Opening Night View from the Audience – Sarah Ricard Orza
Pacific Northwest Ballet:
Opening Night in New York City
Sarah Orza
My husband Seth Orza and I are expecting our first child, a baby girl, in May. So, on Wednesday night, as PNB returned to New York’s City Center for the first time since 1996, I had the opportunity to watch my […]
Director’s Notebook: Peter Boal on Apollo & Carmina Burana
George Balanchine rarely spoke about his ballets or the process of making them. Didn't the ballets speak for themselves and, besides, aren't the critics always offering their analysis of what the artist was thinking? He made an exception for Apollo, though, calling Stravinsky's score "a turning point in my life. It seemed to tell me that I could dare not to use everything—that I, too, could eliminate."
Enduring Duos: Corps de ballet dancer Jessika Anspach on Balanchine’s Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Feé”
Enduring Duos
Love Stories… Those great enduring duos: Princess Aurora and her Prince (I know he has a name, but does anyone know it?). Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. Romeo and Juliet. Peanut Butter and Jelly… I know. PB & J are inanimate objects, incapable of offering or experiencing love, but you can’t […]
Artistic Director’s Notebook: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Artistic Director’s Notebook: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
There are a few moments in George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that get me every time, like when Bottom, crowned with the head of an ass, looks quizzically to his audience in mid-promenade with the willowy Titania, as if to say, “Huh?” Perhaps Balanchine took his […]
Backstage with the Midsummer Bugs
In this blog, Parent Volunteer Coordinator Di Anna Kurriger talks about life backstage with the youngest dancers in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Q&A: Jonathan Porretta
Principal Dancer Jonathan Porretta has graced PNB’s stage for twelve seasons, performing in treasured classics and originating roles in new works. Read more about this fascinating performer here.
Why ballet?
I started with ballet/tap and then in my little school in New Jersey, Totowa […]
PNB School & Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Collaboration
Forty or so lanky teenagers sat on the very lip of the stage peering over the edge to see forty or so young musicians playing a rousing rendition of John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes from our vast orchestra pit. Awed expressions could be seen on the young dancers’ faces as timpanis pounded […]
Artistic Director’s Notebook: Coppélia
Artistic Director’s Notebook: Coppélia
By now you’ve probably heard the old story about me and Coppélia. To do it justice, I’ll have to go back to 1948, when the New York City Ballet was born. That same year, my grandfather accepted a position working for the United Nations, causing my grandparents to relocate to […]
Principal Dancer Jeff Stanton on Coppélia
Working on Coppélia is a bit nostalgic for me, as it appears to be a marker of time in my life as a dancer. For starters, as a young child I remember listening to the album of Coppélia that my mother had. I remember the pictures of dancers on the album almost exactly. […]