In Defense of Donald Byrd's Recent Offering for PNB

 It feels a little strange for me to come to the defense of Donald Byrd, a nationally known ballet and dance choreographer based here in Seattle whose work I have tried to like in years past without much success.

But I did enjoy a recent piece he did for Pacific Northwest Ballet called "And the sky is not cloudy all day" that was dismissed for a couple of reasons by Brian Sibert in an April 2, 2021 review published in the New York Times. 

I wasn't originally going to write about this, but PNB recently announced that one upside of its 2020/2021 all-digital season was that the programming attracted ticket purchasers in over 30 foreign countries as well as in all 50 U.S. states.  As a result, the company's forthcoming season will continue to be offered digitally at the same time PNB resumes performances before live audiences.

"And the sky is not cloudy all day" are well-known lyrics from a song called "Home on the Range" that was most famously sung by Roy Rodgers, known as king of the cowboys.  Byrd, recalling his boyhood dreams of being a cowboy, said he choreographed the piece to Aaron Copeland-sounding music by John Adams by way of nostalgia.

Danced by six men dressed in cowboy attire right down to their boots, the piece "presents a picture of something that existed only in my boyhood imagination," Byrd explained in the program notes. "It is like the 'dream ballet' in a Broadway musical. It steps out of time and reality to present a vision free of harshness, where the bloody narrative of the massacre of the Native people is not there."

Sibert, in his review, beat up on the piece for two reasons. First, he called it "not much of an idea" that came across as sluggish and sloppy "compounded by the way boots blunt ballet footwork."  In contrast, I found Byrd's choreography for men in boots surprisingly convincing from a balletic point of view. 

Secondly, Sibert, who is white, raked Byrd, who is Black, over the coals for being insufficiently woke, calling the ballet disappointing from a choreographer "who can usually be counted on for a strong point of view, especially on matters of history and race."

Seattle performing arts companies, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd atrocity, have been falling all over themselves to both include more people of color in their programming and to be more attentive to various long-standing grievances of American minorities. In that context, Byrd's choice of subject matter may have come as a bit of a shock to PNB artistic director Peter Boal who felt compelled to put the following in his program notes to "And the sky is not cloudy ...":

"Tragically the dream of one group resulted in the conquest and genocide of another. As we grapple with our failures as a nation of many people -- some privileged and included, and some persecuted and excluded -- we also look for strands of hope, inspiration, and even dreams." (The boldface emphasis there is that of Mr. Boal.)

While art over the ages has from time to time had a sociopolitical focus, that has not always been the case and it need not be always the case at present. Aesthetics, which has to do with beauty and good taste, has long been the principle domain of art and there is no reason individual works of art can't continue to reside therein. Because Byrd has choreographed one particular dance that is fundamentally aesthetic in nature does not at all mean that he is insufficiently attuned to social justice concerns. 

Once released, a work of art can stand on it's own terms, can make it's own statement, independent of prevailing social currents. "And the sky is not cloudy .,," is in no respect flawed because it apparently fails to take into consideration conquest, genocide, privilege, exclusion, etc. etc.

One can criticize it on other grounds and despite the fact I liked the piece, it could have been better. In my obviously insufficiently woke opinion, Bryd came up a bit short not on grounds of Political Correctness, but rather because he fell short on character development.  His cowboys needed to get beyond being just "a type."

Early in the pandemic, I watched a video offered by the American Ballet Theater in which former ABT soloist Sascha Radetsky taught his wife, former ABT principal dancer Stella Abrera, how to dance one of the three sailors in Jerome Robbins iconic ballet "Fancy Free," choreography that Robbins also used for the Broadway Musical "On the Town."  Both are about the antics of girl-chasing sailors on a very brief shore leave in New York city.

While Robbins' characters were most definitely "a type," he was careful through a host of often small variations in choreography to make sure they came across as three distinct individuals as well,

That's where Byrd came up short, but there is no reason he can't improve his piece for future performances -- if there are any. I think it has great possibilities.

"West Side Story:" Hijacked and Raped

The 2020 version of "West Side Story" opens on Broadway today (Feb. 20, 2020) and before the reviews are published tomorrow, I thought I would put forth my impressions, having seen the show just over a week ago near the end of its exceptionally long run of "previews."

My headline to this post pretty much says it all, but let me start out on a high note:  Shereen Pimentel, who plays Maria has a lovely voice and, thankfully, she isn't over-miked as the singers in many Broadway musicals are.  She doesn't, however, look much like the innocent girl we expect of Maria based on past productions and that may well be one reason why one of her signature song's from the past, "I Feel Pretty," is missing from this show.

Messages of Arthur Miller's Play "The Crucible"

When Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill) was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, he sometimes recited the following apothegm as illustrative of the political difficulties of finding new sources of federal revenue.

"Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."

In that instance of wishful thinking, outsiders could somehow be the solution to our problems. But it is usually the reverse: outsiders, or external forces, are somehow to blame.

At the moment, for instance, some see immigrants as main reason the American Dream seems increasingly out of reach. That's despite considerable evidence that immigrants have been responsible for far more of America's accomplishments than for the country's failures.

I mention this because I just saw a revival of Arthur Miller's most-performed pay, "The Crucible" on Broadway staring, among others, Saoise Ronan of "Brooklyn" fame.

Miller wrote the play, about the 1692-93 Salem witch trials, in 1953 as an allegory of McCarthyism, an anti-communist witch hunt then in full flood. Intellectuals, particularly in the performing arts, were a prominent target and, indeed, Miller himself was eventually called up before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). While he told the panel about his own former leftist activities, he refused to name others who had been involved and was convicted of contempt of Congress, a conviction that was overturned a couple of years later.

Broadway and ballet choreographer Jerome Robbins ("West Side Story"), called before HUAC in 1950, had likewise initially refused to name names -- for three years in fact -- but when his homosexuality appeared at risk of public disclosure, he reversed course and named several persons -- a playwright, a filmmaker, a dance critic and others. As a result, he wasn't blacklisted and his career continued unfettered.

(The New York City Ballet is currently performing an "All Robbins" program that includes the shorter ballet version of "West Side Story").

I mention these incidents for a couple of reasons.

First, one of the themes of "The Crucible" is that in witch-hunt ridden Massachusetts, it was often necessary to publically condemn the alleged wrongdoings of others to protect one's own standing in society. Even when one believes such demands are wrong, they can be difficult to resist when one is personally compromised.

Thus Robbins felt forced to cave in because his behavior was at odds with prevailing attitudes toward homosexuality. And in Miller's play, the chief protagonist, a farmer named John Proctor, faces problems resisting demands he believes to be wrong because he has had an affair with his family's young female servant, Abigail Williams (played by Ms. Ronan in the current Broadway production).

Second, demands that people name names in order to save themselves are still very much with us: to wit, the CIA's waterboarding of war-against-terrorism prisoners.

In both cases, there are strong incentives to say things that are untrue.

While convoluted to the point of being somewhat confusing at times, Miller's play still has a relevant message to deliver.

(By the way, if you haven't seem the film "Brooklyn," or better yet, read the book, I highly recommend both of them.)