So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to watch a run-through of Seattle dance company Whim W’him’s spring program. I was thrilled; sitting in a rehearsal studio is one of my favorite job perks.
It’s always fun to watch rehearsals, but Whim W’him artistic director Olivier Wever’s seven dancers bring me particular pleasure: they’re extremely well-trained as well as artistically soulful. They’re all excellent, from the energetic Kyle Sangil to Andy McShea, truly a dancer to keep an eye on. What I didn’t know at the time was that the multi-talented Jane Cracovaner was leaving Whim W’him after the season ended.
Cracovaner brings a singular presence to the stage: she’s tall and unbelievably limber, almost like Gumby. Along with her physical skills, Cracovaner has the ability to inhabit a dramatic persona so thoroughly that she becomes that character. In the spring program, in a reprise of Wevers’ Silent Scream, she channels Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. In past shows Cracovaner has brought the audience her interpretation of a society grand dame in a lovely apartment, a robotic creature, or a spurned lover. The list goes on. Sure, portraying a character or emotion is part of a performer’s job, but becoming a character, truly submerging your self, is a rare talent.
I’m not sure what Cracovaner’s future holds, but I hope it includes at least one more Seattle performance.
Speaking of last local performances, recently I had a chance to catch Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theatre performing at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle’s Ballard. Byrd was invited to create a dance in dialogue with a visual art exhibition. I’m not very conversant in Scandinavian contemporary art, so I’m not sure if Byrd fulfilled his brief, but I do know a bit about dance, and this 7-part dialogue had some fascinating moments,
Byrd has had a long and distinguished career as a dancer and dancemaker. For two decades he’s assembled an interesting troupe, featuring dancers like Jade Solomon Curtis, Nia-Amina Minor and so many more, but the latest iteration of his company is far less experienced. This is a new Spectrum, made up of, primarily, very young dancers on the cusp of their professional careers.
The notable exception at the Nordic Museum was a guest artist—Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer James Kirby Rogers, who seems born and trained to execute Byrd’s distinctive choreography. Rogers is technically clear and precise, with the confidence to carry off some of Byrd’s most challenging demands. I wish I had specific photos from the museum, but I don’t so you’ll have to content yourself with this tidbit from Alejandro Cerrudo’s Black on Black on Black.
A few days after I was at the Nordic Museum I learned Rogers was leaving PNB next month to head to Dresden, Germany to join that city’s Semperoper Ballett.
We’ve just started to get to know Rogers, who arrived in Seattle during the pandemic. He partnered former principal dancer Lesley Rausch in Swan Lake before she retired, showing himself to be a deft classical prince, but Rogers is also adept at contemporary choreography by Cerrudo, above, as well as Crystal Pite, Ulysses Dove and more. I wish him the best of luck, but I think I speak for many PNB fans when I say “James, we hardly knew ya!”
PNB also says goodbye this year to longtime rehearsal director Otto Neubert. Audiences might know his very creepy portrayal of the evil Baron Von Rothbart from Swan Lake, but I had the great fortune to watch him rehearsing very young PNB school students for their roles in the annual Nutcracker production, where he was far less intimidating. Neubert displayed patience and an almost tender kindness with the young students, so lovely to watch. He’ll be replaced by retiring soloist Ezra Thomson, a PNB company member since 2009.
Thomson is a stealth performer, an every-day guy you’d meet with for a beer. He’s not a regal presence like Rogers or some of the other company members. But when you see all the roles he danced over his stage career, you realize how much of an impact he’s had on stage. From the lovelorn, moony Bottom, batting his eyelashes at a bewitched Titania in George Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, to a street punk-y Mercutio in Jean Cristophe Maillot’s Romeo et Juliette, Thomson did it all, quietly and competently, often with the kind of quiet impact that could knock your expectations off balance. He’s another dancer I will miss onstage, but I’m thrilled he’ll be around the Phelps Center, PNB’s home base.
I want to say goodbye to one last dancer. Actually, I don’t want to say goodbye because I wish he’d never leave, but I know 42 year-old James Yoichi Moore, a longtime PNB principal dancer, is quite ready to have more time for both his wife and two young children and time to heal a body that’s taken a beating over the years.
Moore, a San Francisco native, has been in Seattle for 20 years but I first really noticed him when he performed Marco Goecke’s solo Mopey. I can’t believe that was not long after Moore got here!
He first appeared onstage in a dark hoody, like a zillion disaffected teenagers around the world. Beating his bare chest, and all but howling his angst to the third tier, Moore mesmerized us. Well, he mesmerized me. The ballet was a definite jolt to audiences who preferred their ballet a bit more sedate, but I became a James Yoichi Moore groupie.
Moore was equally electrifying in Jean Christophe Maillot’s Romeo et Juliette, steaming up the stage with his ballet partner, and good friend, Noelani Pantastico, as well as in Twyla Tharp’s Waiting at the Station, created for PNB. Moore danced the role of an aging man trying to impart everything he knew to a younger protege.
Shorter than many of his male colleagues at PNB, Moore was fully aware that he wasn’t the classic ballet prince. He once told me that PNB’s contemporary repertoire has kept him performing longer than he might have done. While his love-struck Romeo was both princely and human, I have to say, his duet with Angelica Generosa in Crystal Pite’s The Seasons Canon both this season and last confirmed his affinity for contemporary work.
Moore wasn’t just a notable performer; he’s a super nice human being and, it turns out, a great producer and presenter. Moore and Pantastico founded Seattle Dance Collective just before the pandemic in 2019. They presented a live show their first season, but soon made the turn to dance videos as the pandemic-forced venue closures dragged on. Last summer, for example, they presented Dylan Wald in choreographer Penny Saunder’s solo, Vanishing Act.
While Moore hasn’t spoken publicly about ending the Dance Collective, he and his wife are moving forward in a different direction. They now run two outlets of the nationally franchised Tutu ballet schools for very young children, about the same age as the Moores’ own two kids. I imagine him as a patient and caring teacher who any pre-schooler would be lucky to study under.
Moore and his wife are teaching now, but James still has another three weeks performing with PNB. First, there’s Coppelia, then a one-time celebration of his career. This Encore performance is set for Sunday evening, June 9th at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. Moore will perform Mopey, as well as the title character in Balanchine’s Prodigal Son. Expect a bittersweet evening with fond farewells to Rogers, Thomson and Neubert too.
I bid the PNB artists and Cracovaner farewell, but it occurs to me that dancers come and go, often before audiences are ready for their departures. It seems fitting for dance, the most ephemeral of art forms. I have photos and sometimes a video or two, but I carry beautiful memories of the joy these artists have brought me, some of my most precious treasures. To paraphrase the late, great journalist Edward R. Murrow, good bye and good luck dear dance artists!