When you watch a great dancer, time stands still, and their years of hard work and training fall away: All that’s left is that moment and that beauty and those incredible, perfect movements, and you wish it could last forever.
But time doesn’t hold still offstage, and for two of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s most beloved principal dancers, the moment has come to end their long performing careers. Elizabeth Murphy and Lucien Postlewaite, who have a combined total of 33 years with the company, will take their final bows in a special “Season Encore” performance on Sunday, June 7, at McCaw Hall, before whirling off to new stages in their lives.
It was a difficult decision — and not one dictated by immediate necessity, as both are still dancing beautifully — but both feel confident that it’s time.
“My whole career has been a process of listening to my body, to my environment … to all the things that make me an artist,” Postlewaite said, in an interview between rehearsals this spring. “Listening to that voice is what has guided me, and this is the right time.” He has begun a new career as a life coach, and is eager to take the lessons he’s learned in his dancing years into his new business.
Murphy, likewise, said the decision has been “pulling at my heart” for a while, but leaving now feels right. “I’ve had a wonderful career here, and I’m really proud of everything I’ve gotten to do.” The mother of two young daughters (with husband Reed Nakayama, PNB’s resident lighting designer), she’s looking forward to focusing on her family. And she’s considering other possibilities: working toward Pilates certification, doing some teaching this summer, and moving toward “the rehab side of dance,” perhaps through studying physical or occupational therapy.
Currently the two most senior principal dancers in the company, Postlewaite and Murphy took different roads to PNB. Postlewaite, originally from Santa Cruz, Calif., joined as a young apprentice in 2003, quickly rising through the ranks to principal status by 2008. He left in 2012 to dance overseas in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, returning to PNB in 2017. Murphy, who grew up in Chelmsford, Mass., danced with several companies before joining PNB as a corps member in 2011, rising to principal in 2015.
It’s hard to single out a favorite performance from each of these two, after so many years, but I think of Postlewaite’s dreamy, ever-youthful Roméo (in Maillot’s “Roméo et Juliette”), the soaring leaps of his “Prodigal Son,” the shimmery beauty of his work in “Afternoon of a Faun.” For Murphy, I think of the ethereal softness of her “Emeralds” solo in George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” her quicksilver partnership with Dylan Wald in Alejandro Cerrudo’s ballets (particularly “Little mortal jump” and “Silent Ghost”), the delicate madness of her Giselle.
PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal, reflecting on the duo’s legacy, praised Postlewaite’s unbreaking commitment to his roles, both in and out of the studio, and called him “a favorite of so many choreographers and a go-for-broke dancer willing to try anything.” He singled out Murphy’s technique, but added, “She has the stuff that you can’t teach … She just lives in the art, in a way that connects us to the art. She seems to experience the art in real time.”
Looking back at favorite performances, Murphy said she’d long had an affinity for the story ballets, particularly “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Giselle,” both favorites since childhood. “I remember acting out the mad scene (in “Giselle”) when I was probably like 7 years old!” she said. Her love for contemporary choreography, particularly Cerrudo’s, came later.
“It was something I liked watching, but whenever I would try to do it, I would think, oh, it takes a different sort of vulnerability to explore movements that don’t have a distinct name — someone’s not telling you exactly how to do it,” she said. But she fell in love with “Little mortal jump,” and “that was that for me. That experience, building with everything I learned there, how to become more grounded and drop into the floor, it became a really special part of my career.”
Though Postlewaite said his favorite ballet was “whatever I’m dancing at the moment,” he also expressed a fondness for narrative works. “I love to tell stories,” he said. “Peter (Boal) asked me how do I distinguish being an artist, a storyteller and a dancer, and I said for me, they’re one and the same. Even if I’m doing a ballet that doesn’t have a narrative, I create a story for myself.”
He’ll very much miss connecting with a partner — “to be so synchronized, so tuned to your own craft and to the other person, that it’s like you’re swimming together.” As dancers, he said, “we get to create a world. Sometimes this world’s a hard one for me, for a lot of people. Having a space where I can look around and connect with my partner — we are in this together, creating an alternate world.”
Both have been able to choose multiple dances that they will perform in “Season Encore” — a career mini-retrospective, as it were. Murphy has chosen selections from “Little mortal jump,” Kent Stowell’s “Cinderella,” the Jessica Lang solo “The Calling,” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “This Bitter Earth,” which has not previously been seen on PNB’s stage. Postlewaite will perform in Balanchine’s “Duo Concertant,” Jerome Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering,” Kent Stowell’s “Swan Lake,” Wheeldon’s “Curious Kingdom” (another PNB premiere) and, one last time, the balcony scene from “Roméo et Juliette.” (Get your handkerchiefs ready.)
And what do they think it will feel like, to dance for a PNB audience for the last time? Postlewaite said he’s been thinking about it, “placing myself in that future self. Because I’m so grateful to the audience, to the space, and I think about that future self and how to honor that.” He’s been envisioning “how to be fully present in the magic of that moment, with room for the unexpected. I don’t know what it’s going to feel like because I’ve never done this before.”
Murphy said she’s been “protecting myself … I think in ‘Encore,’ there’s going to be a lot of feelings!” Those emotions have been rising to the surface throughout the season. She described being on stage at the beginning of “Emeralds” last fall as the curtain rose: “The stage is really warm, and when the curtain rises, it suddenly becomes cool as the air drifts in, it’s this very magical sensation of experiencing the curtain rise. You feel so alive. At dress rehearsal, you don’t feel the buzz, but when the whole audience is there, it’s like a heartbeat — you can feel this pulsing. I just started crying.”
While there’s sadness at an end to this stage in their lives, there’s optimism for the future, whatever it might look like. Ballet is “such a magical art form that I was captivated by at such a young age,” said Murphy. “I’m going to find a new chair, a new seat — I want to continue being a part of it.”
Postlewaite spoke of discovering a new kind of life, one not dictated by the constant rhythms of daily class and rehearsals. “I’m looking forward to exploring what devotion looks like, what commitment to my body looks like, when it’s not intertwined with work,” he said. “I’m so focused on showing up really well for myself and the audience, sometimes that becomes a louder voice in the room than the joy … I’m excited to explore the other side of that.” In the meantime, he said, “It’s just deep gratitude.”
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