Pacific Northwest Ballet is currently indulging in historical revisionism, which does not bode well. That is, the company, at the direction of its board of trustees, has declared Kent Stowell and Francia Russell founding artistic directors even though they arrived five full years after the ensemble's formation.

Their predecessors, Janet Reed and Melissa Hayden, have been virtually eliminated, although a little bouquet of peace was thrown in Reed's direction by naming her founding director of the school. The so-called explanation, both dim and dubious, is that Stowell/Russell's arrival in town, in 1977, was followed one year later with a change of name from Pacific Northwest Dance to Pacific Northwest Ballet, as if a whole new institution had been created. Nevertheless, the official record of PNB as an organization dates itself to 1972. Besides, Russell was not named co-artistic director until 1985.

This spurious repositioning of nomenclature neither honors institutional integrity on which the company likes to pride itself nor to its future under new artistic leadership. Instead of history being the handmaiden to egos, let it stand where it is.

Technically, there were no other previous "artistic directors," but it is a semantic distinction which could easily be mistaken by someone unfamiliar with the founding story of the organization.