Goodbye Liz!
A ballerina sets out on a new life
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has blurred the recent past in my memory, I do recall seeing Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) principal dancer Elizabeth Murphy one day last spring.
She was visiting the Phelps Center, PNB’s Seattle Center home, with her new infant. Murphy hadn’t been back onstage since that birth, and I was wondering when she might return, hoping she’d be able to reprise her role as Juliette in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette.
She disappointed me with the news that it wasn’t going to happen, although Murphy did return to the stage later last year and danced throughout the current season. Murphy is relatively young and I assumed she’d continue her stage career for a few more years.
Alas for her fans, last week the dancer announced this season would be her last. She’s ending her performance career this June. In an official PNB press release, Murphy said, “It’s with love and a full heart that I take my final bow and step into a new era.”
Murphy has danced most of the classical roles — Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, the titular role in Giselle, A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Titania, et cetera, but I was first captivated by her appearance in the 2016 PNB premiere of Alejandro Cerrudo’s Little mortal jump, performing with Dylan Wald. The duo had me in tears, but that was 10 years ago. Since then Murphy’s had a couple of babies and Wald has been recuperating from a surgery, so I haven’t had many chances to see them as onstage partners. PNB is staging Cerrudo’s ballet this month. Even if I don’t see them dance in it, I will definitely be thinking of Murphy and Wald
Murphy’s PNB colleagues have showered social media with memories and fond farewell wishes ever since the ballet company announced her upcoming departure. After 15 years dancing with the company, meeting her husband PNB lighting designer Reed Nakayama there and the births of their two daughters, PNB must seem like a second family to her. At least she won’t have to deal with pesky journalists bugging her to return to the stage.
A friend of mine has a theory that motherhood imbues ballet dancers with a certain something that brings a new dimension to their artistry. Part of me wonders if it’s exhaustion, but I know she means these dancer moms have an expanded sense of empathy that they bring to the roles they dance. PNB’s artistic director Peter Boal seemed to recognize that when he pointed, in her retirement announcement, to Murphy’s ability to take the audience with her on an emotional journey.
I first met Elizabeth Murphy when she came to Seattle in 2011 from Utah’s Ballet West. At the time she had started a dancewear business called Label Dancewear, and I wrote a story about it for Pointe magazine. Murphy hadn’t yet been promoted out of the corps de ballet, but once Boal tapped her as a soloist in 2013 she seemed to fly up the company ranks. She was promoted to principal in 2015. Despite her busy life, Murphy has kept her hand in the world of dancewear, designing costumes for some of her PNB colleagues; her dancewear business, renamed LABL Active, may resurface once she ends her performance career.
PNB says Murphy will appear in all the upcoming programs this season, including Giselle in May, and the all-Jessica Lang performance from May 29-June 7, officially titled All Lang. Her career will be celebrated at the Season Encore performance on June 7 along with that of longtime principal dancer Lucien Postlewaite, who announced his impending retirement last fall. The two were frequent onstage partners so this show should be a tearjerker. Saying goodbye to one veteran dancer is hard; two is even more bittersweet.
With last year’s departure by former principal Cecilia Iliesiu, and Elle Macy’s ongoing surgery recovery plus Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan’s recent injury, PNB has had a dearth of healthy female principal dancers this season. Despite its rich cadre of talented soloists and corps members, it will be hard for PNB to replace Murphy’s years of experience. We’ll miss you
!