With all the excitement of fall comes a new ballet season. As I've been checking popular posts from the past on the blog one that has been popular via search engines for three years is the Twyla Tharp In The Upper Room ballet post from Nov 2007. That was a remarkable piece, made brilliant by a combination of music, choreography and costume. I would love to see it come back (and many pieces much less worthy have been repeated in less time) but sadly it hasn't happened yet.
However, the new season opens tonight with Director's Choice. There are four pieces, one of them is Glasspieces, with music by Philip Glass and choreography by Jerome Robbins. The music for the two pieces (Rubric and Facades) is very reminiscent of the score for In The Upper Room (adapted for that ballet I suppose) so at least one of the elements for this program will be similar. With his broadway background, Robbins' take on the Glass music will be interesting. Here's a look behind the scenes in rehearsal, courtesy of the Pacific Northwest ballet's youtube channel:
Two of the other pieces have been done very recently by PNB - Petite Mort and Jardi Tancat, while Six Dances is a PNB premiere.
In any season there are some classic ballets that are good, but well understood and predictable. The Director's Choice programs are where artistic director Peter Boal will take a few more risks. Not everything pays off, but when something does it's usually spectacular - like In The Upper Room. Wel worth the risk of checkng out the program this weekend and next.
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