PNB's Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan Really Can Do Everything.
I remember the first time I really noticed Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan.
It wasn’t very long after she arrived in Seattle to join PNB’s corps de ballet. With her long, dark hair and big, brown eyes, Ryan took her place as one of many lovely corps members. What distinguished her was her go-for-broke attitude onstage. She threw her entire being into whatever role she was dancing-- so much so that I saw Ryan fall onto her butt at least once. She got up quickly and kept on dancing in less time than it took me to catch my breath.
That kind of zealous passion for her work, the way Ryan approaches every role, is a big plus, the kind of spirit that can make an artistic career. When Pointe magazine asked me to write a feature story about Ryan in 2021, that all-or-nothing approach was also something Ryan’s boss, PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal, singled out when he told me why he’d chosen Ryan, a first-year corps member at the time, to step in at the last minute for former company star Noelani Pantastico.
The role was in Crystal Pite’s noirish ballet Plot Point, inspired by the great Alfred Hitchcock’s films. It was very much an ensemble piece, but Pantastico’s role was critical to the story, involving the discovery of a dead body. Unfortunately, Pantastico had been injured in a car accident and couldn’t perform. Ryan had just one day to learn the role then step onstage in it.
“The expectation was we’d throw her on stage and she’d be tentative,” Boal told me at the time. “But she gave a really strong performance.”
If Ryan felt tentative on the inside, she never betrayed her nerves to the audience.
‘She hurtled out in a gray trench coat,’ I wrote at the time, ‘and turned to the audience, her dark eyes opened wide in shock, and let out a horrified scream.’ It was like Ryan was channeling Rosalind Russell’s Auntie Mame. ‘Here I am, Seattle,’ Ryan announced to us. (I guess I’m a little nostalgic today; I’m sure neither Russell nore Bette Davis, cited later in this essay, are Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan’s cultural reference touchstones).
Since Plot Point, Ryan has soared to the PNB stratosphere, attaining the rank of principal dancer last fall (2023). She’s performed both featured and lead roles in other Pite ballets, including audience favorite The Seasons’ Canon. Ryan also has danced her share of classical works.
For example, this past weekend Ryan and her real-life fiancé, PNB principal Kyle Davis, gave their company premiers as the lead characters Swanilda and Franz in Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine’s Coppelia. Ryan didn’t scream, but her performance didn’t need that kind of announcement. In fact, I wasn’t planning to write anything about this ballet; it’s a pretty love story about a charming village girl who has to compete with a non-human doll, Coppelia, to win the attention of the man Swanilda loves. That would be Franz. As I said, it’s pink and pretty, like a strawberry tart. I wasn’t expecting power, but I got it!
I was surprised to learn that Davis had never danced the role of Franz in McCaw Hall before this year, but he’s been rehabbing a knee injury for what seems like eons. I figured he’d nail the technically challenging choreography, especially in the last act. And he’d perform opposite his fiancé, which had to insure a greater level of comfort and trust between the two dancers. I knew Ryan would rehearse the heck out of her role and I figured it would be an entertaining afternoon. Boy was I right!
I’m sure technical purists, including Ryan herself, could nit-pick her arm positions, or her pointe work. I don’t have either the expertise or the inclination to zero in on that kind of ballet minutia. What did wow me was her almost-electric sparkle, that je ne sais quoi that makes certain performing artists transcend “very good” to “incandescent.”
Ryan also showed us precise footwork and impressive leaps, as well as some charming interplay with the endearingly comedic Ryan Cardea in the role of the lovesick dollmaker Dr. Coppelius. I know the light-hearted performance was the result of many hours in the studio; it’s incredibly hard to make something look so light and bubbly without effort
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Ryan and Davis are rotating in their lead roles with fellow PNB principal dancers Leta Biasucci and the departing James Kirby Rogers, and Angelica Generosa and Jonathan Batista. All three casts are excellent, you can’t go wrong. I’ve seen Biasucci, who is perfection. Generosa with Batista give off enough energy to light up the Space Needle, so they should be a blast to watch.
But if you want to catch an ascending star, Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan will perform with Kyle Davis again on Sunday afternoon, June 9 at McCaw Hall. If you’re a fan of the great Bette Davis film, All About Eve, picture a very nice version of Eve Harrington filling in for Bette Davis’ character, Margo Channing, and you get an idea of what’s in store. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy afternoon, in the best possible sense.