Peter Boal returns to New York this week, taking dancers from Pacific Northwest Ballet to the Joyce Theater (co-responsible for the recent A.W.A.R.D. Show! at On the Boards) to perform from their broad repertoire (which won them last year’s Genius Award for organization): Twyla Tharp’s Opus 111, Benjamin Millepied’s 3 Movements, Marco Goecke’s solo Mopey, and Edwaard Liang’s Für Alina.
The Times has a warm and friendly piece about Boal and the way he’s remade PNB:
Mr. Boal, who speaks softly and with a hint of dryness, lives in Seattle with his wife, Kelly Cass, a former City Ballet dancer, and their three children. In less than five years at Pacific Northwest, directed earlier by Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, he has added a remarkable 57 ballets to the repertory.
Mr. Boal likes to broaden the focus from individual pieces to a choreographer’s body of work, as he has also done with ballets by Jerome Robbins and Christopher Wheeldon, for audiences as well as dancers. “The idea is so that they can really discuss, as with Robbins, how ‘In the Night’ differs from ‘Fancy Free’ and what are their similarities?” he said. “Once the choreographers become the box office draw, the abilities that you have for programming are endless.”
Read the rest here.
