PNB Blog Entries

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New Experiences - Serious Pleasures

By noreply@blogger.com (Barry Kerollis)
Wednesday, Mar 17 at 11:35 PM

Barry Kerollis, corps de ballet

Rehearsing for “3 by Dove” has been a very gratifying experience so far. This season has been very rewarding for me when it comes to dancing big, new roles that really push my boundaries as a dancer. “3 by Dove” has been no disappointment in continuing this push.

I will be dancing in two very different pieces for this program, Victor Quijada’s Suspension of Disbelief and Ulysses Dove’s Serious Pleasures. The contrasts between these two works are very deep, yet based on the same principles of taking ballet dancers and pushing them beyond their classical boundaries. Quijada’s work is a blend of his hip-hop/b-boy/pop-locking/endless list of styles, while Dove’s work is very contemporary ballet that at times pushes into the realm of modern dance.

Quijada choreographed SoD while I was in my third year at PNB. Before Victor chose his cast, we workshopped for a couple of weeks so that we could begin to understand his style and he could get an idea of which dancers he wanted. One of the last days that we were workshopping, I was told that I was not chosen to be in his work. An interesting side story to this is that I was actually really sick that day. I went home that afternoon and became extremely ill and eventually had my appendix out two days later. It was a missed opportunity and I was disappointed that I had come so far along in the workshop, but didn’t get a chance to be a part of his piece.

I knew that this work was returning this season and had pretty much assumed that since I had been cut from the process the first time around, I would not be considered to perform the piece. Peter Boal had mentioned to me around Nutcracker that he had me in mind to replace the one male in the piece who is no longer with PNB, but I had convinced myself that he must have been confused about which piece I was going to be dancing in. The casting finally went up and to my surprise, even though I already knew, I would dance in this piece.

For most dancers, being cast in something that is new to them is very exciting with a hint of nervousness. For me, I was very excited and slightly horrified. The last time PNB had danced SoD, there were rumors that we would never perform the piece again because it’s vocabulary is so far outside of any technique that we know and it could be almost impossible to teach it again without Victor. Now, here I was, one of three first cast dancers that weren’t around for any of the choreographic process. I specify first cast because that means that no matter what, we WILL perform. I was afraid that with the short three-week period to learn the piece, I wouldn’t be able to grasp the style or learn the foreign steps.

We started our first week of rehearsal by watching an old recording, tapping the memories of those that had danced the piece before, and decoding with ballet master Otto Neubert. Surprisingly, it wasn’t impossible to pick up the choreography, just difficult, and we had learned all of the “steps” by the end of the first week. A daunting task that Otto led very well.

The next step was when Victor arrived about two weeks ago. We spent most of that first week without touching the choreography. Check out my dear friend’s (Abby Relic) post to get a good explanation of the workshopping. We finally started working on the choreography towards the end of that first week. By the time that Friday of this past week came, we had touched every part of the piece in detail and were still working out kinks. We are really pushing this process until the last second and I am still a bit nervous about it. But I trust Victor and am positive that we will feel great by the time the curtain rises this Thursday evening. I’d like to give a special merde to the two other newbies in the cast Carrie Imler and Leah O’Connor.

Now for Serious Pleasures. We started rehearsing this piece way back in August, when PNB holds its summer course at the Phelps Center. I love rehearsing during this time because there is so much energy and excitement at the Phelps center as the students watch us. These students are so fresh and young and are really open to new experiences. Ironically, the dancers of PNB were doing the same as they were learning Serious Pleasures.

Alright, anyone that knows me well is aware that I am almost always brutally honest. So, I won’t hold back here. We had to be COMPLETELY open to new experiences while learning Serious Pleasures. SP is a piece that has very mature content. This work is not the Garland Dance in Sleeping Beauty or the Grandfather’s Dance in The Nutcracker. Serious Pleasures is explicit, sexual, and raw. From the first moment in the studio, Parrish Maynard, who is setting this ballet, told us that we had to be open to this choreography.

From there, I knew I was excited to be a part of this work. I think there is nothing more important than art pushing boundaries. Asking an audience to experience something that may be beyond their normal limits. It is meant to make people think, to open their minds, and to become free enough from thought to accept, instead of pass judgment. Dove does this with this piece. There is gyrating, pulsating, and hairography. There is a lot of hairography (choreography for the hair). I am excited to be a part of the controversy that will surely surround this piece.

I am dancing with Chalnessa Eames and at times Seth Orza. There are multiple sections to this piece and each one has a different mood. Dove’s choreography is very earthy and extremely athletic. This piece does not disappoint.

The most recent challenge that we have added to this piece is working with the set. There are nine doors and multiple poles that stick out of walls that we dance in, out of, and on. Typically, we do not get to see the set of a ballet until we are onstage. But due to the complexity of dancing while using the set, we started rehearsing with it the week before we usually get into the theatre.

All in all, I am excited and nervous for this rep to begin. We have been rehearsing very hard with sore muscles, scrapes, and lots of bruises. I can’t wait to hear the audience’s reaction to this program. It is a unique treat.

(Shameless plug - I am the dancer liason for Backstage Pass, a group that brings 21-39 year olds interested in ballet together for PNB performances and events. On Friday, March 26, we will be holding our annual Backstage Bash, my favorite event of the season. It is an event open to all ages, where afterwards you get to dance backstage with the dancers. Don't miss it!)

It's A Process...

By noreply@blogger.com (Abby Relic)
Saturday, Mar 13 at 4:51 PM

Abby Relic, PNB Corps Member

This Rep I am rehearsing two very challenging, yet very different pieces, Victor Quijada’s Suspension of Disbelief and Ulysses Dove’s Vespers. Both pieces are allowing me to tap into areas of my dancing that I usually do not get to experiment with, and I am learning new concepts every day that will aid not only the way I execute steps in these contemporary works, but also the execution of classical ballet steps.

Suspension of Disbelief has been quite the experience. We spent the first week “work-shopping” with Quijada, or experimenting with how our bodies move through the space around us, and vice versa, how the space around us causes a reaction to move our bodies. His entire piece is based around this concept, for example, someone or something pushes a part of your body, causing it to react in a direction an then possibly rebound in another direction, knocking another body part along the way. Sounds confusing, but in the workshops it made sense to me. As a ballet dancer, sometimes the focus is on a position the body makes, or the end point of a movement. What makes that end point meaningful and beautiful is the process it takes to get there. Quijada has described his choreography to us as ‘real.’ Someone ‘really’ pushes you, you ‘really’ fall, and then they ‘really’ catch you and pull you back up. The steps and positions of the choreography are all there, but the focus is on the process it takes to get to those positions, and then they just happen, almost without even realizing that they did. Not that these steps are easy, or that no effort goes into them, because I can barely hold my arms up right now to type this blog. J Needless to say, everyone got way into the workshops. My coworker and friend, Barry, mentioned to me that he woke up in the middle of a night moving through space with his elbow. There have been many similar stories, and I catch myself work-shopping all over Seattle.

Besides this space reaction concept, the piece also incorporates an urban theme. I have always been a BIG fan of hip hop culture in its entirety; the music, the dancing, the attitude, you name it. I have taken quite a few hip hop dance classes over the years purely for my own personal enjoyment, and have always been in awe of the way these dancers move. It is about the feeling or intention behind each step, not the step itself. I have am also completely mesmerized by break dancing and the things break-dancers allow to come out of their bodies. Mesmerized. Through Quijada’s workshops I kind of started to understand how B boys/girls do the crazy things that they do, which made me really excited. It’s a lot of physics, which I’m not going to get into, but everything involves using the different parts of your body to get from point A to point B, and again, it’s all about the process, not the end points. It is pretty funny to see all of our faces when Quijada would demonstrate a new break dancing move. We all look at him like “Yikes. You want us to do what now?” But then everyone got to working on these difficult moves, offering advice to each other on different ways to approach each step in order to complete it. When someone accomplishes a difficult move or maneuver, there is always a fellow “teammate” there to offer some sort of congratulations. The process of this piece has been extremely rewarding, but the beauty of it is that there is still a long way to go.

Vespers is an entirely different piece; probably the only similarity is that it is also not ballet. There is a story behind Vespers, but the challenge is that the story is not directly communicated to you, there is no clear-cut picture drawn up for you. You get to make it up yourself, or, as I have discovered, you get to find it. The same concepts of using your body to get from point A to point B I have also found to be useful in Vespers, but honestly, I haven’t quite connected with what exactly my story is. Each time I rehearse the piece, I feel closer to finding my own voice, and that, I feel, is the point. The rehearsal process to find that feeling that I am fishing for will allow me to get to that end point where I actually find it. And if I can’t move my arms from Suspension of Disbelief, well, I also can’t move my legs because of Vespers. The physical and psychological demands of this Rep continue to present new challenges for myself and my fellow dancers, creating a never-ending learning process with no end point really, which I find to be the beauty of this process. There is always one step further you can go.

A Peep from the PR Guy

By noreply@blogger.com (Gary Tucker, PNB PR Guy)
Thursday, Mar 11 at 12:50 PM

3 by Dove (and One by Quijada!!!)

By noreply@blogger.com (andrew bartee)
Wednesday, Mar 10 at 11:46 PM
Two weeks down, two to go.
Rehearsals for 3 by Dove have devoured my existence for the last two weeks. The Dove ballets are some of the most physically and mentally challenging, yet rewarding works I have ever learned. For this rep I am learning roles in Dove’s Red Angels, and Serious Pleasures, and Victor Quijada’s Suspension of Disbelief.

It was actually back in July that I first began to learn, and work through the Dove ballets. I was fortunate enough to travel with PNB to Jacob’s Pillow in August to perform an all Dove program including Red Angels, Vespers, and Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven. During that summer rehearsal period, Parrish Maynard also visited to begin setting Serious Pleasures. It was quite a lot of work. SO much choreography. I had to take in years worth of information in a few short weeks (also, years worth of ice baths). I was dancing with/alongside the principles and soloists of the company, dancers with vastly greater experience than me. Intimidating? Absolutely. But thankfully everyone was extremely helpful and kind, and made me feel like part of the team.

The thing that I find so special about Dove’s work is that he choreographed his life. Everything he created was an expression of his personal experience. Each ballet is deeply meaningful, poignant even. Vespers he made in memory of his grandmother. “Front Porch” lamented his experience with love and loss. “Pleasures” explores his view and encounters with human sexual nature. Each piece contains real-life experiences, and ones that each of us can relate to, whether as the audience or the dancer.

As a performer it is a great challenge to take on a work where the choreographer has set the bar so high by pouring their soul in to it. In one of my Red Angels rehearsals last week Peter mentioned about Ulysses, “If you had good extension, he wanted better. If you had a high arabesque, he wanted it higher.” We want to honor what Ulysses originally intended the piece to be and so we push ourselves to work harder, and perform beyond what we think is possible.

My goal in this profession is to always be growing, changing, learning, experiencing, and giving everything I have. The Dove work has really helped me push myself and better understand the importance of continually maturing in this art, but also just in life too.

I remember the first time I saw Red Angels. I was 15 and a student in the school, but was performing in the corps of Diamonds. I stuck around after an onstage Jewels rehearsal because the company was having a dress rehearsal for the "8 Encores" performance. The excerpts from the other ballets were nice and I enjoyed them, but something about Red Angels electrified me. The energy of the piece was unlike anything I had seen. I left the theater in awe, inspired, and positive that I had to perform that ballet someday. That day came much sooner than I thought.