Houk Bidding Farewell To Pnb Today
There is a time for every season in a dancer's calendar, but sometimes those seasons really whiz by.
The announcement from Pacific Northwest Ballet that popular principal dancer Benjamin Houk will give his farewell performance today, at 2 p.m. in the Opera House, is an announcement that makes ballet fans take a good, hard look at the calendar.
Can it really be 13 years since Houk's arrival at PNB as the brilliant young kid who knew how to catapult his characterization right over the footlights and into the audience? Can Houk, who is still only 34, really be thinking about retirement?
Well, it isn't precisely retirement, because Houk will make some guest performances. But he is assuming the position of artistic director of the Nashville Ballet, and his administrative duties are going to claim the lion's share of his time.
"It's gradually sinking in, but I'm still pretty amazed," said Houk of his impending move to Nashville, which he found out about "only three or four weeks ago."
For Houk, it's the ages of his children as well as the major roles he has undertaken that help him gauge the time: his daughter was born during his first year in Seattle, and she is 12 now. There also are two more young Houks, 10 and 2; and Houk and his wife, dancer Lauri-Michell, have a baby on the way, due in November.
It was news of the fourth child that helped prompt Houk's decision to change career directions. PNB artistic co-director Francia Russell says Houk came to her "to start investigating the next stage of his career, and for some help on resumes and letters and job opportunities."
Though Russell says she and her husband, co-director Kent Stowell, "hated the thought of losing Ben," they also knew of his interest in choreography, education and artistic direction. Because jobs in that last category are few and far between, they all figured it might take two or three years for the right opportunity to surface. To everyone's surprise, Russell got an immediate call from Nashville for a further recommendation, which she promptly gave, and the artistic directorship was offered to Houk.
"We all wish it were two years away," Russell says, "but we're also delighted for him."
You get a feeling for the company's closeness when you realize that today's farewell performance is also drawing both Russell and Stowell back to the stage. Stowell will be up there doing Rothbart, and Russell will be the Queen Mother, in the "Swan Lake" that has Houk dancing Prince Siegfried opposite his frequent partner, Patricia Barker.
Those who have seen Houk dance know he has a unique gift for communication. Beginning with his first big role for the company as Romeo in "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," one of Stowell's most moving examples of choreography and a perfect fit for the young dancer, Houk has become a dancer who establishes a rapport with his audience.
He's also a communicator offstage, particularly in PNB's arts education program, Bravo! Ballet, which shows school children that ballet isn't a remote art form.
"Twenty seconds into a lecture," he says, "you get their rapt attention by just doing some big ballet trick. I tell them, `A lot of you have this idea of ballet,' tripping around on the tippy-toes. But then I tell them: `This is ballet,' and do four pirouettes and a double turn."
Houk shows them real muscles and real physical skills. And if that weren't enough, he also likes to invite football star Michael Jackson, a former Husky and Seahawk, along for the fun. The two of them do hip-hop dance routines and the kids go wild.
"We do residencies with third- to fifth-graders," Houk says, "and we turn them all into 2 year olds again. They forget they're supposed to be cool, and we have this incredible session trying different dance forms, choreographing a dance, hearing Mozart and Beethoven as well as the Cure. Then we bring them all down to the Opera House, and it's a big hit."
Houk himself wasn't supposed to become a dancer; he's the son and the grandson of two physicians. But he "just fell in love with it," first in Amherst, Mass., and later in Tacoma, where the young dancer received a scholarship offer to go to New York with the Joffrey Ballet.
"I didn't really get a start until I was 15, which is quite late," Houk says, "but then I really dove into it."
Maybe it's like the actor who always wanted to direct, but Houk has always been interested in being a choreographer and artistic director.
"He's a real contributor, and he has taken every opportunity to choreograph and teach," Stowell says. "Some dancers can have an air of abstraction about them; dance is a silent art for many, and they don't always learn to communicate. But Ben has always been a communicator. He is almost ego-less, easy to work with, and a great example to us all."
Houk expects to keep up his ties with Seattle. This fall, he's joining PNB for performances in New York and the Kennedy Center. There also are some guest-artist engagements, but Houk says he's happy to wind down a little.
"I'm not going to cling to dancing," he says, "because I'm excited about doing something new - squeezing as much as I can out of others' performances. I've always had a real hunger for that, so this is a natural progression to me.
"But what's surprising is how nerve-wracking it is when you are the director. When I'm on stage, I'm never worried because I know I'm responsible for what I do, and can handle it. But for a director, once the curtain goes up your involvement is over, that's when you start to worry."
Houk's Seattle fans will see him again, Russell says, in PNB's 25th anniversary season for 1997-98.
For Houk, looking back on his years with the company gives him great satisfaction.
"I feel like I got in at a really great time, riding a wave of PNB's growth and success, and helping create it, too. There is a real pride of ownership in that cycle, and I'm proud to have been a part of it."