A grand and tender tribute to PNB duo

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

By R.M. CAMPBELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER DANCE CRITIC

After nearly 50 tributes from sons, colleagues and dancers, excerpts from some 10 ballets and a grand procession of all the dancers and ballet masters in Pacific Northwest Ballet, plus a handful of students from the school, Kent Stowell and Francia Russell arrived on stage to acknowledge the standing ovation Sunday night at McCaw Hall.

PHOTO GALLERY

View photos from the PNB tribute to Kent Stowell and Francia Russell at McCaw Hall.

Then, the flowers arrived -- some thrown onto the stage and others presented to the couple by dancers and their three children -- kisses were exchanged and silver confetti floated down from the fly loft. Russell made a deep curtsy and Stowell a bow of the head to the dancers on stage, turned to bow to the audience and once again looked back to the dancers -- the men dressed in black and white and the women in white tutus. The moment was a poignant one, and the couple, retiring after nearly three decades as co-artistic directors of PNB, were clearly moved. At the very end, Stowell and Russell took a curtain call alone, their arms filled with flowers, and the curtain fell.

The handsomely choreographed tribute, which ran a full two hours with no intermission, was full of tender moments. As chairman of the PNB Foundation and past chair of the PNB board of trustees, Susan Brotman, who with her husband, Jeffrey, funded the night, gave the evening a stylish and eloquent beginning with her front-of-curtain speech. She was flanked by two of the younger students at the PNB School, which Russell ran with care and dedication, who also spoke.

Only the works of three choreographers were performed: Stowell, of course; George Balanchine, who encouraged the company from its earliest days, and eldest son Christopher Stowell, artistic director of Oregon Ballet Theatre.

Christopher Stowell's work, choreographed for the tribute, was a wonderful potpourri of movement employing 29 dancers and six students in costumes from different Stowell ballets. The differences in tone and effect were amusing.

A procession of a handful of students and the entire company, called a "grand defile" in Paris, closed the performance. It was an extraordinary demonstration, as dancers arrived, in groups and alone, concluding with principal dancer Patricia Barker, of the amplitude and majesty of the art form and those who practice it.

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