Northwest makeover.

It makes sense that a city with a tradition of recycling like Seattle, would choose to renovate a theater instead of demolishing it and starting over. Built in 1928 and first remodeled in 1962, the Opera House (home of Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Seattle Opera) was serviceable but awkward, with few bathrooms, fewer elevators, and a detached feeling between the audience and the performers. The new Marion Oliver McCaw Hall solves these basic problems, with improved facilities and better public spaces, including an ambitious exterior lighting installation that projects a changing display of colors on a series of metal scrims.

But no matter what these amenities are like, the heart of any theater is the auditorium and the stage. Sight lines for the audience at McCaw Hall are much better than to the old house, even at the sides and rear. The designers, LMN Architects, brought the sides of the house in slightly to produce an improved view, and they extended the side rows from the first tier to the mare floor, almost like arms on an easy chair, so that it's possible to walk up to the balcony without leaving the auditorium. At forty feet, the proscenium opening is ten feet taller, with the bright reds and purples front the hack of the house transitioning to black around the stage, which helps focus the audience's attention on the performers. And, in contrast to the former version of the auditorium, the acoustics seem to be very well balanced, with no dead spots.

The backstage improvements are even more significant, with new dressing rooms on the stage level, a 50 percent increase in lighting capacity, and, adjacent to the stage, a full-sized rehearsal space that can hold an entire set. Previously. dancers had to run up a set of concrete stairs to reach their dressing rooms, and extra set pieces were often stored in trailers off the loading dock. The enhanced lighting was immediately noticeable during the opening gala, with much better definition of individual figures, even among the corps de ballet dancers upstage.

The main goal for PNB Co-Directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell was to improve the connection between the dancers and the audience, creating a sense of intimacy in the theater. Russell says she feels that "people like to see individuals onstage; they like to relate to an artist." As the company prepared for a new production of Swan Lake, Russell said that "facial expressions, eye contact, the relationship between the Prince and Odette/Odile [are] most important. Our dancers were always acting their hearts out, and for the very first time our audience will be able to see it."