Peace out girl scout

Andrew Bartee is a Pacific Northwest–born dancer and choreographer whose work bridges the worlds of classical ballet and contemporary dance. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Bartee began his formal training at the PNB School and joined Pacific Northwest Ballet’s corps de ballet in 2009. Early in his career, he earned recognition as the first recipient of the Flemming Halby Exchange with the Royal Danish Ballet School, and later received a Princess Grace Award for dance, the youngest recipient that year.

Known for his long limbs and graceful, angular movement, Bartee dances fluidly across genres. During his years with PNB, he also performed regularly with Seattle contemporary company Whim W’Him, expanding his range across styles and choreographic voices. His passion for modern and experimental dance led him to become a recurring contributor to PNB’s annual NEXT STEP choreographic showcase, where works such as arms that work earned critical comparisons to the enduring power of Balanchine and Arpino.

Bartee was selected as a choreographer for Wolf Trap’s Face of America PBS series, creating a site-specific work filmed on location at Olympic National Park — a commission that brought his choreography to a national audience. He later left PNB to join Ballet BC in Vancouver, drawn by the opportunity to engage more deeply in the choreographic process and expand the range of his artistic collaborators.

At Ballet BC, Bartee has embraced an environment where dancers question everything and are constantly creating — a fitting home for an artist whose movement has always been driven by curiosity, individuality, and an unflinching personal voice.

Born in Baltimore, Philip Glass studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics and philosophy, he went to New York’s Juilliard School, drove a cab and studied composition with Darius Milhaud and others.

At 23, he moved to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger. While there, he discovered Indian classical music while transcribing the works of Ravi Shankar into Western musical notation. A creative turning point, Glass researched non-Western music in India and parts of Africa, and applied the techniques to his own composition.

Back in the United States, Glass spent the late 1960s and early 1970s creating a major collection of new music. In 1976 his landmark opera Einstein on the Beach was staged by Robert Wilson to a baffling variety of reviews. His compositions were so avant-garde that he had to form the Philip Glass Ensemble to give them a venue for performance. Although called a minimalist by the Western classical mainstream, he denies this categorization. His major works include opera, theater pieces, film soundtracks, dance and song. Glass remains one of the most important American composers. More recently, a major reexamination of Glass’s oeuvre has led him to be labeled “The Last Romantic” by the musical press.

Through his opera, symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble, and collaborations with artists, Glass has had an extraordinary impact on the musical and intellectual life of his times. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than 25 operas; twelve symphonies; three piano concertos; concertos for violin, piano, timpani, saxophone quartet, and orchestra; soundtracks for films; string quartets; and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ.

Randall G. Chiarelli (1949-2024) devoted his career to lighting for dance, much of it at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and also for American Ballet Theatre, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, among others. His many collaborators included choreographers Donald Byrd, Mark Dendy, Ronald Hynd, Kent Stowell, Susan Stroman, and Christopher Wheeldon. Chiarelli graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in painting and sculpture.