A Night to Remember
A crazy Seattle dance ride ends with a flourish
Seattle International Dance Festival’s (SIDF) closing night was a fitting capper to a wild weekend of dance in the city.
From Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Next Step program—a showcase for choreography created by company dancers for students in the PNB School’s Professional Division—to Alice Gosti’s delicate and haunting Where is Home: Third Shore, created at and for the old Immigration and Naturalization Services building near Seattle’s sports stadia, contemporary dance fans dashed from venue to venue to cram in as many shows as possible.
(A side note: wouldn’t it be cool to have a master dance calendar for presenters to consult before scheduling everything on the same weekend??)
On Sunday evening, June 18th, I arrived with a friend at the Broadway Performance Hall for SIDF’s final 2023 show, only to find a building-wide power outage. SIDF director Cyrus Khambatta and his team scrambled to move the production down the street to the Erickson Theatre, SIDF’s alternate venue. Once everyone scurried over, the crew did a quick—QUICK—sound and light check. Amazingly, the show went on only about 30 minutes behind schedule. Bravo to the intrepid staff and artists who showed extreme grace in crazy circumstances.
As per SIDF’s philosophy, the evening was a mixed bill, featuring a lively piece performed by Khambatta’s eponymous company; Victoria Gutierrez’s dark dance about mental illness; the soft opening of PNB soloist Price Suddarth’s new company JUMPKUT, via a duet called Reverie that Suddarth created in 2021 for Ballet Sun Valley; and the dance I was particularly interested to see, Come to Ground, by relative Seattle newcomer Emily Schoen Branch, who relocated from New York to the Pacific Northwest in 2020.
Branch, who had a long career on the East Coast, including a stint with the critically acclaimed KEIGWIN + CO, had presented her work in Seattle prior to SIDF, but I didn’t see it, so this show was my introduction to her, and it was definitely satisfying.
Come to Ground was a series of three interconnected solos punctuated by several trios, set to a recording of Pacific Northwest writer David Whyte reading three of his essays. Each essay serves as the inspiration for a solo, performed by three wonderful dancers: independent artist Rhea Keller, Whim W’Him Contemporary Dance company member Kyle Sangil, and the ever-impressive Leah Terada, a soloist with Pacific Northwest Ballet.
I confess to a bias against dances performed to text. I think it’s because I have difficulty absorbing movement when I’m listening to words, particularly words I’m supposed to pay attention to. I started out trying to take in Whyte’s essays and the dancers’ movements simultaneously, but my mind soon tuned out the text, transforming his voice into another instrument that provided a foundation for the dance. And the dance was worth all of my attention.
Occasionally Branch’s choreography directly illustrated what Whyte was saying; more often the dancers’ wide swooping movements were impressionistic, illustrating emotions, like paintbrushes that leave streaks of color on a canvas. The large arcs the dancers created with their arms and legs were countered by physical retractions that originated in their torsos, as if their belly buttons were pulling their limbs in. The effect was light, almost airy, so that the dancers’ bodies resembled seed pods wafting from tree branches down to the ground.
Sangil, a small, but powerful dancer with an explosive style of moving, seemed taller as he performed Branch’s work. The piece’s languid pace, along with the emphasis on extended limbs, allowed Sangil to infuse his solo with a delicacy I haven’t often seen him display.
Branch’s choreography also shone a new light on Terada’s talents. Whatever genre Terada performs, whether classical ballet or contemporary works, she always seems to invest herself fully, which is one of the joys of following her career. Come to Ground was no exception. When she, Keller and Sangil converged onstage at the end of the piece, arms extended towards an unknown future, I felt their yearning, and a spark of hope amidst the chaos we’re experiencing in the world. Terada’s megawatt smile as the dancers took their bows said it all. Brava!
Although I’m still not sold on the combination of dance and text, Branch’s vision was able to overcome my inability to digest two things at once. For me, SIDF’s last show ended on a satisfying high note.
June has been overflowing with dance opportunities, but they’re starting to ebb as we hit full-summer sunshine. That’s just as well, but I can’t help wishing that producers, presenters and dance artists could stretch out the season just a tad. I love a good binge-watch, but a little breathing room between shows might give us a little more space to fully savor each one.