Ballet BC Program 2 Queen Elizabeth Theatre

Both Laura and I are getting over spring colds.  Vancouver is experiencing  dreariness with ugly rain holding back the coming of the sun.  If it weren’t for season’s tickets to the ballet neither of us would have got off the couch and escaped from the tv to culture.  It never seems like a good idea getting dressed but history has proven over and over again that an evening of Ballet BC is an uplifting intriguing consciousness raising event. It even puts a smile on my face. Curmudgeon that age is making me.

And true to form this ballet did.  The  Queen Elizabeth Theatre is  a bright oasis.  Tonight  the young women were truly gala in the latest fashions.  Marvellous dresses and splendid shoes. I like best the gaggles of the  early teens with their aunt or dance instructor mentor  all fluttering and vibrant. But tonight it was the 20 year olds looking truly mysterious and captivating.  The young men in jackets and fancy shirts and well scrubbed faces were there as well.  

There is always the older crowd. Fewer tonight  compared to the surge of youthful enthusiasm with it’s obvious appreciation of excellence. Us older folk are main stay.  The City set.  Very uptown.  Banyan Books meets Nordstrom crowd.  Uniquely Vancouver.  But this night seemed mostly for the young and beautiful people. My favourite place in the whole world for people watching is the Ballet.

 Queen Elizabeth really is a fine little theatre.  Not the Lincoln Centre by any means.  Neither is it shabby.   I like the seats and the view.  I like too when Emily Molnar comes on stage and briefly describes the coming show. I was miffed though she didn’t mention St. Patrick.  There was however a swath of green dresses and jackets in the audience.  I was wearing my patch vest from Dublin.  Laura looked divine in her Ivanka. 

When the lights went down, the Anthem choreographed by Lisa Gelly and Josh Martin exploded on the stage, a minimalist background, with functional costumes,  a plethora of new moves and impossible bodies reached out to meet the industrial music of Colin Stetson, Sarah Neufeld, Ginzburg and Purgus. It was something never considered possible and yet it worked all together as one, a most incredible explanation of space and sound emotionally explored by human.  I truly loved the piece.  A World Premiere and somehow especially 2017.

I love watching individual dancers. I’ve known Alexis Fletcher, Peter Smida, Rachel Prince, Rachel Meyers and Gilbert Small now for several seasons so truly appreciate their interpretations and sophistication.  Each night a dancer might capture my attention as tonight Nicole Ward and Brandon Alley stood out for me.  It’s the troop though that astonishes,, like a flock of birds moving together in ultimate unison.  

I loved Swan, choreography by Wen Wei Wang,  music from Swan Lake, Alexis Fletcher and Kirsten Wicklund sublime and Christoph von Reideman, Andrew Bartee, Gilbert Small and Peter Smida so strong and robust.  Combinations and permutations so very modern and refined. Such a tableau of exquisite form.  Robson Street and Davie.  Kate Burrows costume design rippled.

The audience loved the Lesly Telford composition, “If I were 2” , an exploration of narcissism, especially the young people. A dance duet by Emily Chessa and Brandon Alley set to the words of Barbara Adler sounding like a poem played by nightclub turntable.  It wasn’t my cup of tea, like  the other time they brought a painter on stage.  I just wish for Nutcracker at such times despite my overall joy of the contemporary.  

But then as always Ballet BC redeemed itself  with the especially intimate Solo Echo choreographed by Crystal Pite to the beautiful music of Brahms.   It actually had me crying and laughing at the same time as the dancers together reminded me of the otters holding onto each through the night at Vancouver Aquarium or at other times they became like a mob of inquisitive meerkats.  I’ve never seen the like of it in all my years of ballet attendance such an original work of humans holding to each other, letting go and finding one another, then holding together as a group or family or community. Such delicacy and love.  The tablleaus of human forms were mesmerizing.  

The audience really loved it and we all leapt to our feet to give the performers a well deserved standing ovation. Then we funnelled back out to cars and taxis and the less dreary still raining city of Vancouver.  I even had a little bounce in my step.  

 

BC Ballet Program 1

BC Ballet’s Program 1 show cased the works of our resident choreographer Cayetano Soto.  I love the ballet and especially love the beautiful people who attend the ballet. This was no different with as usually the best dressed folk of Vancouver stood about chatting in the foyer lounge before the show began.
The works tonight were impressive and enjoyable with interesting choices of music and constumes.  Obviously Cayetano Soto is an accomplished choreographer I thought as the evening progressed, the dancers as usual, simply incredible.
But that last work. I’ve attended ballets for 50 years and I’ve seen nothing like it.  Utterly delightful, incredibly original.  It reminded me of the first time I saw the works of Martha Graham and  Alvin Ailey. Here was the very best of modern and contemporary dance.  But I also couldn’t help but think of the work of Paddy Stone’s, such popular work, so engaging with the audience.  Sometimes modern dance like modern art can be self absorbed but then along comes someone like Cayetano Soto who truly delights in pleasing his audience.  To say there was standing applause is an understatement. The audience roared.  Later I said to Laura, that one performance alone was worth the season’s tickets.  It was the most unusual performance I’ve seen in decades.  What would one call that, “John Travolta channels Mr. Bean on a Mediterranean set by Monty Python?”
Like every one else leaving we were beaming. The ballet had definitely uplifted us. We had been touched by genius and knew it.  Thank you BC Ballet and especially thank you Cayetano Soto.
 

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.

 

Giselle-Ballet BC

I so enjoyed the world premiere Ballet BC,Giselle, choreographed by the extraordinary Jose Navas.  The blending of classical and modern forms created the most wonderful avante garde  performance  of this great traditional French folk tale.  Adolphe Adams whimsical and serene music was paired to the dance as if the performers had been written in as staffs and notes.  "Of course," I thought time and again, "those movements are simply perfectly matched to the score!"

The dancers themselves were unsurpassable.  The leads, Alexis Fletcher, Maggie Fogeron, Connor Gnam, Alexander Burton, and Gilbert Small were interpretative geniuses with every expression of their bodies coupled to each other, the music and the mood of this terribly moving story of the star crossed lovers.

Lino's set with the simplicity of hanging ropes and the high screen movie back drop of slow moving scenes of petals and clouds  was truly ingenious.  I loved the snatches of words, reminiscent of e.e. cummings, that appeared cryptically, almost teasingly, as a poetic sub text.   Linda Chow's costumes were point and counterpoint to the cultural sense of love and romance, both hidden and exposed.   All combined to explode the senses, touch the heart and free the mind of the viewer.

I felt I could have been in Europe or New York, the cutting edge work was so artistically refined and professionally polished.  Standing ovations, roses, bows and more bows, bravos, and curtain calls were all well deserved.

It was a shock to find myself back in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre lobby surrounded by other Vancouverites.  Looking at the haute couture dresses of some of the beautiful young women and the studied appearances of the handsome  young men about me as I departed,  I might as well have been at fashion week in Paris or Hong Kong.  I keep forgetting that Vancouver has become a artistically diverse city with countless denizens sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate even the highest forms of cultural advance.  

Artistic Director Emily Molnar had announced to great applause that Ballet BC had already nearly met their  spring fund raising campaign goals. The announced line up for shows in the coming year looks tantalizing.  Driving home I felt my spirit lifted by the ballet, my mind challenged and my heart touched. I love art when it's so truly accomplished,  original and moving.