Stage Review - In the Upper Room (Pacific Northwest Ballet)
Stage Review - In the Upper Room
Presented By: Pacific Northwest Ballet - Seattle, WA
Show Run: November 07 - November 16, 2025
Date Reviewed: Friday, November 07, 2025 (Opening Night)
Run Time: 2 Hours, 20 Minutes (inclusive of two 20-minute intermissions)
Reviewed By: Tucker Cholvin
This year, I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of time I spend on my phone. I’ve noticed that any time I am on the bus, waiting for a traffic light, or generally at loose ends, I find myself reaching for it and scrolling. It’s a habit I don’t love, so I’ve been trying to keep my usage low. Retooling my relationship with my phone has led me to think about my broader relationship with technology.
So I was excited for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s new production, which leads with a world premiere, AfterTime, which “explores the dangers of pursuing digital systems designed to outlast us,” and “sacrificing ourselves for permanence in an inherently ephemeral world.” The work comes from two PNB dancers – Amanda Morgan and Christopher D’Ariano – collaborating as choreographers.
The work is arresting from the start, as two dancers climb out of the orchestra pit and onto the stage. Dressed in ragged clothes that would not have looked out of place on Ewoks in Star Wars,they discover the world of AfterTime. Here, dancers dressed like they are ready for a lightcycle race in Tron dance in robotic, gridlike sequences. One of the outsiders enters their digitalworld; the other remains outside of it. In their dances, we see that life in AfterTime is one of rigid conformity, and that deviation is punished.
Every aspect of this production is stimulating, immersive, captivating. The attention-grabbing colors, sounds and visuals that make our phones so addictive are all here, too. The score composed by Fiona Stocks-Lyon and Thomas Nickell for the piece is also a standout. It toggles from percussive, digitalsoundscapes to highly acoustic, instrumental sections as the action flows in and out of the digital world onstage. It's wrapped in a cocoon of multimedia projections, mimicking the screens surrounding us in real life.
But as this multi sensory whirlwind played out, I found my attention slipping away from the dance to everything else: the videos, the storyline, the score. Maybe that’s exactly what D’Ariano and Morgan had in mind: to overwhelm us in the same way that technology seems to be overwhelming our society more each day. When we spilled out into the lobby at intermission, we argued about the narrative, what the artists want to say about technology, whether we agree with that – but the dancing itself hardly figured into our conversation. All the same, the piece is an ambitious, thought-provoking work by a talented creative team, and PNB should be applauded for investing the resources to bring it to life.
The rest of PNB’s program – The Window, choreographed by Danielle Rowe, and In the Upper Room, a Twyla Tharp classic – bring dance to the center. Both pieces are rich with emotion, andleave more open to interpretation. The Window explores love, loss, envy, as well as the nature of being a witness, in a tight timeframe. But the piece’s portrayal of mourning and grief hits hardest, and had many crying as the curtain came down.
In the Upper Room ends the program on a note of true delight. In contrast with the other pieces, it is not driven by narrative, but instead by emotion and energy. It is long– about 40 minutes long – but of all the pieces, I found it the most absorbing. Tharp’s choreography requires incredible athleticism and grace, switching quickly from jumps and lifts to delicate, precise steps. Set to music by Philip Glass, every dancer also must hit marksprecisely in unison for the piece to have its greatest visual effect. At times in Friday’s performance, this felt uneven. Of the cast, Christopher D’Ariano, Luther DeMyer and Noah Martzall were the most tightly in synch – and some of the hardest working in the piece. Overall, the piece is mesmerizing and transporting.
Taken together, the program works well. PNB’s commitment to developing new works and encouraging its dancers to expandinto choreography is reliably the most exciting and dynamic part of any season. This production is no exception, and pairing these new works with a Tharp classic to anchor the evening makes for a great night.
The Pacific Northwest Ballet production of In the Upper Room runs on stage at McCaw Hall through November 19. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.pnb.org/.
Photo credit: Angela Sterling
