Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Noelani Pantastico and James Yoichi Moore have launched a brand-new company called Seattle Dance Collective. PNB principals and soloists I've gushed over in these pages—including Angelica Generosa, Elizabeth Murphy, Dylan Wald, Miles Pertl, and others—join Whim W'Him's Liane Aung and Jim Kent to compose the first iteration of the group, which will likely morph over the years. At a recent rehearsal for their first show, Program One—a medley of six contemporary dance pieces—Pantastico told me the company allows her and Moore to do work they've always wanted to do but couldn't, work that allows them to express themselves as individual artists and directors. "I get to share a little bit of myself, and not just be this ballerina that everyone sees as some kind of creature onstage," Pantastico said, shuffling around the rehearsal studio in the giant poofy slippers she wears between practice runs. "We're all very human, and we have these stories." by Rich Smith