'Divertimento' reviews 'Jardi Tancat' reviews Pacific NorthWest 'Fearful Symmetries' reviews 'Fearful Symmetries' reviews Barker in reviews recent Pacific NorthWest reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

To begin with in George Balanchine's Divertimento 15 normally a hugely enjoyable romp through the Russian born choreographer's tongue in cheek Yankee spin on Russian Imperial classicism. Foot in mouth was the fitting phrase last week for the group of dancers with wobbly legged women substituting high kicks for high art, and whose three male leads simply couldn't jump while replacing a classical dancer's noble walk with a grimly determined mince. When the sexes danced together the women, ignoring their partners, gushed to the audience while the men just gushed. Scant reverence was given to the simple steps that Balanchine so delicately weaves into Mozart's filigree score, just an off hand complacency shockingly out of place in front of one of the world's most discerning dance audiences.

Pap is defined by Chamber's 20thC Dictionary as soft food for infants and Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato's particular brand is spreading across the international dance world like a disease infecting, thanks to new director Ross Stretton, our own Royal Ballet. But even Duato's brief essay in juvenile angst, Jardi Tancat, was beyond the range of PNB. Mind you the weight of Duato's contrived choreographic cliché's bereft of all recognisable humanity and breath of real life have defeated better dancers than these. A quoted line in the programme from an accompanying song puts it all in perspective - And You, Oh Lord, You gave us wind .

The spectacular Le Corsaire Pas de Trois, usually stops the show and Casey Herd's gutsy attack on the virtuoso male solos was a stab in the right direction. But the black curtains and shaky chandeliers did little to highlight Patricia Barker as she substituted true grit for artistic soul in the ballerina role. However Stanko Milov's truck driver approach to the Romantic Hero, though gross, was refreshing at this point in a long evening but time warped out of all recognition as the programme ended with Peter Martins's Fearful Symmetries.

A vermilion back wall and long black side curtains gave a movie sound stage feel to the action and at first the dancers raced and leaped across the stage covering space as they responded to composer John Adams's pulsing tempi. But the stage patterns were endlessly repeated, the dancers remained reactive puppets contributing nothing to the artistic sum of the piece and the ultimate result was an aching aimlessness. Kent Stowell and Francia Russell have been Pacific Northwest Ballet's artistic directors for almost 25 years. It is clearly time for a change.