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.

 

Ballet BC - Walking Mad

Another night at the Ballet BC! Three works: Walking Mad, a Canadian Premiere, by Johan Inger; Vitulaire, a World Premiere by Aszure Barton and 'between disappearing and becoming' a world premiere by Emily Molnar.  Emily Molnar, the Artistic Director of Ballet BC opened the night at Queen Elizabeth Theatre with enthusiasm and welcome.
"between disappearing and becoming'  was stark in blacks, whites and greys. The music was Hildur Gudnadottir. . The female dancers in black body suits and  ballet slippers on point moved like Swan Lake classics  in contrast to bare chested  men in suits powerfully striding.   The dance was an astonishing repetoire of unique moves, flowing and cascading across the stage.  The dance of the women captivated me most as they wove their bodies  in intricate tales of relational beauty.  The applause at curtain fall filled the theatre.
Vitulaire  show cased the music of Socalled, Stephen Hatfield, Brooklyn Rider, Dachev, Topferova and Tsvetkova. This was primal dance with folk roots and colourful gypsy costume.  What a joy to see Makailla Wallace and Alexis Fletcher dancing on stage together, two extraordinarily accomplished dancers whose every movement evokes music and rythmn! I loved the uplifting beat of this dance as the whole troop became tribal with irony. Guest artist Darren Devaney's gymnastic dance set a breakneck pace.   At intermission the audience seemed ready themselves to break out.  The applause was resounding.
Walking Mad with music from Ravel's  Bolero and Fur Alina was a thorough delight. Using a four doored folding wall as prop the dancers passed in and out of doors in party hats and bowlers careening  and carousing,  Gilbert Small,  Rachel Meyer,  Alyson Fretz and Maggie Forgerson individually danced with charm and grace amidst the departures and admissions.  So moved was the audience that the curtains fall brought the house to a standing ovation with calls of celebration as dancers bowed again and again and again.
The house was all but sold out.   Revitalized we left the theatre glad we'd braved the dark and cold rain.  Bliss,by Jose Navas,  the last Ballet BC performance of the season is May 10 to 12, when Vancouver's weather is made for a night on the town.