PNB Principal Dancer Kaori Nakamura to Retire this Year
One of PNB’s finest leaves the flock
By Seattle Mag May 13, 2014
This article originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of Seattle magazine.
!–paging_filter–pShe’s channeled a sleepy princess, a star-crossed lover and a human cursed to live as a swan—all while strapped into toe shoes. And now Kaori Nakamura is taking on an entirely new role. After 17 years with Pacific Northwest Ballet (16 as a principal dancer), she’s retiring from the stage at the end of this season, but will stay on with PNB as a faculty member at the ballet school. Dance fans will miss the precise, weightless grace she radiated on stage, playing pivotal characters in Cinderella, Don Quixote, The Merry Widow, Coppélia and other ballets. This month she takes the lead in Giselle (running through June 8) and she’ll be a featured performer on PNB’s one-night-only Season Encore bill, which will showcase some of her finest work, including the balcony pas de deux from Roméo et Juliette and the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty. Unless you’re planning to sign up for ballet school, this is your last chance to witness the work of one of Seattle’s most talented shape-shifters. em6/8. 6:30 p.m. Prices vary. McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St.; 206.441.2424; a href=”http://www.pnb.org” target=”_blank”pnb.org /a/em/p
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Photo Essay: Ferry Therapy
Words and photographs by Anna Starr.
Riding the ferry is my favorite Seattle pastime. At any given time on a Washington State Ferry you will find a group of tourists with too many suitcases, someone in work clothes peacefully napping, a jigsaw puzzle diligently being completed, lovers having a Titanic-esque moment on a balcony (fun fact: those balconies are called pickleforks),…
AANHPI Month: Where to Celebrate, Eat, and Learn Around Seattle
From festivals and museum exhibits to food tours and historic neighborhoods, here are a few ways to mark the month across the region.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month—known as AANHPI Month—is observed in the U.S. each May. It began as a weeklong observance in 1978 and expanded to the full month in 1992. Asian, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in the United States extend back much further, including to the late 16th century, when…
Black Panther Park in Skyway Becomes First Black Panther Park in the World
The new community garden honors the Black Panther Party’s legacy of food justice and the Skyway neighbors who helped bring it to life.
On a sunny Sunday earlier this month, at the corner of 75th Avenue and Renton Avenue South, the community gathered for the opening of Skyway’s Black Panther Park. Inspired by the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for School Children program that compelled the federal government to provide breakfast in schools, Black Panther Park is a community…
Rearview Mirror: A Family Coming Apart, SIFF, and My First Fashion Show
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
The Family House A house can hold a lot, and Seattle Rep’s Appropriate knows that. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony-winning play, directed here by Timothy McCuen Piggee, drops the Lafayette siblings into their late father’s hoarded, falling-apart Arkansas plantation home for an estate sale, and lets the whole thing crack open from there. The sibling dynamics are…