Is importing an evening of Balanchine’s ballets to his home base like bringing beans to Boston? Not when it brings us a dancer who’s matured into a full-fledged ballerina.
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s opening night at City Center on Wednesday was a program of three Mr. B masterworks — a tall order in a Balanchine town, and the pressure was on.
Then again, this Seattle company has the creds: It includes a few New York City Ballet alumni, including Peter Boal, PNB’s artistic director. But the most welcome return is Carla Körbes, whom Boal discovered as a teenager in her native Brazil. When Boal retired from NYCB to run PNB in 2005, Körbes followed. When she left she was on the rise but still weak.
What a difference eight years makes. In Balanchine’s “Apollo,” the god chooses from three muses, and it would have been impossible for him to pick anyone but Körbes.
It’s not just her blond hair and scarlet lips, or her long legs tipped with feet arched like bananas. It’s more than her timing: She knows how to play with the music and when to hit a pose to let it register. It’s something as indescribable as ballerina magic. She’s got an inner light only a few have.
Her handsome Apollo, Seth Orza, is also ex-NYCB, but his homecoming was more nervous. Dancing Apollo is like acting Hamlet and Orza’s danced the god only twice before. His take was interesting and forceful, but done with a clenched jaw and stare.
The opener, “Concerto Barocco,” was also a little jittery, but that’s a PNB tradition. At its last City Center outing back in ’96, then-artistic director Kent Stowell was anxious enough that he ran down the aisle to the orchestra pit and yelled at the conductor to slow down. (Happily, this time the music is live as well, minus the yelling.)
The company found its legs by the closer, “Agon,” set to Stravinsky’s astringent score. The dancers knifed through the tight, sharp steps like alcohol into a wound. Lesley Rausch led with mysterious detachment, gazing out at us even as her partner dropped her to the floor.
Though it was fascinating to see New York ballets danced with a Seattle accent, seeing Körbes was the real treat. Tonight and tomorrow night, you can see her as Juliet opposite Orza’s Romeo. She’s the best thing to come from Seattle since Starbucks.