A Historical Look at George Balanchine’s Jewels
By Doug Fullington Jewels. The name sounds expensive and perfect for a box-office hit. But when Balanchine’s “plotless full-length ballet,” as it was touted, premiered at New York City Ballet on April 13, 1967, it had no title, only three sections called Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds. (Balanchine explained, “I thought of doing sapphire, too—I had Schoenberg in mind, […]
Remembering Designer Ming Cho Lee
This October, the scenic design world, Harvard students, and ballet, theater, and opera audiences everywhere lost an exceptional artist: Ming Cho Lee. While Mr. Lee’s work was renowned around the world, Seattle audiences had the opportunity to delight in his masterpieces through his longtime collaboration with Founding Artistic Director Kent Stowell. We asked Kent to share with […]
Meet the Artist Calista Ruat
Calista Ruat hails from Paris, France. She joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as a corps de ballet member in 2017, and will premiere her first choreographic work for 2019’s NEXT STEP: OUTSIDE/IN. Calista trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School under the direction of Claude Bessy, where her teachers were Carole Arbo and Attilio Labis, and she was coached by Noella Pontois. Ms. Ruat joined Paris […]
Answering Nutcracker FAQs
We’re glad you asked! A random sampling of ballet FAQs. Not at all! There is probably no another ballet that has been performed so many times, in so many different ways. From your neighborhood dance studio to a professional company, the skill of the dancers and scale of the production varies as much as interpretations […]
Q&A: Peter Boal talks Red Angels
Knowing the late choreographer Ulysses Dove created Red Angels on our Artistic Director (then a New York City Ballet principal dancer) Peter Boal, we were eager for an inside look. We asked him to reveal the process behind Red Angels – both as a dancer and a staging artist. Peter Boal: We became very close to Ulysses during the multi-week process […]
Q&A: Giselle Designer Jérôme Kaplan
Peter Boal’s radiant staging of Giselle returns with all-new scenery and costumes by award-winning designer Jérôme Kaplan (above) who is best known to PNB audiences for his designs for Don Quixote, Roméo et Juliette. Q: What steps were critical to your process in creating designs for sets and costumes for PNB’s Giselle? A: I definitely think that the most critical […]
PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal’s Staging of Giselle
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2011 production of Giselle has been staged by PNB artistic director Peter Boal, based in part on primary sources from Paris and St. Petersburg, with the assistance of dance historians Marian Smith and Doug Fullington. In 2014, new scenery and costumes designed by Jérôme Kaplan will be added to the production. Giselle is widely acknowledged […]
Local Color: Painting Sets for a New Giselle
We’ve all noticed the shift: from artisanal breads and cheeses to homemade cider and chickens in backyards, what’s old is new again. Here in Seattle, urban farming is chic. And, at least at PNB, the old-world way of hand-painting large scenery (AKA “drops”) has never gone out of style. Nearly every set piece you see on stage at a PNB […]
A History of Giselle
“In Westphalia, the former Saxony, all is not dead which lies buried. When we wander there through the old oak groves we can hear the voices of the olden time, and the re-echoes of those deeply mysterious magic spells in which there gushes a [great] fullness of life …A mysterious awe thrilled my soul—when…wandering through […]