Snohomish County entertainment
Choreographer's dance honors her late husband

By Diane Wright
Times Snohomish County bureau

	REX KLEIN From left: Shayleen Rawlins, Sarah Henderson, Rosemary Richards, Karissa Eslinger, Crystal Serrano and Thera Langham are dancers in "Requiem," part of an Olympic Ballet Theatre show Friday.
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EDMONDS — Helen Wilkins felt a sense of obligation.

Since John Wilkins' death last year, she had wanted to honor her late husband and longtime co- director of the Olympic Ballet Theatre.

"I felt I would probably need to create something for him," she said. "I didn't know when or where."

"Requiem," the dance she created to honor her husband, is called by Wilkins a "voice from us to John." It premiered Jan. 31, the anniversary of her husband's death, to a packed house at a benefit for the Edmonds Center for the Arts. It will get a reprise Friday in a concert of modern dance and ballet works at the center.

'Requiem' The Olympic Ballet Theatre will present "Requiem" and other classical and contemporary dance works at 7 p.m. Friday at the Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N. Tickets are $5 at the door. Donations will be accepted toward the John Wilkins Memorial Stage at the arts center. Information: www.olympicballet.com or 425-774-7570.

"Requiem" features a cast of 10 women dancing "in the clouds," Wilkins said. With man-made fog rolling across the stage and a middle movement featuring Frédéric Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, the piece has a big impact.

For the performers, dancing at the arts center rather than at the ballet's studio is a bonus.

"The dancers have been begging me to get back in a theater," Wilkins said.

The Olympic Ballet's company performs in theaters several times a year, but the setting was especially important because this performance will be critiqued by Jane Miller Gifford of Regional Dance America, which does critiques around the country every year.

The feedback helps dance companies grow artistically. Gifford also will select which piece Olympic will perform at the Regional Dance America festival in Arizona in May.

The performance will feature several works by different choreographers.

Daniel Wilkins, the couple's middle son and the company's associate artistic director, will present an excerpt from "Religilistic," a contemporary dance piece to debut in its entirety May 21 and 22.

Also on Friday's program is a work by faculty member Tatiana Cater and Olympic Ballet student Lindsay Bickford.

Two guest artists from Spectrum Dance Theater of Seattle also will dance: David Alewine and Julia Wilkins, the Wilkinses' daughter, will perform a work by Donald Byrd, Spectrum's artistic director.

Helen Wilkins performed in the Banff School of Fine Arts Festival in Canada before going to New York and dancing with a touring company called Ballet Concepts. After a stint in Europe, she came back to the U.S. She met her future husband in a ballet class in New York City in 1968.

At the start of choreographing "Requiem," Wilkins had thought about asking their son Daniel to dance.

"But I realized that as soon as you put a man on the stage, it's very difficult not to see that man as John," she said. "Then you're having somebody dance a life instead of a tribute to a life."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com

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