'All Balanchine,' all beautiful, at Pacific Northwest Ballet

Dance review |

The pleasures of pure dance are onstage at Pacific Northwest Ballet this week and next in "All Balanchine," a delightful and at times breathtaking demonstration that less is often so much more. Freed of the elaborate costumes, sets and narrative weight of story ballets, or the frequently thumping music and frenetic movement of more contemporary works, the dancers on opening night found room to create a world. In a setting of such simplicity — bare stage and plain leotards — every detail of the movement mattered; every limb could be heard as it spoke.

In "Serenade," that blue-cloud version of Balanchine heaven, Kylee Kitchens' long-legged arabesque seemed to reach to the sky, slowly and delicately rotated by a partner's unseen hands as Tchaikovsky's delicious strings soared. (The PNB orchestra, led by three different conductors opening night, sounded particularly lovely in this work.) Kaori Nakamura held the audience rapt with a series of jumps kept deliberately low and small; the last jump finally set free.

Jonathan Porretta, in the Melancholic variation in "The Four Temperaments," leapt toward the audience as if he just might jump over our heads; at his solo's end, he walked backward into the wings, his back curved into a yearning arch as his hands led the way. Olivier Wevers brought an airy, almost comic looseness to the Phlegmatic section, suddenly slumping into a broken-limbed droop, as if the string holding him up had just snapped. At the end of the variation, he and the ensemble collapsed their upper bodies, with a perfectly timed whoosh of breath — and we exhaled with them. Ariana Lallone, ever-mesmerizing, danced Choleric with queenly grace.

And in the playful, folk-dance-inspired "Square Dance," Carrie Imler and Lucien Postlewaite barely seemed to touch the floor. Postlewaite, in a moody solo, carved intricate shapes with his body, in movement seemingly incapable of strain. Imler, who has an uncanny knack for appearing unhurried even when dancing at warp speed, sailed through her fiendishly difficult variations with calm effortlessness. She bounced through jumps (particularly a tricky one in which both legs straighten and kick, separately) as if the floor were a demure trampoline, and literally kicked up her heels with Postlewaite in a precise, sparkling pas de deux. Just a dancer, some music and Balanchine — and from this comes magic.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com