayard, who led the following ballet with aplomb despite its wildly different movement vocabulary. She has range, folks! 

Vignettes — Lily Wills

Pacific Northwest Ballet School professional division students in Lily Wills’ Vignettes. Photo © Lindsay Thomas

Corps de ballet member Lily Wills’s Vignettes was fun, funny, well-structured, and endearing. 

The first of the ballet’s four movements looked like a real hoedown, drawing on swing and country-western line dancing (“where everything is so democratic and cool”).

Then a brief love story unfolded: a solo man wearing black and white danced with a woman in white and another in black, suggesting a divided affection. PD dancer Gustav Frautschi stood out here with some solid peacocking, spins, and leaps. 

The third movement flipped the script with a flirtatious duet in which the woman played coy and ultimately fluttered off on her own; both dancers—Max Howard and Josie Yang—showed a tremendous amount of promise. 

The final movement seemed to place the audience in a bedroom, where two women performed incredibly complex tumbling in the spirit of good old-fashioned sisterhood. From hoedowns to heartaches to the safety net of sisterhood, Wills covered a lot of ground in these movements and stuck every landing. I could have watched a couple more vignettes in this vein. 

Push — Zsilas Michael Hughes

I love poems about poems, movies about movies, and ballets about ballets, and PNB Corps de ballet member and all-around dance phenom Zsilas Michael Hughes’s Push fit squarely in that mold, seeming to be about the Next Step process itself. 

Hughes drew on the full cast, dressed them all in maroon and earth tones, and had them dance for each other as much as they danced for the audience. To be sure, the dancers presented to the house often enough, but overall it felt as though the audience were flies on the wall of some early-1980s New York City loft, watching a group of dancers hang out, try to impress each other, and, well “push” themselves.

Like Macy and Wald, Hughes also laid bare the geometry of the work, starting with a straight line of dancers across the stage while a few stepped forward individually to strut their stuff. Then the dancers arranged themselves in vertical lines on the left and right sides of the stage as others took turns stepping into the center to show off. 

The whole thing ended in a dance party—a perfect conclusion to a thrilling evening, one that showed how these dancers perform just as well backstage as they do onstage. 

Giselle on Edge 

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Spooky spring. Photo credit: Angela Sterling

Despite my well-documented and admittedly somewhat tedious aversion to old, floofy, fairy tale ballets, I’m glad I decided to overrule my bias, march into McCaw Hall, order my customary pint of sparkling wine, and join an audience all giddy and anxious to see Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Giselle, an evening-length production that runs through April 19. 

After all, like anything created by French Romantics in 1841, the narrative is deeply weird. 

In brief: A Duke named Albert abandons his fiancée, dresses in peasant drag, and saunters down to a nearby village to seduce a sprightly young woman named Giselle. Another nobleman named Hilarion intervenes and tries his hand at taking Giselle’s, but she rejects his advances. When Giselle ultimately learns of Albert’s true identity, she goes nutso and then dies. End of Act I. 

In Act II, we enter a misandrist’s dream: a phalanx of jilted bride-ghosts called “Wilis” haunt a cemetery soaked in moonlight, waiting for unsuspecting men to stumble by so they can dance them to death. When Albert visits the cemetery to pay his respects, the Wilis confront him and commence with their deadly jigs. 

Though Giselle bears many story ballet elements I find a little wearisome — idle dance numbers, a somewhat unwieldy plot, a general air of properness — PNB’s production subverts them all in interesting ways. 

I mean, c’mon. The whole thing is a painting. Photo credit: Angela Sterling

Sure, there’s a bunch of town dances, but everyone is drunk on wine, so that’s kinda fun. Sure, the plot is a little unwieldy at first blush, but if you read the program ahead of time you’ll be fine. And, sure, a general air of properness still pervades, but in this ballet our leading lady famously releases her hair from its ballerina bun and then dances with it all loose and flowing. Sounds normal, but it’s genuinely shocking in context. 

The other thing to admire about PNB’s treatment of these older ballets is the incredible scenic design. Jerome Kaplan’s set here is no aberration; he transports us to a fairy tale German village, complete with super-lush, looming trees, thatch-roof cottages, and a castle at the top of a great hill. As I’ve noted in the past, this set isn’t just gorgeous to behold. Several aspects of its design, paired with PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal’s stage direction, brilliantly prefigure the death and ghostliness that dominate the ballet’s second half, enriching the story. 

And maybe it’s something to do with the state of the world I left behind for a few hours when I entered the auditorium, but on opening night I couldn’t stop thinking about how much this ballet, despite its age, seemed to speak to our current moment — mostly because everything about it feels on edge. 

In the opening meet-cute between Giselle and Duke Albert, the dancers perform extensions that seem to stretch each other to the limits of their limbs. In a famous moment later on, Giselle rises onto one toe and hops across the stage en pointe nearly a dozen times. The Wilis also hop around on one foot for a while. And, of course, the main characters are all on the edge of falling in love, being found out, or going mad. Then, in the second act, Giselle is on the edge of life, Albert is on the edge of death, and the rest of us are on the edge of our seats wondering how it’s all going to end. 

All of that edging, as it were, would not have been lost on French audiences at the time of production. In 1841, France was smack dab between two revolutions; the July Revolution of 1830 and the February Revolution of 1848. That first revolution kicked the old aristocracy out of power, a new bourgeois class was running things, and the peasants were — as the peasants almost always are — getting screwed. Giselle librettist Théophile Gautier no doubt saw all that, and audiences wouldn’t have been blind to the socio-political commentary resonating throughout a story of a nobleman deceiving and destroying the life of a peasant.

Living in a country that’s living on the edge in so many ways, it was hard not to see the cruelty of our wars, the stress of our income inequality, the precarity of our jobs, and the fate of our democracy in all of Giselle’s teetering.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan and Kyle Davis as Giselle and Albert. Photo credit: Angela Sterling

You’d have trouble finding a better dancer to convey all the strength and determination it takes to maintain one’s balance in such world than PNB principal Sarah-Gabriel Ryan, who brought to the role her characteristic ebullience, magnetism, and technical skill. The audience swooned when she swooned, went crazy when she went crazy, and held their breath during the challenging en pointe hops and the second act’s heart-melting duet. Showing her great range as an actor and dancer, she convincingly burned warm and bright with love in Act I, and then appeared cool and weightless — though no less steely — in Act II. More, please!

As Albert, principal Kyle Davis successfully walked the fine line between unsympathetic cad and sympathetic loverboy. His Act II penance felt genuinely moving, and when he executed more than a dozen fancy foot flutters (aka entrechat sixes) in quick succession, everyone in the room was too impressed to hold his character’s sins against him. 

As Myrtha, queen of the Wilis, soloist Amanda Morgan projected a commanding and ethereal presence in equal measure, mesmerizing as Medusa. 

PNB soloist Amanda Morgan as a ghost queen ready to dance a man to death. Photo credit: Angela Sterling.

Principal dancer Clara Ruf Maldonado and soloist Kuu Sakuragi’s peasant pas de deux stunned as a study in contrasts that nonetheless paired elegantly. Maldonado moved like the melody while Sakuragi bobbed and bounced like the percussion. Together they produced one of those duets where you stop thinking about anything and just watch. Someone give Sakuragi a promotion already. 

And ten cheers for corps de ballet dancer Ryan Cardea, who played Hilarion and did an excellent job of throwing himself across the stage and falling down (on purpose). These are difficult things to do, and watching someone actually crash out (again, on purpose) provided much-needed catharsis in the middle of all the ballet’s brinksmanship. Go see it!

Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Cinderella Is a Dream 

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Great ballet hands all around. Photo: Angela Sterling

Some versions of the Cinderella story are full of gore and crime and punishment; others focus on sweet revenge. Some really play up magical and pagan elements, while others aim to serve as a kind of fantastical lesson in the redemptive powers of Christian virtues such as equanimity and kindness, especially for poor girls born into tough situations. 

Kent Stowell’s 1994 remake for Pacific Northwest Ballet, which runs through February 8 at McCall Hall, leans into the story’s dreamier and more romantic/Romantic corners while still retaining the fun and freaky elements that make it feel like a fairy tail. The resulting magical romance gives Seattle audiences a chance to dip into an eighteenth-century dream, where we can marvel at designer Martin Pakledinaz’s richly textured costumes, hoot and holler at the company’s technical prowess, and witness the considerable acting chops of its principals. 

Speaking of principals: I feel as if I’m seeing Leta Biasucci kick off opening night in lead roles more often, and I believe we’re all better for it. Though she has played leads on plenty of other nights, more often I’ve seen her on opening nights in supporting or comedic roles, showing off her advanced technical skills. Her timing and musicality are impeccable, her footwork is intricate, and she glides across the stage with the power and grace of an artist with nothing to prove, only something to say. 

(L-R) Lucian Postlewaite and Leta Biasucci. Photo: Angela Sterling.

In the titular role, she convincingly transforms Cinderella from a sweet and humble castaway into a confident and beaming dream bride, carrying herself with a generosity of spirit you can see from the cheap seats. She exudes pathos and understanding when navigating her relationship with her father, who loves her but seems powerless to stop the cruelty of Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters. We believe her when she extends her hand to help her fairy godmother—disguised as an old homeless woman—warm up by the fire, and we swoon with her as she swoons for the prince. (Though I somewhat dismissively mentioned the virtues of equanimity and kindness in my introduction, those traits unfortunately run in short supply among many of us these days. Seeing Biasucci’s Cinderella model them so exquisitely felt like a breath of fresh air.)

But anyway, speaking of the Prince: I don’t know what Lucien Postlewaite does to maintain his vigor, but whatever it is, it’s working. On Friday night, he played the familiar role of the regal suitor with characteristic charm and gravitas. He hits all the prim and proper notes just so, but he also make big lifts look effortless — at one point he lifted Biasucci into the air and spun her around like a pizza without (apparently) breaking a sweat.

Corps de ballet member Melisa Guilliams offered up an elegant, grounded turn as the Godmother, with light beams practically emanating from her very being the whole time. What a dream. 

Speaking of dreams: four fairies who embody the seasons dance for Cinderella in a couple of extended dream sequences, bestowing upon her magical powers. Standouts here included Yuki Takahashi as Spring, who floated across the stage like a petal, and Madison Rayn Abeo as winter, who carried herself with the season’s great power and austerity without coming off as frigid. 

Though you’d think the best duet would go to Biasucci and Postlewaite’s romantic closing pas de deux, on Friday night, at least, it belonged to soloists Takahashi and Mark Cuddihee, who danced their roles as Columbine and Harlequin, respectively, with verve, humor and acrobatic panache. A special shout out goes to Corps member Zsilas Michael Hughes, whose role as a leggy flame demon dubbed “Evil Sprite” was so dynamic and arresting that it felt like a dream within a dream. 

And finally, MVP of the night goes to Kuu Sakuragi, who played the Jester. The heart smiled when he leapt onstage, a dynamo in cap and bells. He jumps six feet in the air like it’s nothing, and his leg extensions were just crazy—nothing less than astonishing. It’s great to see him explore his comedic range, filling the proverbial pointe shoes of former PNB dancer and current PNB Rehearsal Director Ezra Thomson, who similarly employed his technical mastery for our comedic benefit.

All told, apart from the aggressively mauve color pallet of the scenic design, this old story of dreaming a little dream until it really does come true was a welcome escape from our particularly ugly political environment. Go see it for a nice rest and recharge, and for the sheer amazement of watching these dancers do their thing. 

PNB’s Roméo et Juliette Is in Good Hands 

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Soloist Clara Ruf Maldonado and principal Lucien Postlewaite, reaching out across the divide in their roles as Juliette and Roméo. Clean lines, people. We call these clean lines!! Photo: Angela Sterling

I’ve raved about Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette for years, but this year marked the first performance in quite a while without former PNB principal Noelani Pantastico tumbling across the stage in her signature role as a rambunctious, hopelessly romantic Juliette AND ALSO the first performance without former PNB principal James Yoichi Moore bouncing around the stage in his signature role as the bubbly and charming Roméo. Tough tights to fill. 

But my nerves settled knowing that PNB tapped Pantastico and her partner, the talented choreographer Bruno Roque, to stage the show. True to form, Pantastico’s and Roque’s direction maintained all the powers of the earlier performances — the bawdy humor, the cinematic storytelling, the endless pining, the screaming pain, and the way the ballet expresses its biggest ideas in its tiniest gestures — all while making room for the new crew of dancers to make the roles their own. 

Now THIS is some premium flouncing. (L-R Soloist Christian Poppe, Postlewaite, and Principal Kyle Davis) Photo: Angela Sterling

As a rule, I find story ballets boring—too much empty flouncing. But Maillot’s version of Shakespeare’s tale of woe, which runs at McCaw Hall through April 20, is the exception to that rule, especially in the hands of Pantastico and Roque. While many story ballets feature a lot of fluff and tutus parading for the king, this one gives us three well-structured acts layered with complexity. Act I introduces the players and commences with the fun and games. Act II sparks the romance and commences with the sex and fighting. Act III brings it on home and commences with the killings and tragedy. 

Maillot’s brilliant stagecraft shines through in a million ways. His use of textiles, for instance, subtly reinforces the theme of love as both poison and cure. On one hand, a piece of Rosaline’s dress sparks desire, The Nurse’s rag pulls Juliette onstage for the first time, and a satin sheet protects the lovers from the audience’s prying eyes. On the other hand, Roméo’s dropped jacket gives him away, a bloody rag seals Tybalt’s fate, and Juliette pulls a long, red sheet from her true love’s chest at the ballet’s tragic end. Moreover, Maillot’s focus on textiles cleverly references the “text” on which he bases the ballet—the two words, text and textile, share the Latin root meaning “woven.” Fitting, given that artists weave both stories and cloth. 

But of course, we see the stagers’ hands most readily in the quality of the performances, which were tremendous all around. 

You ever just float off the ground due to the pure power of romance? Photo: Angela Sterling

Opening night reunited soloist Clara Ruf Maldonado and principal Lucien Postlewaite, who appeared to be still buzzing with the creative chemistry they developed in February’s production of Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun. In that show, the young upstart and the veteran moved with one mind to Claude Debussy’s eponymous prelude, as if they were different fragments of the choreographer’s lackadaisically erotic, sylvan dream. 

Though Postlewaite has danced the role of Roméo with Pantastico about a million times over the years, on Friday his performance felt as fresh and as impassioned as ever. Somehow, that grown-ass, 40-year-old man can still believably transform into a lovestruck teenager panting with desire and overflowing with hormones. And yet, his skill and bearing brought a noticeable gravitas to the role. With his back against the wall on Juliette’s not-quite-yet-death-bed, he wept as if he’d known this love for ages, as if he’d lost it a thousand times. 

Maldonado picked up the torch—or, in this case, the blood-soaked sheet—from Pantastico and ran with it. Maldonado’s Juliette began the ballet all anxious knees and elbows, softened into a kind of puppy-dog love at the sight of Roméo, and projected a pain beyond her years by the end. And yet, throughout the show her technical prowess and general gumption conveyed the kind of strength and agency that Pantastico imbued into her version of the character. I can’t wait to see what Maldonado does with this tragic figure in what will very likely be a long and storied career. 

Soloist Christopher D’Ariano as Friar Laurence. His two acolytes complete the trio. Photo: Angela Sterling

Other opening night debuts include soloist Christopher D’Ariano as Friar Laurence. D’Ariano’s version of the character — the priest in black and white, the door to love and death — was appropriately grave and rigid, cutting sharp right angles through the air like a living crucifix. But he added more fluid movement that humanized his role a little more, deepening the tragedy. 

Principal dancer Elle Macy’s turn as Lady Capulet was magnetic as ever. Her slinky black dresses and her sinuous, powerful movements recalled a spider trapping her prey in a web. Despite her villain-coded character, she moved with grace and palpable grief at the death of her nephew, Tybalt, who was played with an exacting ruthlessness by principal Jonathan Batista.

Capulets, led by Principal Jonathan Batista as Tybalt, havin’ a little fun before the fall. Photo: Angela Sterling

Principal Kyle Davis also deserves a round of applause for his spirited and haughty Mercutio, and principal Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan had the crowd laughing with her comical (and deceptively difficult!) role as The Nurse. 

An ensemble piece like this one demands a strong, multi-talented company that can pair high-level technical ability with premium acting chops. With this crew, PNB yet again shows its more than up to the challenge. GO SEE IT.

And, as always: if you think the ballet is too expensive, then think again. You can pay what you can on Thursdays, and there isn’t a bad seat in the house.