"No, we’re not going to put glass on stage or in the hands of dancers." by Rich Smith  When the Pacific Northwest Ballet asked Preston Singletary to reimagine the world of Sleeping Beauty, he said yes immediately—even though he’d never created a theatrical set before.  “I just thought, ‘This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and what the heck, why not?’” he says.  He’s right about the opportunity. Creating a set for a story ballet is a big deal. They’re massive productions—the budget for this one hovers in the $4.5 million range, Singletary says—and they run regularly. Some of their sets, like Maurice Sendak’s treatment of The Nutcracker, reach a kind of iconic status in the community. Generations of dancers and families will grow up with Singletary’s vision of Sleeping Beauty coloring their daydreams.  The canonical ballet features a lush (and lengthy) score from Tchaikovsky and a famous hard part, the “Rose Adagio,” where four different suitors slowly twirl Princess Aurora as she stands on one leg en pointe. It’s one of those moments dancers train for forever. And like any other story ballet, Sleeping Beauty is insane. The action starts with a scornful fairy losing her invitation to a baby shower in the mail and then cursing that baby as revenge, and it ends with dancing cameos from Pinocchio and Geppetto, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and other characters from other fairy tales.  Despite the prestige and power of the ballet, PNB’s older production of it looked pretty minimal. They built a platform, threw up some columns with some ivy twirled around them, and painted some clouds on a backdrop. It was stately and very… spacious.  A sketch of one of Singletary’s set designs. (No, it’s not glass.) PRESTON SINGLETARY Singletary’s Sleeping Beauty plucks audiences out of that minimalist Western European dream and immerses them in a verdant Pacific Northwestern watercolor forest. Layers of painted madronas frame the scene, and a huge, action-eagle set piece that appears to be carved from wood dominates the stage. Formline graphics from Tlingit art informed the design and inspired the architecture of the costumes. Singletary says PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal didn’t want to set the fairy tale in an Alaskan Native tribe. They wanted a timeless, imaginary world, but one nevertheless rooted in a place, one that harkened back to the past while speaking to contemporary times and pressing on into the future.  If that’s what they wanted, few other artists fit the bill better than Singletary. He’s known not only for refreshing myths but for continuing to write them, as he’s currently doing in a traveling installation called Raven and the Box of Daylight. In that exhibition, he uses aspects of traditional mythologies but modernizes them to create social commentary that speaks to our times.  Singletary first turned to his Tlingit heritage for inspiration in 1988 when he started sandblasting formline figures into glass. In 1997, he exhibited a body of this glasswork at Vetri Gallery downtown, and his career took off from there. He’s shown regularly at Traver Gallery, just upstairs from Vetri, and has exhibited in Canada, Italy, France, and all around the US.  In September, I called him up to chat about what it was like to create a whole new world.  You’re known for your glasswork. Are you making the whole set out of glass?  No, we’re not going to put glass on stage or in the hands of dancers. I’m working purely from a graphic standpoint.  Speaking of that graphic style, I once read that the thickness of water ripples inspired the line in formline art. Do you know if that’s true, or is that bullshit?  That’s one aspect of it, but there are a lot of theories around it. The line also looks like wood grain. There are also the tools used to make the forms. And then there’s the question about why the art is so distinctive. It’s either that the community was so conservative that they wanted to instill this strong graphic design in their work, and the other idea is that they wanted to adhere strongly to tradition. The golden age for Northwest Coast [artists] happened at first contact with Russians, which gave the Natives access to steel tools that fueled the production of the art. But then shortly after that, the Natives were forbidden to own land, they were forbidden to practice their art and culture. It was essentially outlawed. They couldn’t stop it entirely, and it started to come back in the 1930s. In its elegance and streamlined style, some of your work recalls Constantin Brncuși’s sculpture. Do you like him at all? Was he an influence on you? Yeah, him and [Isamu] Noguchi and Henry Moore. I didn’t go to school for art; I just learned through practical experience working with other artists and elders, learning about the artwork and mythologies, which all tie in together. The stories, the songs, the dances, the artwork—it’s all intertwined. Even the influences are intertwined. The first art that was interesting to me was the Surrealists, which is heavily imbued by all these symbols. Later, I learned that the Surrealists held Northwest Coast art in high regard because of its graphic style and abstraction and whatnot. And then I learned about this genre they called primitivism, which was the Modernists reflecting on Northwest Coast art, African art, or Oceanic art. So I became really infatuated, like: What was it that the Modernists were trying to get out of what they called primitive art? They were essentially trying to deconstruct their education process, open themselves up to this work, and borrow aspects of it. That’s when I started looking at Modernist objects and making them and then adorning them with Northwest Coast art.  This is your first theatrical scenic design commission. Are you scared or nervous? If so, what did you do to tamp down the nerves? I was, but I had a great team working with me. I have to give a lot of credit to [watercolor artist and scenic designer] Charlene Hall, a partner I was given to work with to paint scenes. I directed a big design team and collaborated with [PNB Artistic Director] Peter Boal. The two of them helped me figure out how to create a successful stage set.  Aside from that huge eagle, what other Tlingit-inspired objects will audiences see onstage?  We have Carabosse represented as a raven, and the raven has its own unique symbolism to it. Raven is the trickster, but in some cultures, Raven is the foreteller of death. When the prince arrives, he comes in paddling a canoe. The wedding scene at the end features some basket forms that I make, and when the Lilac Fairies come to bestow gifts upon Aurora, they give her plexiglass boxes fashioned after bentwood boxes. If the opportunity arises, would you be interested in continuing to work with PNB or creating other theatrical sets?  I don’t even know how many Native American people have had the opportunity to design a stage like this, but I don’t think it’s very many. And I think I heard somebody tell me they were aware of one Native person who was asked to design the set for a ballet. So this, for me, is a real opportunity. I’m really flattered and honored to be asked to do it. Singletary’s band, Khu.éex’, is playing at Westlake Park for Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 14 at 1 pm. PNB’s production of Sleeping Beauty runs January 31 to February 9, 2025, at McCaw Hall.