Signature
Music
Barret Anspach
(VVLD, 2015)
Choreography
Price Suddarth
Costume Design
Mark Zappone
Lighting Design
Randall G. Chiarelli
Premiere
November 6, 2015; Pacific Northwest Ballet
The 2015 world premiere of Price Suddarth’s Signature was generously underwritten in part by Deidra Wager, Jodi Wong, and Katharyn Alvord Gerlich.
Program Notes
“Why me?”
A question all of us have asked ourselves at one time or another: as a dancer, what makes my performance worth watching; as a musician, what makes my melody worth hearing; as a writer, what makes my script worth reading; as a choreographer, what makes my movement worth repeating? When Peter approached me with the unparalleled opportunity to create something on an extraordinary company of remarkable individuals (that is, once the excitement wore off), I felt it my responsibility to identify what attribute or skill I might offer that could set my work apart. The inner dialogue of the “why me?” arose.
My ultimate discovery? Nothing. No thing sets me apart. It’s not about what we can do or what we possess—that possible “it” factor; there will always be someone else out there who is stronger, faster, better. Instead, the most beautiful thing about each individual is just that—we are individual. The most beautiful thing we each have to offer is that we are 100% irreplaceable, distinctively singular, and utterly unmatched. Signature celebrates this notion—the idea of the nothing that is inimitable, the nothing that makes each individual matchless.