In “the Upper Room”, the Indelible Human Spirit Gleams

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Leta Biasucci and Lucien Postlewaite (center) with corps de ballet dancers (L-R) Destiny Wimpye and Genevieve Waldorf in Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. Photo © Angela Sterling.

“A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.”

-Twyla Tharp

Last June, choreographer Rena Butler asked a potent question that has echoed ever since. “What do we need a ballet for?” In Pacific Northwest Ballet’s second repertory program of the season, each piece in the triple bill answers this question differently. A technology-driven world premiere, a tender grief-stricken work for three, and a bold masterpiece from the ‘80s don’t seem like they should fit together, and yet, they do, cohesively flickering with humanity.

Pacific Northwest Ballet has long been committed to fostering the creation of new works. Programs like NEXT STEP and New Voices nurture the next generation of choreographers, and it’s no wonder that in a company where choreographic talent is so generously cultivated, these voices often require a larger stage in due time. In past years, NEXT STEP has allowed Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan to demonstrate their capacity to create deeply meaningful work, and in their first piece for the company, their vision for the role of art in today's world is clear.

Art has the power to confirm. In an era where technological advances threaten both human artistry and humanity as a whole, there is something comforting about seeing this threat reflected in a piece of art. At a time when self-driving vehicles have just been released onto the streets of Seattle, AfterTime explores the consequences of technical advances amid an apocalyptic world. From its first eerie, dissonant tones, it is a world far removed from what typically awaits us behind the curtain. 

The orchestra’s tune goes sour, and there, before a concealed stage, two muddled, ragged, human forms crawl from the orchestra pit. There is something archaic and animalistic about their renderings: their drawn-out deliberation, faces temporarily hidden by cloth, the way they cling to connection as though they have lost all else. Having found their way through a hole in the curtain, their human forms emerge from this muddle, and moments later, so does our entire human existence.

AfterTime is strengthened and characterized by its interdisciplinary endeavors, and nowhere is this clearer than when the two protagonists come to a still to watch the projection that plays above them in the endless dark. Technology rarely finds its place within the world of ballet, yet the role it plays in AfterTime is crucial. It shows us a picture of our world, encompassing industry, science, traditional values, and a reckoning of how we arrived at our current state. There is something greatly nostalgic, deeply sad, and beautiful about this video. In vintage film, it proclaims all that we have lost, or will lose, due to technical advances. It shows us the loss of humanity.

Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Leah Terada and corps de ballet dancer Joh Morrill in the world premiere of Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan’s AfterTime. Photo © Angela Sterling.

While the protagonists are barefoot, grounded to the reality of the earth, many of the dancers who emerge as part of “the system” use pointework as a means to elevated precision. Their abrupt, angular fragmentations of contained physicality and one-dimensionality remind us that dance is, at its root, a soul pursuit. The world of AfterTime is often abrasive, drenched in digital sound, and yet, when this artificial noise gives way to the pulsing heart of the orchestra, the effect is overwhelming. One can’t help but feel immense gratitude for the swell of beauty that floods from the orchestra pit; ephemeral and genuine in a way that technology at its finest will never be able to replicate. 

Though there are many ways to interpret what unfolds within AfterTime, the expression of loss that fills its final moments is rich with the storytelling capacities of its artists. Leah Terada returns to the stage after more than a year with a burning sincerity. Her magnificent portrayal of ache ringing from each quivering fingertip is filled with confliction and restraint, and an urgency to displace the air around her with pleading limbs.

Joh Morrill, far too often overlooked by choreographers, is always raging with necessity, deeply present in the ever-greater reach of his wildly emotive being. AfterTime gifts Morrill the opportunity to engulf the stage with boundless drive, to grapple and despair before us; a tremendously moving, soulful form in the dusk.

On Saturday evening, Malena Ani’s guttural regret surging through her, and Clara Ruf Maldonado’s ability to contort her body to emote the unspeakable limits of expression, showed them both as artists of vast still-unexplored range.

The dystopian, inhuman world of AfterTime would at times be easy to brush off, but each time that it fell before my eyes, the seed of truth within it burned increasingly stronger. In our own world today, such a threat is so real that we cannot brush off the foreboding warnings this work presents. If anything, AfterTime reminds us just how desperately we must cling to truly human artistic visions.

At the core of the program, The Window encompasses more depth of feeling than should reasonably fit within twenty-five minutes. In 2023, Dani Rowe envisioned a one-act ballet based on the true account of a woman who watched her neighbor’s life unfold into tragedy, and it returns to PNB’s stage with haunting potency. The Window reveals Rowe as a storyteller of expert craftsmanship, one who is able to thread the needle of truth with visceral precision. It is a work of literary construction, formed of vignettes and introspective choreography, and Rowe spins the story like a novelist, letting gesture replace lingering lines of prose, and haunting metaphors echo in the dark. 

 Two years ago, it struck me as an ingenious creation, one that sneaks into your heart rather quickly, and its return is startling in its articulation. The Window is minimalistic in design, yet there in the ebony web, lies an entire world. It is an insular affair, a story for three within rooms built of nothing but Reed Nakayama’s squares of light. Upon such a simple canvas, and clothed in the soft-edged folds of Emma Kingsbury’s timeless costumes, the intricacies of character simply sing. One of Rowe’s greatest gifts as a choreographer is how rapidly and intricately she builds character. The Window is only twenty-five minutes long, and yet, by the end, we’ve known these people deeply and intimately. 

Rowe’s nuanced brilliance pours through in the moments when she taps into a nerve we can’t quite explain. Such as when The Watcher begins, quite suddenly, to mimic one half of the duet seen through her window, falling into their rich embrace in a world of her own. Or when the golden days have already gone, and The Woman becomes–for one brief breath–a frozen doll, lifted weightless in his arms before flooding back to life when she hits the ground.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Elizabeth Murphy in Dani Rowe’s The Window. , Photo © Angela Sterling.

In a puddle of dim light, The Window’s prologue finds a man drawn to the heavens, chest pulled as if upon a string, while Shannon Rugani’s cinematic score creeps along with caution of what lies ahead. His hands trace where his earthly body once lay upon the ground, and then he is gone, vanished into nothing.

A newly born square of light reveals a neighboring room, where we find The Watcher, a restless, conflicted individual who brims with intensity. Rugani sets her in motion, and Rowe reveals her to us in nimble accentuations of character. In the intricate whir of her twisted, tangled, hurried steps, in the inner confliction that pulls her in all directions at once, in the ache that coils from her rippled center, we cannot help but see every tribulation. She’s full of racing thoughts, her frustrations declared in bouts of might and defiance, a flurry of black velvet whirling through the dark expanse.

The Watcher was a defining debut for Melisa Guilliams in 2023, one which showed her ability to give herself completely to the stark expressivity of this deep-feeling neighbor who can’t help but peer. Her soft shaping of these fractured expressions, and the intentionality with which she forms the gestures of her character–a longing reach and a turmoiled contraction– are a startling sight. When I think of The Watcher, I will always think of The Window’s first one, the one who weaves through her most intimate proclamations as though they are her own.

From the moment The Woman and The Man emerge from the shadows to burst into their carefree youth, the world is full of possibilities. Rowe’s ability to depict the gestures of reality with a poet’s touch lets etchings of physical articulations gleam with palpable truth. Intricately devised steps burst forth as expressions of these souls, and Elizabeth Murphy and Christopher D’Ariano fall through rounded curves of unfolding passions with their hearts bared, a breathless swirl of fluidity.

The ordinary wonders that fill even those dark days are a thing of beauty: sitting at a table, eye to eye; a hand drawn desperately to her cheek as if they might freeze the moment; a building crescendo of a chassé that somehow beams with hope; their visceral connection echoing each full swell of Rugani’s score. In his slumping body and her grief-stricken one, Rowe’s outward manifestation of loss is immaculately chiseled, intensely and remarkably real.

When their eager rhythm comes to a still, light carries the story forward. Shadows pass across the room, day after day, and there they lie, frozen. The unrest and agony that boil out of Murphy in the aftermath, as a stiff white shirt becomes her companion through grief, is an arresting vision of artistry. Even when pounding the earth in disbelief, each breath is still somehow steeped in astonishing beauty.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a cast known for their exquisite Romeo and Juliets should bring this grief and love-filled work to life with such honest intention, and yet, during Saturday’s matinee, we were left shell-shocked regardless. Debuts for Lucien Postlewaite and Angelica Generosa, and a return to the role of The Watcher for Clara Ruf Maldonado, were etched with such realism that audible proof of those deeply affected rang all around.

In The Window, Clara Ruf Maldonado is carved from ache and desire. A singularly captivating figure in the dark, she moves as though emotion attempts to claw its way out of her. Her Watcher is as light as air, and youthful in a way that makes us feel for her immediately. Quiet determination marks her intrinsic intention, and the force that overtakes her in the wake of such loss leaves her desperate breath hanging in the dark, haunting.

On Saturday, I could have sworn that it was a full-length ballet unfolding before us, for Angelica Generosa and Lucien Postlewaite approach it with the same willingness to leave it all there upon the stage. Not a single detail is left untouched. They take their time with the small wonders until they expand into an all-consuming, overwhelm of beauty. Postlewaite’s ease-filled deliberation, and Generosa’s delight in each soft curl make The Window intimately their own creation. In the blessings of their early days, their wide-eyed innocence is a sight of such pure youth that we forget what will soon unravel in their hands. 

But, when the golden days have fallen, oh, the fear that overcomes their eyes. There is nothing to do but ache with them as they coil through soul-wrenching depictions of life’s most helpless moments. In Generosa’s masterful wild release of desperation, I could not help but see a shadow of her Juliet, for she finds deep-rooted tensions and frictions against her own reality that are simply heartbreaking in their raw essence. How an arabesque can extend emotion is still a mystery, yet there it was, an exquisite reach towards heaven, somehow grief-stricken in its own gesture.

To watch them wrestle with fate in the cold light leaves nothing in the world remaining save for their shared breath and our still, awe-struck ones. Just the silhouette of Generosa’s body as she left the stage–emptied by it all–was a virtuosity in itself.

Twyla Tharp’s 1986 masterpiece, In the Upper Room, is considered to be one of the most iconic works of the 20th century, and it’s not hard to see why. Tharp takes the dance forms at her disposal and forms an entirely new world, mixing influences of ballet, modern, aerobics, acrobatics, jogging, jazz, and hip hop until they blur together in a physical tour de force. The cast of thirteen, split into “stompers” in sneakers and “ballet people” in pointe and flat shoes, move endlessly through Tharp’s daring endeavors, until it seems the vibrantly optimistic energy they conjure might never come to a still.

Incessantly bright and hypnotic, In the Upper Room is a piece of vast ambition and scope. It is an emporium of style and vim, a long-winded declaration of freedom that begins so contained, yet in time, is overtaken by its dancers' vigor. Tharp is in her element, daring to throw dancers through the physical test of a lifetime while making it look like nothing but a bold reckoning of the unrestrained human spirit. 

Philip Glass’ relentless score is the lifeblood of In the Upper Room. Building to invigorating heights, and falling to peace, only to climb once more, he pushes dancers to absurd tests of endurance. Twyla Tharp once said that she thinks of music “as fuel, its spectrum of energy governed by tempi, volume, and heart,” and while she follows Glass’ lead, she often lays her own rhythm juxtaposed upon his steady one.

This is particularly true near the beginning, as the “stompers” begin a monotonous repetition upstage. In rather pedestrian motions that fall into classical refinement with the ease of a breath, they move as if going about their daily work. These first few minutes are contained, well-tempered even, as though these same dancers won’t soon, in a half hour’s time, be overtaking the stage with unstoppable, raging power.

Arlene Croce once called In the Upper Room “Tharp’s Olympiad”, and indeed, Glass’ often frenetic pace forms nearly alarming determination amongst the dancers. Their eyes gleam with the endeavor before them, a focus that makes the entire forty minutes unfold in a daze of flow state. As they move through Tharp’s blindingly bright mechanisms, their pure exhilaration and adrenaline evaporate out into the audience as an addictive substance in itself. The stakes are endlessly high, for no other reason than that the music declares it a necessity. 

Smile-inducing shenanigans of human creativity and endurance are a hallmark characteristic of In the Upper Room. With loose-flung limbs and stretched steps, intricate direction changes, a loftiness in their billowing triumphs, and a speed of dizzying exuberance, these forty minutes are packed as tightly as they could be. As intensity builds, layers are shed and they fall unapologetically into the deep rhythm encircling them, bursting into a mystifying freedom that only Tharp could have engineered.

Pacific Northwest Ballet company dancers in Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. . Photo © Angela Sterling.

Not until they were soaring across the stage as the perfectly synched “bomb squad” did I realize how perfectly aligned Clara Ruf Maldonado and Yuki Takahashi’s gifts of razor-sharp, spritely nimbleness are. Their precision through Glass’ ferocious speed is hard to comprehend, for they move faster than the eye can behold with effervescent attack. Never gone from the stage for long, their contagious thrill is a feat of such clean, vivacious unison that it doesn’t seem physically possible. Yet there they were, bursting with rapturous glee night after night.

Likewise, watching Noah Martzall and Joh Morrill give into the grandiose momentum of their own making had me shaking my head in disbelief. Seeing both of them go the extra mile is no surprise, for they possess boundless aptitude to carve through rhythm with wild abandon. Their intensity and time-of-their-lives enthusiasm is one of the crowning joys of In the Upper Room.

Lucien Postlewaite and Leta Biasucci arrive from some other pristine world with a grace that refuses to hide beneath voluminous pin-stipes. It’s impossible not to see everything Postlewaite does these days with a tinge of nostalgia, yet in the Upper Room, as he hung suspended with airborne ease, and roared across the expansive stage, it seemed impossible to think that such a powerhouse of devotion could ever come to a still.

A few more honorable mentions: Destiny Wimpye’s vibrant exuberance catching a well-earned moment in the sun, Melisa Guilliams attacking every glimmer of athletic drive with startling determination in her eyes, and Dylan Calahan, who always moves with such endearing exactitude, falling into dizzying turns of incomprehensible velocity.

While it is a work of never-ending jubilation, in the eighth section, they slip softly into the spell of a blue haze. Madison Rayn Abeo enters that bittersweet repose as though bathed in a dream, brushing the sweet earth like a heavenly prayer, filled with serenity. As scarlet hues sail through cerulean depths, the momentum they’ve built is temporarily suspended in a world of blue light falling upon poetic limbs, a scene so wrought with delicate beauty that surely our own breath could disturb their ethereal longing.

In the finale, Tharp pushes full throttle, building to ecstasy as dancers consume space with hungry lungs, bewilderingly full of verve and enthusiasm for this thing we call life. Here, it’s clear to see why Tharp chose the title In the Upper Room. Forty minutes after the curtain first rose upon this fog-filled palace, they exist upon a vastly different plane, and by some miracle, we have ascended with them. During opening weekend, this brilliant cast of thirteen was put through the ringer, performing back-to-back shows all weekend long, and yet, there they were on Saturday night, still dancing like there was no tomorrow. 

By the end, we mere mortals can only shake our heads in astonishment. It seems as though we might go on in this haze forever, and oh, wouldn’t that be a thrill!

In the Upper Room runs through November 16th at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and streams November 20th-24th for digital subscribers.