Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Mercer Arts Arena

Seattle, Washington

April 10-19, 2003

Of the three ballets on Pacific Northwest Ballet's penultimate program of the season, it was the oldest, Todd Bolender's 1955 Souvenirs, and the newest, Christopher Stowell's world premiere Zais, that were most interesting.

Bold and ambitious, Zais is the work of a novice but confident choreographer with acute musical sense, a sure hand with large groups of dancers, and a keen respect for the history of his art. The eighteen-member corps and three principal couples moved from courtly, mannered formality to fairly unbridled expressiveness in three well-defined sections set to excerpts from Jean-Philippe Rameau's operas Zais and Nais.

Christophe Maraval, with his Paris Opera Ballet-style epaulement and elegant line, was formidable partnering Noelani Pantastico in the central pas de deux on Saturday night, and interesting throwing out that classical line in the solo that ends the piece. On Friday night, however, Stowell's emotion-laden spiraling choreography also brought out in Olivier Wevers a new fluidity and expressiveness. That performance was marred by the corps' inaccuracy in the militarily precise opening movement, but otherwise flawlessly danced. Randall G. Chiarelli's painterly lighting design, Mark Zappone's period-evoking costumes, and the dancing brought out the color and texture of Rameau's music, beautifully played by PNB's orchestra.

SOUVENIRS, A LOVING SEND-UP OF SILENT MOVIES, SET TO A CHARMING SCORE BY SAMUEl, BARBER, IS GREAT FUN, WITH ITS SAUCY SEXUAL INNUENDOES AND MANIC POOLSIDE FINALE. The Man About Town, danced with superb and unusual panache by Jeffrey Stanton, flirts with anyone in a skirt, from The Wife to a chamber maid, in the 1913 hotel that is the ballet's mise-en-scene. It is also profoundly touching when the Wallflowers and the Dream Girl, three adolescent girls, sit, bored and uncomfortable, eager and afraid, hoping to be chosen at a tea dance. One dreams of a suitor, danced elegantly by Maraval and boyishly by Batkhurel Bold on consecutive nights, in a pas de deux as tender as young love itself. Stacy Lowenberg as the Vamp was deliciously seductive, in deep contrast to Ariana Lallone's wonderfully wicked take on the same role.

Kirk Peterson's aerobic Amazed in Burning Dreams (1993), a nonstop, hard-driving piece to music by Philip Glass, was brilliantly danced, and cheered by the audience.