The Nutcracker may be canonically known as the official ballet of holiday hell, but not enough of us are acquainted with the rich Venn diagram that exists between classical ballet and Spooky Season, from the undead brides of Giselle to the baroque body horror of Suspiria. So I am delighted to report that Pacific Northwest Ballet’s second production of its current season could easily be called “Oops! All Ghosts!” if artistic director Peter Boal was more of a jokester. (Sorry, Peter Boal! I know joking is not allowed in ballet!) Ghost Stories, which opens November 6, promises “a gaggle of goosebumps,” and features a Whitman’s Sampler’s worth of Halloween treats, from a George Balanchine weird-girl classic to a new Edgar Allan Poe adaptation choreographed by PNB principal dancer Kyle Davis.
For those who aren’t already ballet-pilled, Ghost Stories promises to be a fun way in. Compared with the hours-long commitment of a story ballet like Swan Lake (which is arguably very spooky in its own bird-person way), a variety pack evening like this one is a great entry point if you’re new to watching ballet. In Ghost Stories, you’re going to get something weird, something new, and something rooted in American ballet tradition.
The latter shows up in my favorite fractured bedtime story, La Sonnambula, a goth-coded confection perfect for girls who are just sooooooo sleepy. Though the story is ostensibly about a doomed poet’s romantic troubles (who cares), the real MVP of La Sonnambula is a mysterious sleepwalker (relatable) who haunts the stage in a glorious, vaguely 1970s-doing-Victorian nightgown, while brandishing a candlestick. I saw this ballet for the first time as a teenager and found it incredibly chic and odd. I’m not always a fan of Balanchine (please don’t hurt me!), but La Sonnambula is one of his finer projects, and perfect Halloween-adjacent viewing, especially if you care deeply about Alvin Schwartz books like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories (I’m thinking mostly of the one about the girl with the ribbon around her neck), the Brontë sisters (more Emily, less Charlotte, no Emerald Fennell), or the Mia Goth cinematic universe.
PNB principal Davis cares deeply about Edgar Allan Poe’s famous, brief account of a visitation from a “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore”—so much that it’s the inspiration for his new ballet The Raven. Menacing tales of animal encounters are perfect source material for classical dance, but Davis’s effort to track down the music for this piece is equally compelling: He wanted to use Alexander Dreyschock’s Morceau de concert, Op. 27, a semi-forgotten piece of music that had been recorded only twice and whose sheet music seemed not to exist. Following a decades-long odyssey involving both the Festival of Neglected Romantic Music (yes, it’s real) and the smarts of PNB music librarian Mona Butler, Davis located the only copy of the score known to exist. It’s since been copied, and will accompany Davis’s take on Poe’s legendary poem. (There’s even a Poe dress-up night during the run. What is this, the Independence Inn?)
The final ghost on the lineup trades narrative for something closer to abstraction in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Silent Ghost and PACOPEPEPLUTO. Cerrudo’s ballets have a cheeky contemporary charm—my favorite is Little mortal jump, a ballet featuring music by Andrew Bird and getting-stuck-on-a-wall choreography. With its moody partnering and emotional palette, Silent Ghost fits the evening’s brief perfectly. But it’s hard to make the case that PACOPEPEPLUTO is a ghost story, unless it’s about the ghost of Dean Martin. It kind of doesn’t matter, though, because this piece, which premiered at Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance in 2011, is a real winner: a winsome, campy series of male solos set to classics like “That’s Amoré.” If The Raven conjures foggy, consumptive supernatural horror, PACOPEPEPLUTO is a welcome diversion to Palm Springs, the choreographic equivalent of a poolside cocktail garnished with a sparkly umbrella. It’s fun. It has a sense of humor. Sometimes joking is allowed in ballet.
See Ghost Stories November 6–15 at McCaw Hall.