Victoria Birkinshaw/Stuff
Gettin the tutus ready for take off: Jess Taunt, left, Paul Thomson, Jemima Scott, Patricia Barker, Paul Mathews and Mayu Tanigaito.
As the Royal New Zealand Ballet gears up for a nationwide tour, Sarah Catherall goes behind the scenes in Wellington and talks to some of the main players – both onstage and off. The stage manager
Paul Thomson has worked at the Royal New Zealand Ballet for 2½ years. I’m like the old fuddy duddy here, especially among the younger dancers. I’m the one who is the “no’’ guy – no water on stage, no food on stage, take your earphones out. I didn’t know a huge lot about ballet before I started here but I really enjoy watching it, especially the modern stuff. I have to know every production intimately. I’m thinking, “Who is coming on when, who is exiting?” – you have to know every piece as much as the dancers do but in a totally different way. We don’t need to know the dance moves, but we need to know
← Use Arrow Keys →
Before we explain why Ashton Edwards is such a groundbreaking ballet dancer, give us a second to define some ballet terminology. You ve probably heard the phrase on pointe, which refers to the style of ballet in which dancers support all their weight on the tips of their toes. It s also a style we see performed almost exclusively by women dancers.
But Edwards, who is gender-fluid, is currently training on pointe as a student at Seattle s Pacific Northwest Ballet. That s a big deal, because training on pointe, and ballet dancing in general, is usually very binary, Edwards explained in an interview with K5 News in Seattle. Men have their own separate training for jumps and turns. For men to be on pointe at a professional ballet school right now, hasn t really happened.
The dining room at Canlis is a marvel of mid-20th-century modernist architecture, all pitched angles and Frank Lloyd Wright aesthetics. With sweeping views of Lake Union and the Cascades, the upscale Queen Anne restaurant has been a destination for anniversaries, birthdays, and other celebrations since it opened 70 years ago. Throughout the decades, the James Beard Award winner has become known for its impeccable service and elevated atmosphere that is refined without being too stuffy.
But almost a full year into a deadly pandemic, Canlis sits mostly empty. Through 2020 and early 2021, the restaurant has tried out different iterations of service, including transformations into a burger drive-thru, a drive-in movie theater, and an outdoor crab boil. In the fall, it became a makeshift studio for YouTube cooking classes and other instructional videos as part of an effort called Canlis Community College. Online clips weren’t limited to the culinary world: Stylists from Rudy’s Barber
Listen • 5:32
Ashton Edwards is an 18-year-old ballet student with the Pacific Northwest Ballet s elite Professional Division in Seattle. He s been studying classical ballet since age four.
The way that ballet dancer Ashton Edwards leaps through the air is pure art. The fact that he does it in pointe shoes is a rare feat.
Ballet traditionally has very divided roles for men and women. Men need power to lift their female partners. Women are prized for their delicate precision and the ability to seemingly defy gravity.
But ideas about ballet are changing.
Ashton Edwards is an 18-year-old ballet student with the Pacific Northwest Ballet s elite Professional Division in Seattle. He has been studying classical ballet since he was 4 but always in male roles.
In a tough year, movies brought comfort
Watching favorites softened loneliness of virus’s isolation By Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times
Published: January 3, 2021, 6:30am
Share: Adele Haenel, left, and Noemie Merlant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a slow-burn masterpiece that was perhaps Seattle Times movie critic Moira Macdonald s favorite film of the year. (MK2 Films)
If 2020 were a movie, it would be one of two things: so terrible nobody could sit through it, or strangely, morbidly fascinating, even as we all muttered that clearly the screenwriters had quite the overactive imaginations.
It hasn’t been a normal year now there’s an understatement for you and lots of normal things have vanished, at least for now. One of those things is my annual list of 10 favorite movies of the year. With pandemic restrictions devastating the local arts scene, and with Seattle cinemas closed since March (some of them reopened in October, only to close again i