A Fervent Return for a New Generation: Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Firebird"

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Angelica Generosa in the title role of Kent Stowell’s Firebird. Photo © Angela Sterling.

It is the stories of good versus evil that we return to most frequently, seeking within them both a mirror and a guide. Ballet is filled with such stories, yet Kent Stowell’s Firebird was last programmed at Pacific Northwest Ballet during his final season as co-artistic director twenty-one years ago. This March, it returns restored and revitalized, breathing with a newfound sense of artistic responsibility. Like the very best triple bills, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s fourth repertory program of the season is rich in history and pairs three mighty works of immensely different lineages. Alejandro Cerrudo’s Little Mortal Jump, returns like a potent and charismatic old friend, while Red Angels by Ulysses Dove makes a striking central work, and Kent Stowell’s Firebird is revived triumphantly for a new generation.

Seattle is no stranger to the potency of a Cerrudo ballet. Since 2014, Pacific Northwest Ballet has acquired and commissioned a host of works by the choreographer, and in 2016, became the second company to perform Little Mortal Jump. Like many of Cerrudo’s works, it is episodic, theatrical, and defined by his willingness to experiment with pushing aside expectations. From the beginning, his wit and creativity break beyond our established traditions. 

In full light, the orchestra begins. No strung tune brings us to silence; it is only the realization that a dancer flits down the aisle with great haste–springing over feet with stark urgency on his way– that transitions us from reality. In an instant, the chatter is gone, and we are submerged. 

In the dark, murky air, there hangs a silence while black revolving boxes that build the home of Little Mortal Jump send shards of light dancing across the audience. One of Cerrudo’s greatest gifts as a choreographer is his ability to build from the simplest forms to the epic. He begins with casually stitched-together bits of gestural choreography contained in a pocket of the stage, surprising us again and again with wit and unexplainable nostalgia until we find ourselves far removed from this simple beginning. Cerrudo seamlessly blends a playlist of a score–partially recorded, mostly live–to let Little Mortal Jump move from the tender evocations of humor and playful youth, to the ballet’s final moments that reach an almost spiritual existence.

Cerrudo knows how to surprise us with a leap into the orchestra pit, a larger-than-life figure piercing the light, bodies caught and suspended by velcro suits, a dancer perched upon the curled form of his partner: wings lifted in flight. Yet a breath later, these theatrical bits are all forgotten when the profundity of his movement overwhelms the stage with the capacity for conjured emotion.

Pacific Northwest Ballet soloists Kuu Sakuragi and Yuki Takahashi in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Little Mortal Jump. Photo © Angela Sterling.

A most human spirit glows within Cerrudo’s work. It is organic, grounded, and spurred by a rolling continuum. As kaleidoscopic motions come in and out of unison, finding well-worn and novelty avenues, the flow of Cerrudo’s choreography is a current’s strong hold. Like a tide, his movement coils with rhythmed waves, rising and falling, retracing and unwinding patterns, swelled with immortal momentum. One minuscule movement generates the next, propelling, circling back, passing between bodies, fluidly and inevitably.

If his momentum is an ocean’s tidal pull, then the way that Cerrudo crafts a duet is like a shell carried by the sea’s endless motion. Watching his work, I return again and again to the image of a shell carried by the ocean. Each way that a shell can be moved, encircled, pushed, enveloped, invaded, and lifted by water is the boundless way that Cerrudo lets two bodies meet in space, a constant exploration of possibility.

In Little Mortal Jump, Cerrudo is a storyteller who taps here and there in vignettes until he finds his protagonists: desperate and reaching for the light. On opening night, the magnitude of witnessing Elizabeth Murphy and Dylan Wald in motion, with the weight of her impending retirement and his return to the stage, was nothing short of heartfelt relief for the present. The last time we saw the two of them in a Cerrudo work, I wrote that they moved “as though they had never known anything but each other and the blue mist surrounding them.” Two years later, this magnetic quality has only multiplied. 

As the stage empties save for the two of them, Wald approaches Murphy as though there is nothing else in the world, looking through her nearly, until a new plane of existence is born. Wald’s steadfast focus and Murphy’s swift clarity magnify Cerrudo’s building intensity in the simplest of motions. In that stark light, there’s control and resistance, desperation and determination interwoven as they fall into the work’s endless insistence. 

Wald consumes space with cathartic will that lies enraptured within Cerrudo’s flow state. He possesses an all-consuming eagerness that rolls with ease and innate purpose through the bold intricacies of Little Mortal Jump. To see him in motion once more, and to witness his intensity of focus, is to see in a new light the compelling inner necessity that has always characterized his work. Murphy, too, all silken illuminance and unearthly fluidity, weaves a soul song in Little Mortal Jump. She knows Cerrudo’s forms most intimately and imbues the rising urgency with a grace that is her own tender creation. On opening night, amidst the nearly religious heights of the ballet’s final breaths, Wald and Murphy were both so possessed by the moment that it seemed they might just stretch Max Richter’s score to fill eternity.

Cerrudo has a potent ability to build tension, to pause, and to contain, until energy tumbles into a breath of relief and unbridled momentum. Arms lift, nearly wing-like, and then there they fall, into the depths of Max Richter’s climbing urgency like destiny itself unwraveling. Later, there’s a moment when limbs come to rest for a breath, and there they stand: just two souls, eye to eye, blatantly human before each other. 

Twenty years from now, when I reflect on Elle Macy’s dancing, Little Mortal Jump is one of the countless works that will spring to mind as an encapsulating pearl of her artistry. I have been trying for years to define just what it is about her movement in Cerrudo’s form that captivates so purely, yet in the end, there are no fitting words. To see someone move with such conviction is overwhelming. She is fully convinced. Unwaveringly ingrained in the present. She speaks his language like a mother tongue, so deeply nestled within the work that one feels she is in constant communion with Currudo’s vision and her own full-souled intention. 

It seems most fitting that after nine months, she should return in a work which declares and defines her artistry with such lucidity. The fervency of Macy’s focus and the vividness with which she carves the air around her, the little extra gust of might and detail that extends choreography’s potential, leaves Little Mortal Jump, like countless other works, forever characterized by her imprint. 

At her side, Luther DeMyer’s flowing, raging, carved, and molten form is a poetic pairing of fluidity and illimitable reach. The never-ending spool of yearning that they unwind together so viscerally leaves their illuminated forms hanging in the mind's eye like a swell of profundity. Days later, there it still is: physical ephemerality residing in an indelible shadow.

Little Mortal Jump is one of those marvelous works where you find yourself wishing it might never end. Just as in life, the fleeting glimpses of character and relationships that Cerrudo forms fade into the dark long before we’re ready to bid them adieu. When Max Richter falls silent, and those swirling boxes come to a sudden still, the sharp intake of breath–a breath of awe and grief and beauty lost–defines Little Mortal Jump as a reflection of humanity that surprises in its authentic potency.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Clara Ruf Maldonado and Lucien Postlewaite in Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels. Photo © Angela Sterling.

From the heartfelt, we jump straight to the dynamic extremes of Red Angels, which packs a mighty punch in its mere fourteen minutes. When it was first brought to PNB for the opening gala of Peter Boal’s first season as artistic director in 2005, Boal hoped to show his “intentions to unleash a tide of bold new works”. Nestled between an old Kent Stowell classic and the contemporary voice of Cerrudo, Red Angels seems to declare just how much impact Peter Boal’s two decades of leadership have had on the company’s voice. 

Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels asks dancers to bare themselves, to push beyond preconceived limits with their intensity of output. With its precisely planned, bold, and contained movement, its jagged edges are born of angular stretch and attack. Dove was interested in using the gifts of Balanchine’s dancers–speed, agility, musical intelligence, and grit– and pushing them a step further. Red Angels is formed by the polarity of Ulysses Dove’s life: the light and the darkness, by the balance of heaven and hell that was his own reality. It is stylistically taut and fraught with impassioned forms. 

Fragmented in nature, Red Angels presents four dancers whose vivid declarations both conceal and reveal intuition within the electrifying drive of Richard Einhorn’s score. Christopher D’Ariano has a contained might that could move mountains, and his precision is a striking command in itself. Extending the visual reach of Dove’s form, Amanda Morgan returns to a role that seems to be made for her balance of ease and toss-it-to-the-wind attack. It is, of course, a melancholic sight to see Lucien Postlewaite’s evident mastery of chiseled form within Red Angels, and to feel history blinking by before us. But, in his focus and verve, in each impassioned sustain, we forget for a moment that such a powerful presence is evanescent. 

The highlight of the work, however, is witnessing Clara Ruf Maldonado attack Red Angels like she’s been waiting a lifetime to express something of such explosive strength. Maldonado may not be cast as the Firebird herself this time around, but in the sharp vigilance that she brings to Red Angels, we see a hint of a firebird that reveals the two works to be in the same bloodline. Maldonado has skyrocketed in the past year, in everything from Afternoon of a Faun and Roméo et Juliette to The Window, and in Red Angels, she proves again the level of fearless pursuit she brings to any role. She’s nearly unrecognizable in the character that emblazes the choreography. Her sharp, angular ferocity and the fiery intensity in her eyes are a bold pronouncement that eclipses all else.

Balancing these two modern works is the revival of a one-act classic gone from sight for so long, I thought we may never see it again. Kent Stowell’s The Firebird premiered on tour at the Kennedy Center in 1989 and was last seen more than twenty-one years ago in February 2005. It is surreal to see this relic, once brought to life by some of PNB’s most memorable artists, reenlivened with full strength.

There’s a great breath of awe that arises when the curtain reveals Ming Cho Lee’s fantastical scenic design with its folk-hue waiting to welcome us into a world as vivid as a picture book. Randall G. Chiarelli’s lighting sweeps the stage in elemental moonlight and turns Theoni V. Aldredge’s glistening scarlet silk tutu into a spellbinding enchantment. Firebird sings with its own history, not just PNB’s history, but of its larger place in balletic lore. 

In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev wrote, “I need a ballet, and a Russian one– the first Russian ballet, since there is no such thing.” It was a turning point in art history, a ballet spurred by Russian traditions and Russian artists, that lifted ballet from its courtly roots and into the conversation of modern art. Diaghilev commissioned Michel Fokine to choreograph the tale, while he took a chance on the young Igor Stravinsky to produce, in sound, an homage to Russian folk culture. After completing ethnographic studies of traditional Russian music, Stravinsky crafted a musical differentiation between the natural and supernatural. This magical sound is produced primarily by the augmented fourth, also known as the “devil's interval”, which coincidentally coincides with the fourth position that characterizes so much of Firebird’s choreography.

The 1910 premiere of The Firebird marked a decisive success for the Ballet Russes. George Balanchine later danced the role of Kastchei with the Ballet Russes, and despite his strivings beyond restaging Russian classics on American soil, Firebird became the first major success for the New York City Ballet in 1949.

Both Kent Stowell and Francia Russell danced in his production years before they would shape Pacific Northwest Ballet into a company capable of producing its own momentous retelling of Firebird. Thus, a trail leads straight from Diaghilev to the vision flooding Pacific Northwest Ballet today, close to one hundred and sixteen years after its revolutionary premiere.

Firebird nearly made its return for the company’s 40th anniversary season in 2012, but from the first glimpse of Angelica Generosa’s Firebird, it was quite clear that they simply had to wait for this generation of artists to take center stage. With its sharp celerity and surge of Balanchine-hued technicality, Generosa is in her element. On a technical plane, the role of Firebird requires abrupt halt, meticulous control, flightful speed and agility, which all seem to be tailor-made for her affinity. All the while, her eyes are ablaze. One cannot undermine the otherworldly quality bestowed by the brazen wildness in Generosa’s eyes that only confirms the eerie, elementality possessing her Firebird. It is an enrapturing sight to behold, this stark pronouncement of character that lies shrouded in mystery. 

Her ever-reliable partnership with Jonathan Batista comes with a brilliant surprise in Firebird: they have somehow found the ability to make themselves strangers despite how closely-tuned their work has become over the years. As she recoiled from his limbs, creaturely side-eye and all, one could have sworn that they were truly man and bird, so brilliantly foreign was their relation. In the sharp feathers of Generosa’s spirited fingers, and the sheer grit of her tenacious attack, one thing was clear on opening night: a fearless Firebird has been born for a new era.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan and soloist Luther DeMyer in Kent Stowell’s Firebird. Photo © Angela Sterling.

It should come as no surprise by now that Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan has a particular gift for taking any character further than envisioned possible. She is unrecognizable in her flighty form, possessed by some overpowering spirit which lingers darkly in her eyes and enchants with a single glance. All quicksilver precision and needlesharp in her exactitude, she’s a fierce and fully feeling bird who commands with an electrically charged presence, and fittingly, with raging fire under her feet.

Ryan’s debut reveals the complex nature of the Firebird with accentuated nuance. We see not only her seducing prowess and mighty zeal, but the strange sadness that lingers within her simultaneously. Ryan’s compelling Firebird is defined by lyricism, by the polarity of her soulful and technical reign, and the unbridled strength that makes these intensities gleam. What she carries in her eyes alone–a glimmer of glee at her dominance, and the blunt edge of menace –leaves not a single static moment in her wake.

Though it may mirror Swan Lake’s capturing of enchantment, the pas de deux between the Firebird and Prince Ivan is one of the few unromantic duets in the canon. With a cold shoulder and a distrust that marks their encounter as her wings stretch out of his embrace, the Firebird quickly declares that their relationship will be more combative and negotiative than passionate. As Jennifer Homans writes, she is “less of a person than an idea or force”, a fleeting and abstract captivation whose magical essence never lessens.

In his adaptation of Firebird, Stowell chose to refocus the story on the human love between Prince Ivan and the Prince’s Bride, which further separates the Firebird from romantic notions and grants significance to the final scene’s wedding. As the Prince and his bride, Christopher D’Ariano and Melisa Guilliams are a glorious pairing that spin a tale of such youthful hope that they nearly begin to mirror Romeo and Juliet. D’Ariano’s intentionality in the smallest of gestures, and Guilliams’ generous, blossoming spirit are charming gifts of their committed expressions. The moonlit scene they share, with its lovely intertwined maiden dances, velveteen steps, and dream-like tenderness, seems to exist beyond the bounds of time, celestial in sound and breath.

Though Firebird is filled with Russian folk traditions and monster-calamities (as in the original, Firebird is the only dancer on pointe in Stowell’s production), there’s a fascinating correlation between George Balanchine’s Rubies and Stowell’s choreography for the role of Firebird. Stowell takes literal quotes from the neoclassical ballet, gifting the Firebird her turned-in passés, sharpened march step, high-flung leg, jutted lunge, love of a chiseled fourth position, accented hands, and combative verve. In this way, it is somehow more “Balanchine” than Balanchine’s own Firebird. 

This spring, across the country, Firebird flits about in prominent repertories, pronouncing something with the combined power of a timeless folk tale and Stravinsky’s lush orchestration. On this side of the country, the revival of a ballet not seen in over two decades, paired with signature works, forms an artistically significant program. After the final performance of opening weekend, Peter Boal reflected that he sees a ballet organization as a “microcosm for what a positive place in this world can be.” As Firebird dashed with vitality across McCaw Hall’s stage, and Little Mortal Jump and Red Angels struck a chord even in their ghostly memory, I could not have agreed more wholeheartedly.

There are only four more chances to catch the return of Firebird at Pacific Northwest Ballet, March 20-22!