Ballet BC, Program 3

Ballet BC, Program 3 was by far the best ballet of the season. All three pieces were spectacular.
 "Beginning After” , Choreographed by Cayetano Soto, with music of Handel  was physically inconceivable.  The dancers seemed otherworldly in their movements. The parts and the whole in harmony with the music. Soto’s dance is Daliesque in motion. I love Cayetano Soto’s choreography. It’s the most original and inspirational I’ve seen in recent times.  It’s authenticity and unique interpretation of the human spirit through dance is so uplifting.
“when you left’ choreographed by Emily Molnar was so utterly different from all that has gone before.  The music of Peteris Vasks: Plainscape was performed by the Phoenix Chamber Choir under the direction of Grame Langager. When we stood to cheer and applaud at the end of this remarkable piece we saw all the smiling happy faces of this gifted choir in the orchestra pit .  This piece amazed me for it’s modernity and abstract birdlike flocking flow so reminiscent of classical with it’s  elegance of form.  But where Soto brings to mind Salvador Dali, this Molnar piece was reminiscent of Klimt.
I loved Bill.  Bill was the choreography of Sharon Eyal and Gai Bhear, first performed in 2010 by the Batsheva Dance Company .Music by Ori Lichtik. I’d seen Bill once before and loved it.  Reminiscent of Paul Gauguin I thought it the most amazing tribal post apocalypse interpretation. The drums and white bodies  and that Monty Python funny walk  was all so chorus like in the song of creation.  I found myself outside trying but failing to repeat that inconceivably simple looking impossible walk  such a  complex rhythmic repetition around which the whole community of dance and song revolved. Outside others were doing the same. I don’t recall seeing this before, though of course,  some of it had to do with this being Spring.  There were just so many of the audience dancing and imitating different bits they’d loved from the show in front of the old Queen E. It was wonderful.
The Ballet BC dancers are all the best.I’ve loved Alexis Fletcher for ever, even bidding  this night on a silent auction black and white photograph of her captured  in leaping flight  Livona Ellis and Rachel Meyer and Rachel Prince, , Christoph Von Riedemann and Peter Smida all stood out for me tonight.  But I love them all and a different one just shines a little brighter in different performances, all so professional.  Professional remains a designation of meritocracy. In contrast to the values of mediocrity, the professional is not uniform but unique in that the skills consistently rise above an impossible level which an amateur might only attain on rare occasion.   Even the apprentices tonight were memorable with Justin Calvadores and  Parker Finley’s dance being noteworthy to me.  I find myself watching an individual then looking to see who they were.  I noticed these delightful new folk whereas Nicole Ward , Kirsten Wicklund, Gilbert Small, and Patrick Kilbane are names I’ve come to know and faces I’ve come to recognise.  But they’re all superb.  If this were hockey we'd speak of Brandon Alley and Andrew Bartee as the Sabines or Emily Chess and Kiera Hill as ‘all stars’.  Zander Constant and Shanna Wolfe have joined the big leagues
But its dance and the audience didn’t dress like Walmart. Intermission was a feast for the eyes in terms of haute coiffure.  The shoes, the shoes, the shoes! the ladies exclaimed.  I loved the men in gold lame jackets and the lithe and sensuous ladies in long  spring gowns. So many of the young had perfect dancer bodies whereas some of us who danced compared out girth and reminisced nostalgically about times when we moved liked cats and leaped liked lions.  it was a great night.  Laura and I shared it with our friends Lorne and Justine.  After all the standing ovations we ourselves couldn’t stop singing the praises of the dancers and choreographers..  Ballet BC is just so vital.