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elfsOmaha and I attended the Pacific Northwest Ballet's All Premiere season opener, and it was a mixed bag. That's always true when you go to an all-premier; you're getting a combination of dances that either have never been seen before on this stage, or have never been seen before ever. The only distinction they have is that someone chose to bring them to PNB, and someone chose to pay for them. There were three this year, and I'm going to review them backwards.
The last piece, Cacti is ballet comedy, and it was successful. Cacti has twenty people on stage: sixteen dancers and four musicians. The dancers each have a small wooden platform of their own, described in the text as a "Scrabble piece" although none of the platforms have letters. There are four voiceover pieces, two of which seem to be quoting from the worst, most pretentious critical reviews the choreographer ever garnered, one is the inner monologue of the choreographer, and one is a recording of the dialogue between two dancers as they go through the motions as if in rehearsal.
Cacti is technically demanding; with sixteen people on stage weilding heavy pieces of wood and flowerpots with dangerously spiny plants in them, there are dangers aplenty, and the dancers go through a dizzying array of complex interactions and physically demanding body moves in very rapid succession, all the while playing roles that are alternatingly funny, incongruous, or just outright silly, and you get more than one laugh out of it. There are four movements, and all of them are distinct, interesting, and tell a story about just how much the choreographer hates pretentious critics.
I trust Cerrudo; his Little Mortal Jump, which I saw in 2016, was an amazing sequence, with its beginning silliness and its ending passion, all highlighted though large black cubes on casters that, when turned, revealed lights, costumes, and other paraphenalia that led the viewer through the idea of people seeking immortality through intimacy. You can see that the "little mortal jumps" he wants to get across are the heart-stopping courage it takes to be vulnerable with someone else.
In that light, Silent Ghost is... okay. But just okay. Cerrudo remains a technically challenging choreographer pushing his dancers to their limits, seeking that exact edge at which their expressiveness to the audience and their own physical limitations are both at their utmost. Cerrudo's taste in music has always pleased me; he has a really good ear for chosing music that communicates authenticity and verisimilitude, for getting across to the honest the place and time he wants to invoke.
But Silent Ghost doesn't seem to have anything to say in quite the same way Little Mortal Jump did. The pieces were all pretty and strong, but that's a lot of what they had to say: these dancers are pretty and strong.
I mean, that's not a bad thing to say.
See separate review TL;DR: I really didn't like it.
Cacti, by Alexander Ekman
The last piece, Cacti is ballet comedy, and it was successful. Cacti has twenty people on stage: sixteen dancers and four musicians. The dancers each have a small wooden platform of their own, described in the text as a "Scrabble piece" although none of the platforms have letters. There are four voiceover pieces, two of which seem to be quoting from the worst, most pretentious critical reviews the choreographer ever garnered, one is the inner monologue of the choreographer, and one is a recording of the dialogue between two dancers as they go through the motions as if in rehearsal.
Cacti is technically demanding; with sixteen people on stage weilding heavy pieces of wood and flowerpots with dangerously spiny plants in them, there are dangers aplenty, and the dancers go through a dizzying array of complex interactions and physically demanding body moves in very rapid succession, all the while playing roles that are alternatingly funny, incongruous, or just outright silly, and you get more than one laugh out of it. There are four movements, and all of them are distinct, interesting, and tell a story about just how much the choreographer hates pretentious critics.
Silent Ghost, by Alejandro Cerrudo
I trust Cerrudo; his Little Mortal Jump, which I saw in 2016, was an amazing sequence, with its beginning silliness and its ending passion, all highlighted though large black cubes on casters that, when turned, revealed lights, costumes, and other paraphenalia that led the viewer through the idea of people seeking immortality through intimacy. You can see that the "little mortal jumps" he wants to get across are the heart-stopping courage it takes to be vulnerable with someone else.
In that light, Silent Ghost is... okay. But just okay. Cerrudo remains a technically challenging choreographer pushing his dancers to their limits, seeking that exact edge at which their expressiveness to the audience and their own physical limitations are both at their utmost. Cerrudo's taste in music has always pleased me; he has a really good ear for chosing music that communicates authenticity and verisimilitude, for getting across to the honest the place and time he wants to invoke.
But Silent Ghost doesn't seem to have anything to say in quite the same way Little Mortal Jump did. The pieces were all pretty and strong, but that's a lot of what they had to say: these dancers are pretty and strong.
I mean, that's not a bad thing to say.
A Dark and Lonely Space, by Kyle Davis
See separate review TL;DR: I really didn't like it.
