Above: Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Sarah Ricard Orza photographed by Angela Sterling.
WHERE SNOWFLAKES DANCE AND SWEAR is a unique book by Stephen Manes which chronicles a season at Pacific Northwest Ballet from an insider's viewpoint. What sets his book apart from other 'insider' books is that Mr. Manes had virtually no prior connection to the world of ballet - aside from attending some performances with his wife - prior to being given instant and virtually all-encompassing access to the inner workings of a major ballet company. PNB's Peter Boal literally threw open every door for the author during the Company's 2007-2008 season. A writer about computer technology and an avid baseball fan, Mr. Manes suddenly found himself privy to the Company's rehearsals, casting decisions, financial pow-wows, marketing strategies, costume fittings, union rules, and to the various aches and pains of professional ballet dancers on a daily basis. His book sets out with one big question: "How does ballet happen?"
When I received this long (800+ pages) and physically heavy book in the mail and cracked it open, it seemed daunting. I dove in, and right from the start was taken with the writer's factual yet imaginative style and his way of making us think about aspects of the realm of ballet that we'd possibly never thought about before. It did take me a long time to finish the book, in part because I do most of my reading in the bathtub and the book was hard to manage in water up to my neck. But I persevered, in part because dancers I love keep cropping up in the pages: Peter Boal (of course), Miranda Weese (now retired), Carla Korbes, Seth Orza and his wife Sarah Ricard Orza were each at one time dancing at New York City Ballet where I became attached to them as dancers and as personalities. Another NYCB favorite, William Lin-Yee, was just coming into the PNB Company when the author's task was winding down.
It is in fact the biographical paragraphs about individual dancers that I found most interesting: finding out what makes beautiful dancers like Carrie Imler and Lucien Postlewaite tick is far more fascinating here than in a dry Playbill bio. Dance for me is all about dancers, and I loved finding out things about them - for example, the connection between Carla Korbes and Alexandra Danilova - that enhanced my admiration.
As in any long book, even about a subject that engrosses, certain topics will be more interesting than others. I read avidly about the season's 'big thing': the production of Jean-Christophe Maillot's ROMEO ET JULIETTE which PNB were bringing into their repertoire. In the pages dealing with this production, all the internal workings of the Company are exposed and discussed in detail by Mr. Manes, from how much things cost to technical aspects of lighting as costuming. We also see how how outside stagers - in this case sent from Maillot's Monte Carlo - and PNB's home team find common ground to get the prodution onto the stage. For ROMEO, the stagers took a different view of casting than the resident artistic administration; this resulted in having to tell certain principal ballerinas who were assumed to viable candidates for Juliet that they would instead be cast as the Nurse. Ironically, when performance time came, illness and injury among the Company's women resulted in the lovely principal ballerina Noelani Pantastico dancing all the performances of Juliet; in a further irony, Noelani left PNB at the end of the season and joined Maillot's Ballets de Monte Carlo.
I found myself glossing over the chapters dealing with choreographers whose work I don't really relate to. I simply found myself not caring about their work methods or their personalities; it's possible that reading more about them might have altered my view of their work...possible, but highly unlikely.
Far more interesting to me were the pages detailing such things as orchestral auditions or how the children to perform in NUTCRACKER are selected and groomed. Peter Boal is seemingly everywhere, from board meetings to intense private coaching sessions where he draws upon his experience as a great danseur to pass on valuable tips to his Company members.
By the end, the author has pretty much answered his own question: "How does ballet happen?" It happens when talented and passionate people in every field of the creative process dedicate themselves to the finished product. But it's the dancers at the top of this pyramid who have the ultimate responsibility for the success of a given programme. And it's the pages and pages about the dancers as individuals and as a collective that make Mr. Manes' book a necessity for balletomanes worldwide.
