By Marcie Sillman Pacific Northwest Ballet’s new season, opening later this month, will be the first in more than two decades without longtime principal Lesley Rausch. The ballerina was acclaimed for nuanced performances in everything from Swan Lake to Ulysses Dove’s very contemporary Red Angels. She will be missed, but Rausch’s retirement is an inflection
By Marcie Sillman When Kent Stowell and Francia Russell arrived in Seattle in 1977 to take the reins of a five-year old ballet company, they had one big goal: “We wanted to make a company and a school that we would be proud to be part of as dancers,” Russell recalls. Forty-five years later, the
Pacific Northwest Ballet Jean-Christophe Maillot / Cendrillon by Tessa Perkins Deneault The Cinderella story remains a common trope in popular culture and art. In 2016, San Francisco Ballet performed Christopher Wheeldon’s version and the National Ballet of Canada performed James Kudelka’s, to name just two notable dance productions. And, in February of this year, Seattle’s