Christmas Oratorio - Vancouver Chamber Choir - Owen McCausland, Evangelist - Pacific Baroque Orchestra

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio has to my mind never been performed better. It’s only my second time experiencing it live, mind you,  but Bach is my all time favourite composer.  Conductor Kari Turunen was magnificent.  The voice of Owen McCausland was spectacular. The other solos and duets were drawn from the choir who were apart and together angelic. The Pacific Baroque Orchestra could not have been better. I loved the wind instruments. The strings were sweet. The keys special.  The brass and kettle drum a delight.  2 parts with the second rising to exultant.  The Vancouver Chamber Choir was heavenly. The Orpheum was the perfect venue for this masterpiece.  It was indeed one of the rarest of nights. A performance to be remembered fondly for a life time.

 









 Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Ballet BC UN/A

I rode in on my Harley Electric Glyde wearing leather chaps and a red and black embroidered western shirt.  I was the only one at the ballet wearing a cowboy shirt and leathers and a Harley vest..  You have to get up pretty early to be an original dresser at the BC Ballet.  It's the best fashion venue anywhere in the city.  Very chic and elegant, with one guy in a cowboy shirt.  I got compliments, of course.
John and Chelsea arrived .  Chelsea had been in residence at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.  I told Chelsea I’d seen Baryshnikov at the Royal Winnipeg.  She was suitably impressed. I also dropped that I’d known Arnold Sporr. John’s friend is Karen Kain, former director of the National Ballet of Canada.  John’s heard me wax poetic about the Royal Winnipeg Ballet but he’s a National Ballet fan.  In Ballet circles we're kind of like a Toronto Maple Leaf fan talking to a Montreal Canadian Fan.  Following the analogy, the Ballet BC is kind of like the Canucks.  This year I was at the Canucks one great game and glad I had season’s tickets to the ballet given the Canucks showing in other games.  Ballet BC by comparison has had an extraordinary season.
I attribute Ballet BC’s amazing success to the Artistic Director, Emily Molnar.  The dancers are incredible, but I’m really really enjoying the diversity and originality that Molnar has encouraged in the choreography and dance.  It’s all so thoroughly professional as well.  Tonight’s performance was another truly spectacular evening of dance.
Three World Premiere’s. Twenty Eight Thousand Waves, by choreographer Cayetano Soto.  I simply loved it.  No individual dancer stood out for me but the troop was coordinated discords arranging and rearranging like a human kaleidoscope. I can’t recall seeing anything before  like this.
Lost and Seek choreographed by Gustavo Ramirez Sansano  was danced to the music of J.S. Bach, my favourite composer. I so appreciated this post modern dance with men in kilts, women in tight body suits and the contorted human asymmetries woven loosely into the complex mathematics of the master.  I felt the search, the lost and seek, each dancer’s individual and group expression.  Rachel Meyer danced sublimely.
Immix choreographed by Giocondo Barbuto was so individual yet combined with tableaux. The program notes described the ‘connect, integrate, meld, merge and mix …inherent …in Gabriel Prokofiev’s music’  And that’s what the dancers added  so well to.  As always I loved Alexis Fletcher’s dance.  Gilbert Small was just so powerful.
Tonight the troop amazed me, their collective angst and ability to work so thoroughly together.  The lighting was so simple but revolutionary, the costumes unique.
The standing ovations were loud.  And well deserved.  John and Chelsea and I had waxed poetic during intermission about the stupendous dance performance.  At the end we felt well sated as if we’d just been finest meal of rare art.
As I rode off into the Vancouver night I could feel my big motorcycle wanting to dance.