SEATTLE — One woman in the audience remembered that he also played baseball in college.
Edward Villella, now in his late 70s, is among America’s best loved and most famous ballet dancers.
On Monday, Villella coached Pacific Northwest Ballet cast members in preparation for the company’s 42nd season opener Friday.
George Balanchine’s masterpiece ballet “Jewels” will be performed through Oct. 5 in McCaw Hall at the Seattle Center.
“Jewels” is a trio of dance gems — Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds — that pay tribute to America’s golden ages of music and dance. The ballet is set to the music of Faure, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky.
The great choreographer Balanchine wrote Rubies, a jazzy spin on Igor Stravinsky’s 1929 “Capriccio,” for Villella and his partner, ballerina Patricia McBride.
The coaching session in a PNB rehearsal room included a chance for adoring audience members, seated in folding chairs along the walls, to question Villella. PNB director Peter Boal moderated.
He spoke primarily about Balanchine and how “Jewels” came together in 1967 at the New York City Ballet.
Balanchine had trust in his dancers, Villella said. They had to find their own characters and relationships in a rather plotless ballet for which Balanchine gave only the direction to “be flirtatious.”
Villella knows the Rubies choreography so well that he easily provided suggestions to PNB dancers Jonathan Porretta and Leta Biasucci and their colleagues James Moore and Angelica Generosa. These tips resulted in nuanced expression and attention to the Stravinsky’s rhythms.
This central section of “Jewels” takes full advantage of the jazzy off-beats and modern style of Stravinsky’s piece for piano and orchestra. It is athletic and, yes, flirty.
Jeanie Thomas, PNB’s former education director previously wrote that, “Capriciousness (referring to the title of Stravinsky’s score) might also be said to characterize Balanchine’s choreography, which is half elegant, half street-smart. With its jutting hips, flexed feet, show-biz kicks and witty counter-rhythms, Rubies is a many faceted example of the exuberantly distorted classicism that Balanchine invented to render Stravinsky’s musical idiom three-dimensionally.”
It certainly must have been a good fit for Villella, who interrupted his ballet training to go to college at the New York Maritime Academy, where the tough young man boxed and played baseball.
The Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers were as thrilled as the audience to meet with Villella and he praised them in return. Porretta and Biasucci will perform the duo Friday and Saturday nights.
“I owe a debt to these works,” said Villella, who is considered a living legend in the ballet world.
And, yes, he still loves baseball.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
“Jewels”
Pacific Northwest Ballet presents George Balanchine’s “Jewels” at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26, 27, Oct. 2, 3, 4 as well as 2 p.m. Sept. 27 and 1 p.m. Oct. 5 at Seattle Center’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. Tickets available at the box office, 301 Mercer St., by calling 206-441-2424 or online at www.PNB.org.
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