"Could you please take off those earrings? They're distracting."
Those were the first words Pat Graney spoke directly to me 20 years ago. At the time I belonged to a local dance company called Danceworks Northwest, and its director, JoAnna Mendl Shaw, had commissioned Pat to set a short piece titled "Table" on the seven of us.
Tattoo, the latest work by Seattle-based dance maker Pat Graney, presents a series of vignettes that reflect on memory and women’s roles in cultures both primitive and contemporary. However, according to the choreographer, it’s best not to try and make sense of it all. Instead she suggests approaching the piece "as if you’re going into a gallery of images and just surrender to that experience. If you’re trying to figure out what each section means, I think you’ll get frustrated."
Tattoos as markings or as insistent beats -- in either case, attention-getting patterns -- informed the latest offering the Pat Graney Company brought from Seattle. Tattoo followed the more personal Faith and Sleep, seen here in previous years. Like anthropological inquiry, but with wily theatrical effects, the full-evening work Saturday at the Colony Theater delved into human connections throughout history.
At On the Boards Pat Graney will revive "Sleep (Making peace with the angels)," Jan. 28-30.
Local dance enthusiasts have something to look forward to this weekend.On the Boards, which has been bringing Seattle great dance this season (Bloolips, Kumiko Kumoto), will present their crowning achievement of the year this weekend at the Moore Theatre: Pat Graney's "Sleep (making peace with the angels)."For those not in the know, Pat Graney is the most nationally-acclaimed contemporary choreographer working in our city. While not a hometown girl in the strictest sense (Graney is originally from Florida and got her dance BA at the University of Arizona), it has been a great blessing that she chose Seattle as her home and that she has remained here with her company in spite of national and international success.
"It's so hard to talk about dreams - people think it's just this crazy women's thing," says choreographer Pat Graney.
She's sitting in a local coffee shop, composed and alert, sipping tea. On this day the world premiere of "Sleep (making peace with the angels)," her first full-evening dance theater work in four years, is still two weeks off (it opens Thursday).
$25,000 for Sleep (MAP 1995) by choreographer Pat Graney, composer Martin Swan, ceramic artist/designer Marilyn Lysohir, lighting designer Jeff Bickford and costume/fabric designer Frances Kenny.
Dance inspired by the lush nudes of Michelangelo and Caravaggio and the dreamy maidens of Maxfield Parrish enlivens the Washington Hall Performance Gallery, today through Saturday, as Pat Graney Dance Company reprises its nationally acclaimed "Faith."
