Dance Review - Jewels (Pacific Northwest Ballet)

Dance Review – Jewels
Presented By: Pacific Northwest Ballet - Seattle, WA
Show Run: September 26 - October 5, 2025
Date Reviewed: Friday, September 26, 2025
Run Time: Two hours and 10 minutes (inclusive of two 20 minute intermissions)
Reviewed By: Tucker Cholvin 

As the curtain rose on Friday night at McCaw Hall, Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) began its 53rd season in familiar territory: George Balanchine’s Jewels. PNB has returned to Jewels repeatedly since first staging it in 2006. And for good reason: in Jewels, PNB delivers elegance, grandeur, and dancers in excellent form.

Jewels’ persistence at both PNB and more broadly in American dance owes something to the fact that it is pretty. Featuring tutus, sparkling gems, and a large ensemble cast, it offers audiences who might be more familiar with classic storybook productions like The Nutcracker and Swan Lake a comfortable entry point to contemporary ballet. (Each time the curtain rose on Friday night, the audience excitedly cooed at their first glimpse of the costumes).

But when Jewels premiered in 1967, it must have felt revolutionary. Jewels marked the ‘first full-length plotless ballet,’ with no narrative to back it up. “It is simply a ballet about music and dancing,” Clive Barnes wrote after its premiere in The New York Times. “And what dancing it is!” he added.

Its three acts showcase different styles of ballet. Emeralds highlights the grace of French ballet; Rubies a showcase of showy, glitzy America; and Diamonds an homage to Russian ballet, where Balanchine began his career. Balanchine also designed these pieces as vehicles for the extraordinarily talented dancers that he worked with at the New York City Ballet (NYCB) of the 1960s. PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal has put them to excellent use for many of the dancers here.

In Emeralds, both Elizabeth Murphy and Amanda Morgan deserve commendation for embodying the piece’s refinement. I was captivated by the way Murphy uses her hands to capture the expression and delicate emotions of the dance. This mastery of detail set the tone for the whole evening. Similarly, I loved Morgan’s dancing in the same piece. There’s a moment where, on pointe, she lifts her arms with the jerky, fixed movements of a clock, and then suddenly she melts, completely fluid, into the arms of her partner. Morgan renders the transition so effortlessly beautiful; it is a moment I can’t forget from the performance.

Morgan played double duty on Friday, dancing again in Rubies, whose mood is at times coquettish and spritely, and sometimes feels like cabaret. For Morgan, it’s an opportunity to show off her range. In contrast with fifteen minutes before, here she dances with flexed feet, swinging hips, in movements that seem to evoke everything from Broadway to skipping rope. Rubies is so playful; at one moment, the male corps de ballet dancers chase Jonathan Batista around the stage. But I can’t stop thinking about Angelica Generosa in this piece. Her facial expressions pivot as quickly as she does from comedy to passion to delight; here, she is as much an actress or a comedian, as a dancer. Balanchine referred this part as a “showgirl” when training his dancers for the premiere; is full of that energy, and it is so fun to watch.

In Diamonds, PNB closes the piece with romance and splendor. On Friday, it also marked the beginning of a very long goodbye, as principal dancer Lucien Postlewaite begins his last season before retiring from dance. On stage, he danced with the control and winsome charm that has made him an audience favorite since he returned to PNB in 2017. (He returns to the role in the October 4 matinee.)

Including and beyond Postlewaite, all of Jewels showcases what a deep bench of talent PNB enjoys right now. And twenty years into Boal’s tenure as artistic director at the company, it is enjoyable to see a company that does Balanchine so well, right here in Seattle. Jewels sets a high bar that hopefully the rest of PNB’s season will rise to. If so, we’re in for a treat.

George Balanchine’s Jewels, presented by Pacific Northwest Ballet, runs on stage at McCaw Hall in Seattle through October 5. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.pnb.org/.

Photo credit: Angela Sterling