SUMMER 2019 Music, Book, & Story by Music, Lyrics, & Story by Steve Martin Edie Brickell Directed By Karen Lund July 10 – August 17 Summer 2019 Volume 15, No. 7 In This Issue Arts, culture and community Feature are our priority here at Encore 3 Pacific Northwest Ballet and it is these three pillars on Thinks Outside the Box which we were founded almost with OUTSIDE/IN 50 years ago. Since then a lot has changed. Dialogue Though we have evolved and 9 A Conversation extended our reach to new places with Choreographers and digital platforms, we are still 12 David Hsieh on the Encore that you have come Kim’s Convenience to expect over the years—the Encore program you hold in your Intermission Brain hands, enhancing your experience Transmission at every performance. 15 Test yourself with our Enjoy the show. trivia quiz! PAUL HEPPNER President Encore Stages is an Encore arts MIKE HATHAWAY Senior Vice President program that features stories about KAJSA PUCKETT Vice President, our local arts community alongside Sales & Marketing information about performances. GENAY GENEREUX Accounting & Encore Stages is a publication of Office Manager Encore Media Group. We also publish Production specialty publications, including SUSAN PETERSON Vice President, Production the SIFF Guide and Catalog, Official JENNIFER SUGDEN Assistant Production Seattle Pride Guide, and GSBA Manager ANA ALVIRA, STEVIE VANBRONKHORST Guide & Directory. Learn more Production Artists and Graphic Designers at encorespotlight.com. Sales MARILYN KALLINS, TERRI REED Encore Stages features the San Francisco/Bay Area Account Executives following organizations: DEVIN BANNON, BRIEANNA HANSEN, AMELIA HEPPNER, ANN MANNING Seattle Area Account Executives CAROL YIP Sales Coordinator Marketing SHAUN SWICK Senior Designer & Digital Lead CIARA CAYA Marketing Coordinator Encore Media Group 425 North 85th Street • Seattle, WA 98103 800.308.2898 • 206.443.0445 [email protected] encoremediagroup.com Encore Arts Programs and Encore Stages are published monthly by Encore Media Group to serve musical and theatrical events in the Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay Areas. All rights reserved. ©2019 Encore Media Group. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited. 2 Pacific Northwest Ballet Thinks Outside the Box—and the Theatre!— with OUTSIDE/IN PNB School students in Christopher D’Ariano’s Youthquake at NEXT STEP: OUTSIDE/IN, 2018. Photo by Lindsay Thomas Danielle Mohlman Once summer rolls around, nothing When it comes to merging a love of can stand between a Seattleite and the outdoors with a love of art, Pacific gets the inside scoop the outdoors. Which is why the Pacific Northwest Ballet has you covered. on Pacific Northwest Northwest Ballet made outdoor In June 2016, PNB started what will performance an annual tradition. hopefully be a very long tradition Ballet’s summer public of outdoor summer performance, performance, NEXT beginning with Sculptured Dance at Ask any Pacific Northwest resident the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic STEP: OUTSIDE/IN. what their favorite time of year is and Sculpture Park in 2016 and 2017, and they’ll answer, without hesitation and continuing on with an annual series with a resounding amount of verve, of performances on their home turf in summer. Every workday ends with a 2018 and, now, 2019. detour through the Olympic Sculpture Park or a jaunt around Green Lake. Longtime ballet audiences may Every weekend is filled with long lazy remember the first iteration of PNB’s trips to Golden Gardens or taxing outdoor performance series: summer treks in hiking boots. But we’re still art performances held at Chateau Ste. lovers. Just don’t make us go inside. Michelle from 1992 to 1995. Audiences encorespotlight.com 3 Museum. When PNB moved their outdoor performances from the Olympic Sculpture Park to Seattle Center in 2018, Gatsby came along for the ride. With the entire Seattle Center campus available as a canvas, Gatsby chose to choreograph for the International Fountain, using the mythology of Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of art, love, beauty and fresh water as inspiration. When Gatsby is choreographing for indoor performance, they’re conscious of the limitations of the space and how those limitations affect the dynamics of the performance. “When I’m choreographing for an The Purple Lemonade at Summer at SAM: Sculptured Dance, 2017. Photo courtesy of outside environment,” Gatsby said, Ron Gatsby “I really allow myself to choreograph movement without concern for the space around me. I can jump higher, reach farther and really stretch myself—both literally and figuratively.” were charged admission and, as the Sculpture Park bike path, played in story goes, there was always a little too the Pocket Beach or walked around Gatsby begins every rehearsal for his much rain. The best part of this new Seattle Center. It’s a joyous challenge upcoming NEXT STEPS: OUTSIDE/ and improved outdoor performance for dancers and choreographers. IN performance with a spoken piece, tradition? Admission is free and open a story or a meditation on the goddess to the public. “I think both choreographers and Oshun. This sets the tone for that day’s dancers love a new canvas,” Boal said. rehearsal, preparing the dancers for a Peter Boal, artistic director of the “So much of dance is created in a studio new set of choreography or a movement Pacific Northwest Ballet, cited access, for the stage. A backdrop of sculpture, workshop. inclusion and a total removal of water or landscape can inspire fresh entrance barriers as the main reasons perspective.” “One thing we’ve recently incorporated these outdoor performances are, and is rehearsing in Cal Anderson Park in always should be free. Boal says there’s a lot to look forward addition to a traditional studio space,” to at this year’s OUTSIDE/IN Gatsby said. “This allows us to see how “One of the reasons that we have been performance, but the performance the public organically responds to the interested in outdoor performances of he’s most excited about is a group- movement.” late is to create easier access to ballet,” choreographed piece created for Boal said. “We had 5,000 attendees the Kreielsheimer Promenade and There are many things you can’t at our first Sculptured Dance, many Fountain by PNB’s newest and youngest control when it comes to outdoor of whom were seeing PNB for the class of choreographers: the nineteen performance but the biggest outlier is first time. New settings bring new choreographers who make up New always going to be the weather. Gatsby inspiration and new audiences.” Voices: Choreography and Process for said that the worst thing a dancer Young Women in Dance. could face when performing outdoors And those new audiences sometimes is the possibility of rain. But with the surprise themselves. Boal recounted Ron Gatsby, artistic director of Purple entirety of their piece taking place in the joy he felt whenever an audience Lemonade Collective, first became the International Fountain, the scariest member stumbled upon Sculptured involved in PNB’s outdoor performance factor—water—is confronted head on. Dance or NEXT STEPS: OUTSIDE/ tradition through Purple Lemonade’s But that doesn’t make it any less of a IN—as they biked across the Olympic partnership with the Seattle Art challenge. 4 “The fountain has an effect on everything from the wardrobe to the way we move,” Gatsby said. “Because we are working with the fountain, I have to choreograph movement that is both dynamic and safe enough for the dancers to perform. I have to consider how they’re going to feel dancing in wet clothes, the type of footwear they wear.” But Ron Gatsby will be the first to tell you: he loves a challenge. Donald Byrd, artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater, has been involved in this new tradition of outdoor PNB performance from the very beginning. When Peter Boal invited Byrd to choreograph a piece for the inaugural Sculptured Dance performance in 2016, he was eager to return to site-specific choreography. “I saw it as an opportunity to return to a kind of work that had given me great pleasure earlier in my career,” Byrd said. “I also thought it would be a lot of fun.” And it was fun. Byrd enjoyed the challenge of drawing the audience’s attention to the unique outdoor space, especially in the case of Untitled, which verdi was performed at the Roy McMakin sculpture of the same name. “There is an interplay among the various elements,” Byrd said. “The RIGOLETTO terrain, sculpture, dancers, movement, audience and sound—including audience sounds; ambient sound like AUGUST 10–28 traffic, dogs and sirens; and the pre- determined sounds that the choreog- rapher has chosen—all play a role.” THE COST OF CORRUPTION NEW-TO-SEATTLE PRODUCTION! Verdi’s thrilling tale of lechery, betrayal, In Italian with English subtitles. Byrd was incredibly aware of the and revenge runs the emotional gamut in Evenings 7:30 PM audience’s role in the performance true operatic fashion while filling the stage Sundays 2:00 PM of Untitled. Because of the dancer’s with brilliant melodies, including the iconic proximity to the audience, and “La donna è mobile”. This powerful and MCCAW HALL the audience’s ability to view the evocative new staging mixes grit and 206.389.7676 glamour while drawing comparisons to performance from any angle, he SEATTLEOPERA.ORG/RIGOLETTO newsmakers of today. choreographed the piece as something to be eavesdropped on. It was a 2019/20 SEASON SPONSOR: IN MEMORY OF KARYL WINN PRODUCTION SPONSOR: breakup. KREIELSHEIMER ENDOWMENT FUND © Philip Newton encorespotlight.com 5 Noelani Panatastico’s Picnic at Sculptured Dance, 2017. Photo courtesy of Pacific Christopher D’Ariano in Donald Byrd’s Northwest Ballet Wake the Neighbors at NEXT STEP: OUTSIDE/IN, 2018.