20 yo University of Winnipeg

I really loved University of Winnipeg.  Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the importance of the ‘right size’ and ‘right fit’ of a college. If I’d gone to nearby University of Manitoba or even Stanford or Cambridge or Oxford I would not have experienced what I experienced at University of Winnipeg.  The class size was truly important.  The very best aspect though was the professors.  They really cared about me individually as a student.

I interviewed my professors. I rejected only one after the interview. I was paying a lot of money for a year learning from them so I wanted to know they were worth it.  I had a list of a half dozen questions. I made an appointment.  I met with them and told them my purpose.  All but one welcomed it. All said they’d never experienced this before but all but one passed with flying colours.  The one who failed was arrogant and didn’t comprehend the idea of ‘hard earned’ money and the buyers desire to ensure his investment. Today I’d just think of him as a privileged socialist who thought others should pay for him. Marx was like that a royal kafetch who was supported by his Jewish friends and bit the hands that fed him.  

I was still teaching dancing at Ken Matthews Dance Studio. I was meditating and praying and would begin meditating 2 hours a day minimum for the next decade or so.  

I was grieving my marriage, feeling such an utter failure. I missed Baiba but I’d moved out of her parents basement into the walk up bachelor apartment beside the university. I really liked the Murphy bed that came out of the wall. I had a crock pot and an electric frying pan. I began my love affair with cooking.  

Paul Simon’s song, « I am a rock I am an I am an island. I have my books...I have my poetry to protect me....I touch no one and no one touches me ‘ was my theme song of the period.

I lived in the library.

I met these great guys, other guys who lived in the library.  Glen Benoit would become my friend and inspiration. He was younger. The son of a famous Winnipeg opthalmologist.  He wanted to be a doctor from childhood. He was dedicated. We both lived in the study carrel.  We’d met because of our matching routines. I’d sit in the confines of the study carrel, no distraction, the little white desk sensory deprivation chamber.  Every hour for 10 minutes I’d get up and have a cup of coffee. Usually the horrid machine fare.  I’d meet Glen and we’d chat. He liked Cat Stevens and introduced me to the album Tea for the Tillerman.  I thought he was young and loved his focus. 

 I wore a black suit and tie to school. I was going from classes to teach dancing.  People thought me unusual. I was a »Manon Black » before this was cool. 

I was supposed to get a white lab coat.  I was doing my own laundry.  I concluded that white was going to get dirty much faster and instead bought a blue mechanics long lab coat. I was the only one dressed dark. The reason for the white is that you can see spills.  I couldn’t see the spills but after I washed my lab coat, not something I made a habit of, one could see the holes where the unseen acid and other solutions spills ate through the fabric.

Glen was my partner in Chemistry lab.  I was an ‘arts’ student when I did my second year of sciences.  I’m confused about the time line and the separation and divorce. The university years flow one after another but their connection with my other life seems less clear.

I remember blowing up the lab that summer.  I think the lab instructors name  was Mrs. Tascona.  I had several fires and explosions and was told that if I had one more explosion she would have to ask me to leave.  I had difficulty with the precision that the ‘science’ students took for granted. I would forever affer know what too many lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and other potential bullies in the arts crowds  lacked because I had this same trait when I began my science studies.  Arts doesn’t have a ‘lab’.  I thought of myself as an ‘ideas’ man. I took pride in being called an ‘intellectual’. I loved my ‘big mind’.  What I didn’t appreciate was the connection between the inner world and outer world.  I lived in my head.  I put less value on application.  I missed that part where the rubber meets the road. 

In the lab that’s where that all occurs. My mechanic friends and engineering friends would have ideas and then have to ‘operationalize’ them.  For people who haven’t got their hands ‘dirty’ this is all anathema to them. We are living in a world where most people want to give orders and want to be thinkers. The women seem the worst. They simply don’t want to learn from getting their hands ‘dirty’ but they do think they can be administrators.

It’s in the detail. I’d learn more about reality and life in the lab and later in surgery than I’d learn from countless books full of ideas and schemes by people who hadn’t done anything.

I didn’t appreciate the importance of a ‘point’.  That little indicator on the measure.  So I filled a spoon with 1 ml when it was supposed to be .1 ml.  It exploded, fortunately in the gas chamber which I’d not completely closed since closing it enough was okay. The instructions were precise. I’d done it imprecisely my way.  The lab had filled with smoke to the level of 4 feet below the ceiling. It had to be evacuated until the fans could get rid of the smoke. The lab was off from the main school. Good planning.

I’d approached my my other lab  partner and asked if he’d be my lab partner. He would turn out to be the very best lab partner because he was amazing at doing technical things but couldn’t comprehend the process of presentation and recording.  We were a straight A team. But as a joke he’d sometimes leave out a « . » in our combined lab work with the result I had another explosion having used 10 times the chemical indicated. He was a joker.  No one died.  His skill in chemistry and labs in general resulted in his becoming  a technician.  I would go onto be the doctor but seeing his comfort with the translation of ideas into reality was a life lesson. I happened to be good at translating what had occurred and recording. Glen my other lab partner was good at everything. 

Glen was beside me on the day of another explosion. The other classmates considered him heroic. There had no takers for the space beside me. By now my lab coat was holed with chemical spills and half burnt. I looked more like a homeless person than a chemistry student. 

 There’s this unusual experiment where we made nitro glycerin in the lab. We had this nifty buzon burners and all that evil scientist paraphernalia .I’d mixed up the ingredients in my usual less than precise way. But I had this concoction going without realizing the amount of heat was another variable that needed careful monitoring. It said in the lab notes that under no condition was the liquid to boil away and become dry as then it would explode.

I saw that the liquid had magically disappeared.  I pointed that out to Glen who was standing beside me.  He turned off his bunson burner and backed carefully away as if I’d just pointed out an STD.  I called to the courageous lab instructor and said, « Pardon me. I seem to have boiled off my liquid. ». 

I don’t know why I just didn’t turn off the flame. The decision to do that took a second or two or more because I was distracted by the mass exodus of students with Mrs. Tascona encouraging this at the doorway. 

I watched as she herded everyone including Glen out of the lab.  There I was alone in front of this major beaker of what obvious was nitro glycerin and nitroglycerin alone.  

I had a brilliant idea. I carefully lifted the still hot beaker and put it under my desk and moved away. The explosion lifted the desk and charred the insides of the wood but otherwise caused no damage.  

« Quick under the desk, » Glen would say another time when I got the experiment a bit off and he being much more scientifically astute recognized what was about to happen. Again a loud noise. The desk lifting.  Class and teacher staring at me. 

« If you have had another  explosion. I can’t let you complete the lab.  I can’t put the rest of the students lives at any more risk. ». 

The pressure was exordinate but I did complete that lab and learned the terrible importance of detail.  What I thought and what I did needed a congruence and care that simply was methodical and not that orgasmic intuitive inspirational bit that is so addictive and appealing in the arts.

A marine colonel would say it was the polishing of boots that made the soldier. My Queen’s counsel friend would say the best lawyer learned to dot every ‘i’.  My surgical mentor Dr. Ross would one day say, « it’s how you handle the tissue’.  

I learned attention to detail in  Mrs. Tascona Chemistry lab. In future contract I’m sure she insisted on danger pay and was sure to keep up her life insurance.  I learned  that little things really counted.

I will forever remember our great long suffering lab teacher on the back of Glen’s motorcycle screaming as he drove her to the bar where we gathered at the end of course. We all raised our glasses to chemistry with a whole new appreciation. For most of us this skill would be turned to  making of better wine and beer or bathtub hallucinogens. .  Chemistry became everything for me. I loved considering the ingredients of everything.  

All the while I was making stews and soups and studying recipes and trying to discern the ingredients and herbs and spices in everything I ate.  The two went hand and hand together. I could even smell some of the chemicals and would later smell disease long before some of my colleagues rationally concluded what was wrong with the patient.  It was like I had this whole other sense open up for me and it had all begun with the periodic table. 

 Now I was thinking in three dimensional spaces. In biochemistry we’d consider the combinations of carbons and other elements in three d and I’d see these shapes dancing in the air visualizing them. I’d speak to a composer and he’d tell me he saw the music that way. I ‘d seen music when I’d dropped acid but he said it was the clefts and lines of script like ticker tape and each of the instruments in these great sheets he’d read in the hall as he directed and his ears listened. I was like that then for chemistry.  It was a marvellous love affair.

At night I’d dance.  I had these regular students and I’d get to know their lives and we’d translate the idea of dance into their bodies and their forms and choreograph these routines that flowed about the rooms and got them awards. I’d choreograph show dances for tv and local shows, great and beautiful presentations of groups of young bodies laughing in form. It was a wonderful time. I felt my senses were alive in a way I’d not known.

I was loving learning in classes. I had these friends at school and the friends in the dance. I actually read text books as I walked at fast pace from the university to the dance studio. Between classes I’d been memorizing mathematic equations.

I’d buy my first Texas instrument computer calculator. Life would become so easy. I’d never been adept with the slide rule. That loss of a ‘point’ could occur so easily with those mechanical devices that needed an intuitive understanding of the desired end to really make them work. I didn’t have this in math. I was always surprised and fascinated by the conclusions I got to these equations that had taken hundreds of years of genius to find. The Texas instrument calculator was a god send. I wore it with pride dangling from my belt buckle. I had a white plastic pocket protector and my pencil and my pen. My hair was cut short and I wore the black slacks, white shirt and often took the tie off so it didin’t get in the solutions. Then in the afternoon like Superman I’d switch back to Clark Kent and go off to teach dancing secure in the knowledge I  could make explosives.  Each technique and process gave me a skill that would be the basis of mastery of all that we took for granted in the 20th century.  Once you can make the basics its not a whole lot different to use these ingredients to move forward. 

I talked not that long ago with a fellow doing gene splitting and we reflected on the simplicity of it and how the new machines were making it so much easier.  

The computer moved us completely into a ‘multi factorial’ analysis that revolutionized our understanding of disease all the while too many people left to ideological teachers remained trapped in cause and effect and binary reductionism. The awe and wonder comes with science.

My love and appreciation of God grew daily in my study just as I’d been in wonder looking at the drop of pond water in that little microscope I’d been given by my parents so many years before.

University of Winnipeg was this wonderful playground for me. Every night I’d be three or 4 hours in the study carrels. On the weekend I’d study 8 to 10 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. Glen would want a ‘change’ and I’d get on the back of his motorcycle and we’d ride to a different library where we’d sit in a different study carrel and study for hours expriencing the different coffee from a different terrible from different coffee machine.  He’d call that a ‘vacation’. He was a funny guy. His brother Archie was older and would go on to be an anesthetist. I’d get to know him and like him him too through the years of medical school. The Benoits were a great family and I appreciated seeing them alone and together and seeing how family transmitted the really important intimate details. I’d meet his mother a beautiful deeply loving woman and his father who had that surgical intellect with the confidence of experience and constant reliability.  It was a great honor to be a friend. I’d be forever thankful.

In medical school I’d come up against these weird blocks. One was kidney. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea of ion exchange. It was a puzzle. Once you got it you couldn’t understand how you ever missed it but it was a reall impediment to my school and understanding. A couple of critical times Glen sat with me and went over it again and again until I had that ‘aha moment’.  We had formed a study group by then. A half dozen of us who’d mainly met in that University of Winnipeg library who’d go onto University of Manitoba medical school and stay together and work together whenever we could. It was great comraderie and truly amazing people.

I’d enter medical school with straight A grades in Arts and Science. Even in medical school I ‘d continue to take courses with Dr .Ridd, studying Kierkegaard and Kafka. Dr. Ridd was a Christian existentialist. He’d have a group us us sitting around a coffee shop after class considering the meaning and purpose of life and reflecting on Ecclesiastes and the Trial.  Then I’d be dissecting the dead in the daytime and dancing to Van Morison the next evening. 

But that’s getting ahead of myself. When I entered medical school I had straight A’s in Arts and Sciences. I joined with a hundred other people whose lowest mark had been one B in one year. We were considered a very smart class. There were 15 other Straight A’s several master students and some PhD’s. For the first time since I’d been in the gifted class in school I felt among my own. I had the same comraderie as the dance world but here the pace was incredible. There was no time for parties.  No time for a ‘break’. We were always on.  It was exhilarating. I loved the overload and the wonder. I loved the learning. I was ecstatic and having one ‘aha’ moment after another.

Long after I left University of Winnipeg I’d return and study in the stacks and carrels.  I’d  love the smell and feel of the library.  The teachers were so inspirational.  My classics professor just for one was a wizard. They were all gods and goddesses to me. These amazing people who shared their arcane knowledge. Gnostics who opened their minds and hearts to us.  Of course Dr. Ridd was my favourite self effacing hero, a basketball player who loved his family and loved students, loved God and loved learning.  I am truly blessed in this life.

I’d still have dinners with my family. My brother and Adell had begun on their amazing love affair. I’d look with wonder at their lives as we all were moving forward crossing these great expanses of wilderness and park lands taking the various bits of pavement.  I’d left the unbeaten paths and the roads less travelled and was really enjoying the speed that came with the well trodden path. I was  loving and appreciating the selection of learning my professors deemed critical.

 This was especially true in philosophy where my professsor had contributed to the insaniety defence decisions and I’d years before my time study the originals of the laws that I’d one day work intimately with.  The university I’d once thought had nothing to offer now gave me so much and condensed so much learning. I was simply in love. I wasn’t standing but I was crawling up the backs of millions who had gone before me to find out the very fabric of modern society. It was incredible.  

I’d leave University of Winnipeg which would always remain a true university to me, like Oxford,  to go to the University of Manitoba which would only be part university but mostly technical school.  I’d love the latter in time too.  I simply loved learning. That humility and stupidity then the learning and mastery , repeated over and over again.  

19 yo to 20 yo Morocco, London, Winnipeg

When we got off the ferry in North Africa we boarded a bus to Tangier.  Moroccan border officials boarded the bus and challenged an American sitting in front of us. He had long hair pushed up under his hat. Rather than being polite, pleasant, and cooperative, he took the exact same attitude and approach that I have proved was the decidedly wrong approach to border crossing officials.

« Fuck you, » he said with bravado.

The two guards bodily carried the young man off the bus and with the assistance of others threw him on the ground. With guards sitting on him one did the sheep shearing till his hair was all gone and bleeding scalp was left.  Crying he got back on the bus. We all headed onto Tangiers.  Our introduction to a sometimes brutal nation.

When we got off the bus, street urchins tried to grab our packsacks, our only possessions and all our worldly goods, insisting on letting them carry our bags for a fee. We told them ‘no’ and carried our own bags. What would stop them running off with our bags? The boys and some teens then began to pelt us with rocks. We were being stoned and it hurt. Baiba was less than impressed as she ducked missiles.  

« What should we do? » I asked Gerry. 

« Throw bigger rocks. «   I thought that a great idea.

So began my greatest rock and stone fight with our side winning and the street urchins dispersing bleeding. Gerry and I were very good throws.  Baiba’s had not participated and stayed behind her ‘guardian knights’.  

 When we arrived Ramadan was in progress. We were told everyone was fasting and there was no food to be had.

We were shocked and unprepared. I thought the situation desperate until a kind Moroccan took us into the back of his cafe and said that because we were foreigners he could feed us.  We ate then and drank, the weather being terribly hot and dry.  The only thing was, that a mere few  hours later when sun down came everyone began feasting. Knowing Hindu and Christian ‘fasting’ we simply hadn’t considered not eating in day light hours anything of a hardship especially with the orgy of fare that appeared everywhere in the night with all the restaurants open and doing brisk business.

I was smoking a pipe these days. I’d had fine meershams and ornate German ones and corn cobs.  I’d run out of British Three Nuns pipe tobacco in Spain. I really did like the flavour and smell of Three Nuns.  In Spain though the tobacco industry had become  state controlled. This resulted in there only being two types of tobacco. The merchants told me 

« There are only two types of pipe tobacco in Spain. One tastes good and smells like shit and the other smells bad and tastes like shit. ». 

I took the one that supposedly tasted good and it sure did smell like shit. 

Sitting down in our first evening in Tangiers a young man  sat beside me in the outdoor cafe where I was having delicious Turkish coffee and smoking my pipe.

« That smells like shit. » he said.

« I know it but it tastes good. »

« The other Spanish tobacco tastes like shit and smells like shit. »

« You know. »

‘Every one knows.’

He took my stubby pipe and pounded it empty on the side of the table. Then he filled my pipe from his pouch.

« Here smoke this. It tastes good and smells good. »

I did and he was right. A major improvement over Spanish Tobaco.

It was high grade hashish. He offered me a large big chocolate bar of it for roughly $20.  In Canada a thousands of that would have cost as much.  Gerry and Baiba were soon as enamoured with Morocco as I.

The next day a hotel owner on the water front asked us if we would move into her penthouse suite for next to nothing. We were glad to. The reason was a young American woman had been murdered just inside the entrance. They’d done their best to get the blood stain on the floor out and were going to get a new rug to cover it. But she said people were superstitious and no one would pay what it was worth until someone else had stayed there. We were definitely not superstitious and for something like $10 a week we were staying in a luxury penthouse looking out on the harbour.  It would have normally cost a thousand.  

At that time the telephone poles had lots of pictures of missing American and Canadian girls. We were told that the white slave and sex trade was the most likely explanation.  Years later I’d read Maggie Trudeau’s ludicrous memoirs of her time in Morocco and how it was so safe for her and her girlfriend to roam alone through the streets unaccompanied. What she failed to mention was she was with the Australian Rugby Team. Moroccan hospitality was really wonderful for men and men with women. But women alone didn’t roam the streets without major risk of disappearing especially blonds who fetched a higher price.

I actually sold Baiba for a camel.  We were in this shop. He’d asked me what I wanted and I’d joked that I wanted a live camel as at that time I’d never ridden one and fancied myself Lawrence of Arabia, my favourite movie. He asked me if I’d trade ‘the woman’ for a live camel.  I was having fun bartering in Morocco and would be told often that when I did I got better prices than the locals. I just considered it a tremendous waste of time but for people without sex and other entertainments it appeared that business and bartering was their only orgasmic activity.  With my pipe always full of hashish time slowed down and I was content to barter. Just like playing chess which Gerry and I spent hours doing. 

I shook my head and the the merchant raise his bid to three camels and perhaps a horse and some carpets and a camel saddle.  An old bearded guy he kept dying Baiba lasciviously, sort of drooling out of the corner of his mouth while I kept indicated more. I was doing well. Baiba had been looking at jewelry and came over to ask what I was doing.

« I’ve traded you for three camels, a horse and couple of rugs and a camel saddle so far. ». She was aghast and furious.  

« You’re not serious ».

« I’m pretty sure I can do better. »

« They’re not joking, Bill. This isn’t funny,. »

Well at that two more men with knives appeared. I realized she might be right. It was  looking like we were going to have difficulty leaving the two new guys moving to bar  our exit.  Baiba darted past me for the street and I was a close second. The men from the store stopped chasing us within a block when we returned to the main thorough fare.

Baiba was very angry.   She wasn’t going out by herself already with either Gery or myself accompanying her.

Not that many nights later I was having  a Turkish coffee and a smoke writing poetry in the kasbah, or inner walled city. We’d been told it was not safe for foreigners to be in there after dark. During the day it was wonderfully exotic. I loved the boys carrying large circular flat bread on their heads. Stalls had beautifully coloured birds for sale. Old men smoke opium from water pipes 

 I was finishing up a poem and noted the light dying but I was moving  slowly. Like one does when mother calls for dinner and you’re doing something you as a child think is more important. Twilight and danger were rapidly approaching.

The minute I stepped away from the cafe veranda two men with short curved swords tried to pounce on  me. Literally jumped together right out of the dark alleyway swinging and jabbing their weapons. They would have cut me or run me threw if I’d not been quick of foot and richly blessed. It was a life and death chase with me knocking over clothing racks and running around and over displays of rugs. The knife and sword wielding thugs stayed hot behind me faces covered with scarves.

 No one seemed to care.  It was as if the locals were somehow in agreement with these men « policing’ their kasbah from foreigners. If I was killed and robbed it would have been no matter. As it was I ran very fast and was very thankful to be out of the Kasbah gate. They didn’t follow. The new city was better lit and more cosmopolitan.

 The kasbah had been fine during the day but never again at night. It was where the old men sat in little rooms smoking opium from long water pipes and illicit transactions took place.  We tended to stay together, the three of us, after I shared my near death or near maiming encounter.

It really was exotic though and relatively safe in the day. We loved Tangiers. It really was so different from anything we’d known. It brought back memories of the movie Casablanca and men really did wear the Fez. The Moroccans were very hospitable. After a week or two we were told that our presence had sufficiently cleansed the apartment , that it could be marketed again at it’s legitimate steep rate. . The murderers had not returned to kill us either.   We moved into  to a little less appealing room very modest rooms away from the harbour. 

Minarets.  Daily prayers.  Early music blaring.  Calls to prayer.  The delicious sea food.  Hashish and more hashish. I smoked my pipe with hashish as if it was regular tobacco.  We were all in a dreamy state the whole time in Morocco except when Baiba feared she’d been traded for camels or  I was fleeing for my life. We were so relaxed. I don’t remember much of our weeks there consequently. We were there some time and not wanting to leave. We didn’t have the money to go further and headed back to Europe to return to England knowing it was time to get work. 

I had a chocolate bar of hashish in my jacket as we were in line to board the ferry.  We saw that everyone was being searched so we began to devour the hashish unwilling to let it go to waste.  We’re lucky we didn’t get acute hashish poisoning. As it was a major storm came up suddenly at sea and the lower floors of the ferry were flooding with the water coming through the portals.  I remember going to the head to pee and seeing half the guests and crew in there puking., the floor awash with vomit. The sea was so bad the crew were sick.

Yet there were Gerry Baiba and myself full of anti nauseus, anti sea sickness hashish, totally unperturbed by the motion.  Unstoned it would have been quite frightening to see such high seas , a hundred foot at the time, crashing over the three story ferry which was having a terrible time making headway.  Passing through the freak squall we eventually arrived safely on the other side.  

We loved returning to Algeciras.  We’d purchased magnificent white lambskin coats for the cold northern weather and decided to ship our bikes and most of our possession north planning on selling the bikes in London; Spain was impoverished and no one could pay anything like what the bikes were worth.  

We hitchiked to Calais and took the ferry to England.  We saw the White Cliffs of Dover and were so thankful to hear English being spoken by everyone. We’d been in foreign lands for months. Being  able to understand everyone was such a joy even though some of the accents made the language still obtuse.

Our first disappointment was finding out that our bicycles and gear hadn’t arrived. It would be a month or so late in transit.  We had used the last of our money on the  ferry for  some English  pastry and tea. A celebration. We walked into a temporary agency and immediately were offered jobs in clerical.  Further we found a cheap flat with a flush toilet outside the basement suite door and a radiator that ran on bobs.  We’d late find the hedge came with the sweetest little resident hedge hog.

The final part of our plan was a trip to the Canadian Consulate. I’d forever be impressed by the Canadian consulate overseas at the time.  Our Foreign Affairs and beurocrats in general in these days were the thing of the English civil service. A matter of pride and true service sadly often absent in today smug government bureaucrat. .  Then was a great era.

« Yes how can I help you, » this well dressed kindly older man asked.

« We are flat broke.  We arrived from Europe and our bicycles we had hoped to sell for immediate cash haven’t arrived. We’ve a flat we can have rent free the first month and we each have jobs that will start to morrow.  We can throw ourselves on your mercy or  our parents would have to pay you for flying us back home or you could lend us 50 quid and we’d pay it back next month when we get our pay. »

« Well that’s well thought through and you’ve done what you needed to do so we’ll spot you fifty but you’ll need to leave us your passports. »

« Of course. » 

I believe Baiba almost feinted with how well received our plan was.  She’d  really expected us to be told to fly home then.  I believe we had our return flight but hadn’t told them that as it might have gone against us.  As it was we lived very poorly the first two months hardly eating and doing nothing but reading in a cold flat because we couldn’t afford to heat the place.  

The wool blankets were warm and we spent a lot of time in the bed.  Mostly fully clothed and reading but sharing a bed with Baiba in those days was heaven under any conditions.  Soon we’d be having fish and chips on the streets, eating pate and crackers and shopping on Oxford Street. We’d get extra jobs, me as a bar tender and Baiba waiting another evening shift. In a very few months our situation had changed entirely and we had money for dance lessons and nights at Jazz Clubs.  We’d make friends with a couple of beautiful sisters with handsome crazy South African ex commando boyfriend,  and some Australians. Gerry and his Girlfriend would be back together though Gerry was working for less money on the dangerous North Sea oil rigs than I was getting as an executive assistant in London working for the Mercantile Bank of London or the new TV station competitor to BBC. We’d go to dances with the Moody Blues and eventually take excursions on bicycle to all the surrounding villages. Our bicycles arrived with our souvenirs and others stuff. We’d have fun , really great fun.  London was so special.  I could go on forever about the wonders of that time and the city.  The history and sense of time was enthralling. Everywhere we walked and looked we’d see a little brass plague saying Dickens lived here or Maugham lived there.

Baiba wanted to stay and dance and dance.  

I wanted to return to Canada because I could get an education there. We’d been to Oxford and stayed in the rooms of a friend doing medical school there. She was a Quaker. We’d sat with other Oxford students and met dons. The whole idea of learning and study so appealed to me now that I’d had my eyes and ears awakened by travel and reading and museums. All the reading of the classics and all the discussions opened my eyes to what a real learning could be. I loved the Quaker medical students desire to serve and the Quaker service and silence.  

I don’t think Baiba would forgive me for bringing her home. She had threatened to stay alone but I’d insisted she return with me. 

We couldn’t get all our clothes into the suitcases so we flew 12 hours like Michelin men with 6 layers of our English clothes worn stifling hot on the plane.  

Our families were so relieved to have us home.  

Baiba would be the best ball room and show dancer  in western Canada  after that much learning and exposure to greatness. She absorbed dance learning like a gifted sponge.  She’d become the leading teacher at Ken Mathews and the principle choreographer.

Dr.  Carl Ridd would help me return to University of Winnipeg. I’d known nothing of the proper way to leave having felt that as I paid for the education and no longer wanted it like a unfinished meal I could leave it on the table.  There was however all manner of bureaucratic hoops to get me reinstated.  Poor Dr. Ridd.  He’d be my mentor and spiritual advisor so inspiring me to higher endeavours. My friends however would  one day  invite him to our apartment when we were all stoned and a little drunk. This was a great Christian leader who no doubt thought the experience anthropologically significant. I found it very awkward. I’d go on to be a straight A student studying more English, History and Shakespeare. I’d take one Biology course, the requisite science and fall in love with it. The next year I’d switch to all sciences.  I’d then consider medicine which came as the answer to a prayer in the University of Winnipeg chapel. 

I’d alsoalways  carry a a little framed picture  of the view out the window of Magdalene College Oxford, the medical student’s dorm where I chose scholarship over theatre and dance. Having  read The Glass Bead Game and become enamoured by the plays of T.S. Elliott and his poetry I was humbled and knew there was so much I needed to learn and that the university was a good place to begin,  I’d still teach some dancing and received some scholarship but with study and school and work it was a world that would pull me further and further from Baiba who continued to dance and party with our friends who felt I’d betrayed them by leaving the world of dance for the world of books.  

Baiba took a lover.  Vecsmamin was furious that I did not bring her home. She stayed out all night and Vecsmamin told me it was my job as a man to get her.  I went to the house of two men who’d joined the studio. One was sleaze ball, a 50’s throw off, greaseball in a suit acting debonair but with no class. The other guy if he’d not been shagging my wife would have been okay.  However when I arrived the party where all the booze was flowing and the music was loud.  Baiba and Bobby, was that  his name . bobby? were in the bed room. I walked in through the screen door and the grease ball told me to get out. 

« I’ve come to see my wife and am not leaving till I do. »

He pulled our a revolver and pointed it in my face.

« You’re going to leave right now our I’m going to blow your face off. »

I think my experiences with crazy Lonny and his gun and my growing up around real men always affected my attitude to cowards and losers with guns in their hands.  

I stared him in the eyes and said.

« I told you. I’m not leaving till I see my wife. If you want to pull that trigger go ahead. »

We were so into dares and playing chicken when we were young. I’d later drive my truck straight at another and watch him peel off in the ditch as I have this edge of insaniety that stood me later in good stead with my patients so many of who especially the criminals, ex military and dangerously insane who shared that trait. I just had a little better control and always played defence despite knowing the best defence is a good offence.

Baiba appeared deschevelled obviously having just scrambled into her clothes with Bobby following pulling up his pants. She stared at us, the ass, slowly lowering the gun from in front of my face. Someone had spurned off the music. Everything stopped. It was a tableau scene. 

« I’d like you to come home with me. »

« I’m staying’

« Vecsmamin told me to bring you home. »

« I’m staying. »

« Alright. »

I turned and left  then. She’d seen the gun in my face and the room mate back away when I didn’t back down.Bobby was just a little boy. Baiba was telling me in no uncertain terms she was unhappy.  

She didn’t like Winnipeg. We’d been staying in the basement of her mothers. I’d made it known I was applying to medical school and she simply didn’t want to be a medical students wife in Winnipeg where she’d already surpassed all the dance opportunities. Besides I’d almost traded her for a camel. I certainly couldn’t be trusted. 

She asked me to come with her to Toronto but I said I couldn’t.  I had support of faculty here and getting into medical school would be likely here and not so likely in Toronto.  I suspect I could have gone with her.  I could have tried for Toronto if I’d kept my faith in love. But she’d chosen Bobby and I’d had a gun in my face.  

I was more interested in scholarship and simply loved books, labs and biochemistry, and this whole other world that was opening to me. It was  so alien to the play world of the theatre and dance. I had become pretentious. I was going to be a missionary doctor. I was going to save the world.  

Baiba was wise to leave. I was an idiot to let her go.  But then life carried on. I moved out of Maija’s basement, a very awkward experience, having to wait a month to get the rent to get my own place.  Maija and Vecsmamin and the family were all so gracious.  Disappointed in me as I was in myself , self centred as I was. 

 Unloving I’d driven Baiba away yet to study pre med and medicine is a most narcissistic endeavour like preparing for the Olympics.  There can be no other gods.  To dream the impossible dreams. I was climbing my own Mount Everest. I had had a calling and I was going to do ‘my utmost for his highest’.  I was a thorough prick.  

Alone in my austere bachelor apartment next door to University of Winnipeg the cafeteria became my kitchen, the lounge my living room and the library my study. I lived and breathed chemistry, biochemistry, biology, physics , mathematics and then moved onto medicine. I had left my old love and had a new love. I was fickle but this new mistress was so utterly demanding and infinitely  rewarding.  

Nutcracker, Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Queen Elizabeth Theatre

Royal Winnipeg Ballet did an awesome performance of  Tchaikovsky “Nutcracker”.   Artistic Director Andre Lewis is to be commended royally. Choreographers Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon were amazing. Paul Daigle’s costume design was out of this world.  I loved the mice. The polar bear were terrific too but all the ballet dancers were colourfully costumed in what seemed perfect for each of their roles.  Brian Perchaluk, Scenic designer with Michael Whitfield lighting designer made the best of  sets that showcased so well all the performances.  The sleigh was terrific.

I loved all the dancers and all the performers.  They were simply outstanding.  The children were delightful.  All in all it was a fabulous evening. I was enchanted from beginning to end.  The intermission was a bit jarring given how captivated we were by the wonder of the production. The skill of the dancers was such that they made the most gruelling dance appear effortless.  

Tonight’s performance made me proud to be from Winnipeg.  I had had seasons tickets  to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet 40 years ago. I loved seeing the Nutcracker over and over again but this surpasses all I’ve seen before.  Tchaikovsky is timeless.  The music is so uplifting.  I love classic ballet. 

I love Ballet BC and so enjoy season’s tickets. I love that they hosted the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It was such a jolt of nostalgia.  I remembered fondly Arnold Sporr . All the men in the audience wore dark suits and the ladies wore great gowns back then. Winnipeg was such a sophisticated city and so supportive of the arts. .  I’ve enjoyed Ballet BC gaining the recognition and appreciation they deserve through the leadership of Emily and John. 

Thank you all for an unforgettable evening.  

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 Program 3, May 2016

"I and I and you” was choreographed by Jorma Elo to the music of Bach.  At first there was disorganization with dancers taking on grotesque inhuman shapes that at times reminded me of the frogs I pithed in the science lab. It was jarring and unaesthetic to my taste yet the music was divine.  Then slowly the most amazing transformation occurred as the dance became more elegant and orderly. The pas de dieux were traditional. The harsh softened into the lyrical and the piece ended with resolution of conflict and celebration of movement and dance.  A truly wonderful performance
At intermission the doors to the outdoor patio were opened so we could wander outside in the centre of Vancouver looking out at the CBC building and up at the half moon in the sky. As always the audience out did itself with studied fashion, a whole range of avant garde designer ward robes.  I can’t say it enough but "people watching" at Ballet BC is the very best fun in Vancouver. What a collection of characters and definitely some of the usual suspects.
"16 + a Room” choreographed by Emily Molnar in collaboration with artists of Ballet BC to the music composed and arranged by Dirk P. Haubrich was in stark contrast to the first piece.  “We are all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain to make a pattern” quotation of Virginia Woolf accompanied the piece.  Harsh, bleak and Kaffkaesque the dancers seemed trapped in a prison like space with an individual holding a sign, “This is the beginning”.  This seemed like a bit of hope juxtaposed with what seemed at times to be Dante’s Hell.  As the sense of a New York street, the urban anomie came through the performance, “This is the beginning” seemed more a curse. Then the lighting and sound effects took on a flavour of helicopters and war.  I thought of the UN’s Agenda 21 with the aim to round up people in camps like the Pol Pot had,  in an attempt to protect holy mother earth from human infestation.  Dancers fleed from side to side but there seemed only the tangled space of encroaching borders and a new sign as equally enigmatic, “This is not the end”. The curtain closed.
Applause and more applause.  “That’s what I like,” said a young man beside me at the coffee bar where I was buying chocolate to sweeten the experience, “Intense,” he said "I liked the intensity of that piece”.  It was definitely intense I thought contemplating suicide.
My companion laughed when I said I could use with a little Swan Lake about now.  
Emily Molnar ensured we got something more and together all of the program made an organic whole
“Bill" was a Canadian premiere but first performed by the Batsheva Dance Company. Choreography was by Sharon Eval, born in Jerusalem, and Gai Behar of Tel Aviv. The music was by Ori Lichtik.
A single male dancer in white strutted almost smaltzilly across the stage. The music was East European Middle Eastern and each move of the dancer’s body was unique display of peacock finery.  As more dancer’s came on stage there was a shifting of music to increasing drums. At one point the dancers seemed like a collection of prehistoric birds calling cries to one another as they congregated. Again they transformed to a tribal grouping.  I found myself thinking of Africa.   Amazing choreography.  So much for the eye.  A group moving in ritual here while another combination of dancers erupted off to the side as three or more interpreted the music centre stage, layers upon layers with individuals flying off to the sides only to coalesce in the amazing drum beat.  A primitive chief arose, then it was as if Basheba had graced the stage.  Ancient movements of utter sensuality contrasting with the rhythmic abrupt frenzied patterns danced in the background. It was a kaleidoscope of dance that crescendoed to the falling of the curtain.
The whole audience erupted  in applause bursting to their feet with bravos and more. .  Bows and bows and more bows were made by the appreciative dancers. Everyone loved the piece.
What a wonderful night.
Outside I found my friend waxing poetic about the incredible emotional ride the collected works had provided. He especially loved the last one and was explaining the symbolism he saw to the beautiful young dancer who accompanied him.    We joined in, excited.  Voices entwining like dance.   It was all so novel, so visual and moving. Then we were laughing, parting, waving good byes and off to our cars.
What an incredible night at the Ballet.  Ballet BC, thank you.  Emily Molnar, Thank you.  Thank you to all of the dancers.

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.

 

Swan Lake - National Ballet of China

It's been 40 years or more since I performed as an extra in The Royal Winnipeg Ballet performance of Swan Lake. I'll never forget the extraordinary performance of Baryshikov of the Bolshoi some years later. Karen Kain forever enchanted me with her Swan Lake performances with Canada's National Ballet . Now having loved many Swan Lakes, Tchaikovsky's music so enthralling, I have been truly uplifted by the divine dance of Prima Ballerina, Wang Qimin of the National Ballet of China.
The troupe collectively danced near perfection. The costumes and set were beyond spectacular. No dance was more deserving of its standing ovations. Thank you Ballet BC for hosting this incredible classical performance !

Old Blind Dog

It's raining on deck. I'm here in the cozy warm with the diesel stove flames dancing light.  The heat is distributed by the helicopter fan twirling atop the stove. I'm listening to Old Blind Dog's New Tricks Album and the Collection.  The instrumentals of whistle, drum and violin are haunting celtic.  Now the Bedlam Boys song of ancient highland is playing.
I've been reading the wonderful writing of my friend Anne Lindsay.  In northern cabins she had us all playing a background of strings so she could weave her flute tapestry in the sound. Now she's painting pictures of Moroccan bazaars with her Kirkcubright pen. I've just been reading too in Peter Newman's, The Company of Adventurers of the northern Scots lads who came out to Canada with the Hudson Bay Company.
It's been a long couple of days with 50 patients a clinic.
I'm wondering why I've been so long not playing my guitar. It's not something I do well but I have enjoyed it so.  Hearing the Old Blind Dog I remember first seeing them that July weekend so many years ago in Port Coquitlam at the annual Scottish Cultural Festival where extraordinarily strong boys where tossing the timber, flinging telephone posts about like they were toothpicks.  I dream one day of seeing and hearing Old Blind Dog in Scotland.
I've thought it would be grand to sail to the shores  grandparents left to come to Canada.  I'd not be the first to go back that way.  I read of a Danish man and his wife  doing this from Victoria there for no other reason than that his life was enriched by the effort.  I love a tale and an adventure to go with it.  The years run down and the costs of such endeavours always seem too high but when one sets a mind to such a thing it carries through.  God works in mysterious ways.  I did love meeting the elderly gent who sailed solo from Britain to the Maritimes in his 80's.  There's time enough and more.
Old Blind Dog is fiddling the Ferret Set from the New Tricks album. It's got me missing dancing now. So much of my life has been devoted to work and more work and more learning to do more work.  I've no regrets about the work. It's a gift to heal and the education I've had to that end has been unsurpassed.  It's second nature now. There's so much I've learned.  It's a tapestry and a fiddling tune for sure.  I've done a mighty fine jig at times to keep death distracted. I've been privilege to miracles.  Watched the dead rise.  So much sacred in the mundane. All the reductionism of the fearful can't contain the glory of a single moment of those times.
I remember delivering that Inuit baby in Churchill.  The same place where the polar bears chased me.  A night in an igloo with a wild Irish man singing songs of the old country while a blizzard blew outside.  Then there was the home visits in the Mariana Islands where the mad carried machetes they'd used insanely.  I climbed a coconut tree. We drank the delicious juice.
And today I thought of the camel I rode in Israel seeing the camel Anne had jockeyed on her face book page.  Those bazaars with the boys carrying fresh baked flat breads on their heads days before Moroccan Ramadan descended in the old city go unforgotten.
Who'd have guessed I'd be in harbour aboard a steel ocean crossing sailboat with a diesel stove keeping out the cold.  This is a rich and blessed life. I'm so grateful for all the permutations and combinations. Thank you for the music, poetry, dance and song.  It  lifts my heart to hear Old Blind Dog.

Ballet BC -Bliss

Laura and I enjoyed the Ballet BC performance Bliss. It was a world premiere by Montreal Choreographer Jose Navas. It was a neo classical peice with Mozart music, girls on endless point and robust men making flying leaps across the stages.  So unique in it's mixture of old and new styles it was almost baroque.  True genius in conception with the dancers performing brilliantly.
It was still light out when we arrived.  I was surprised at the spring 'skin' with ladies no longer wearing stockings, sandals and bare legs for all. We looked a pale lot rain tanned by Vancouver winter and only now breaking out in light cottons and spring frocks.  We found it hard to leave the outdoor deck chairs  this Saturday night.  The Ballet BC has a loyal following with seats packed despite no doubt drawing tonight's crowd from barbecues and beeches.
This was a grand and timely season finale. I look forward to next year's offering already having my Ballet BC season tickets.  I can't imagine how anyone survives Vancouver winters without Ballet BC.  The dancers always lighten the darkness and celebrate the body electric.

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.

Ballet BC - Three Fold

Another sensational night at the ballet.  Diversion by Robert Glumbeck was original and intriguing with extraordinary modern dance.  Walter Matteini's Parole Sospese was downright weird in the best of way. Right out there.  Existential wonderland.  Simone Orlando's Doppeling was retro at it's finest.  Normally I'm simply enthralled by Maikalla Wallace, Alexis Fletcher, Dario Dinuzzi,  and Gilbert Small.  I love the wisdom of their experienced dance interpretation. Yet tonight all the members of the company stood out.  Rachel Meyer was so fresh, Andrea Pena passionate and Alyson Fretz sophisticated in a particularly European way.  Connor Gnam and Alexander Burton were particularly outstanding.  Rachel Prince, Peter Smida, Maggie Fogeron, Livona Ellis, Jed Duifhuis, Chisto Ide, Daniel Marshalsay, and Darren Devaney all were a delight. I'm sorry I can't put faces to names with some of the older and some of newer members because all their pas de deux, leaps and lifts deserved individual mention after tonights superb dance performance.  I truly think that Bach would love what Simone Orlando did for his timeless music. Kate Burrows, Linda Chow and Ina Broeckx's costume designs were genius. Artistic Director Emily Molnar continues to inspire. We are truly blessed by her and Executive Director, Jay Rankin's vision.  Tonight Fasken Martineau was celebrated as Season Sponsor.

Ballet BC - Elton John

Tonight's ballet was a one in a million.  Emilene Molnar, artistic director of Ballet BC, welcomed Alberta Ballet to Vancouver. "Love Lies Bleeding"choreography and libretto by Jean Claude Maitre , featuring music of Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin was a resounding success. Costume Design by Martine Bertrand was way over the top, just the way Elton would have liked it. Set design by Guaillame Lord was equally spectacular.  With all the glitz, verve and downright sexy show biz, the incredible form and style of the impressive dancers still shone through. "Rocket Man" was my favourite but then I've loved always loved the song. The  choreography and starlit dance  added a whole new dimension to my appreciation of the genius of Elton John and Taupin.  I'm sure the pas de dieux of two men was the most elegant I've seen in modern ballet.  I was almost in tears at the performance of "Someone saved my life tonight" It's a show not to miss. Packed audience tonight but another night to go with a few seats left.

http://www.balletbc.com/loveliesbleeding.html

Ballet BC 25th Anniversary Celebration

Ballet BC 25th Anniversary Celebration with Ballet BC and The Turning Point Ensemble with Conductor Owen Underhill is playing April 14 to 16 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tonight was a rare treat. Artistic Director Emily Molnar opened the evening with thanks to the founders Jean Orr, David Y. H. Lui, Sheila Baggs, and present executive producer, Jay Rankin, the sponsors, contributors and audience.
4 original Canadian productions.. Les chercheurs de dieu choreographed by Serge Bennathan opened powerfully with a hint of whimsical.  The Turning Point Ensemble on stage participating with dancers silouetted in a night of magnificent lighting and costume.  I was moved, captivated, enthralled.  Dance and sound joined in heavenly wonder with moments of sheer profundity. Donald Sales and Makaila Wallace with all the dancers touched my very soul.
In Motion with choreographer Wen Wei Wang with music by Owen Underhill, Geometry of Harmoney filled the stage with big body movement of dancers together but little hand movements fluttering in the light.  Contemporary music and contemporary dance living and breathing as one. I love the dance of Leon Feizo Gas.
Moth, choreographed by Donald Sales spoke to loss with candelight and grief. Costumes in black and red.  Dancers Livona Ellis, Shannon Ferguson, Maggie Forgeron, Delphine Leroux, Peter Smida and Makaila Wallace.
Finally, Touch, choreographed by Gioconda Barbuto, music Anthony Genge, The Human Condition.  Alexis Fletcher, Gilbert Small, Rachel Prince were outstanding as were all the dancers.  15 dancers at least in the company, participating together, en mass, alone and as pas de deuxs..
The applause was enormous.  Yet somehow no standing ovation, not that the night did not deserve one but because we  all seemed mesmerized.. It was a magical evening of truly professional performance that left us feeling moved andthoughtful.  Throughout the year we've ushered from the theatre laughing at times, talking loudly about the brilliance of Ballet BC, delighted by the performances and grateful to be among the beautiful people at this greatest of gala events. Tonight, with the season ending, there was sadness, such a perfect season of incredible breadth and charm  had hardly been imaginable after the trials of the previous year.
Time to buy seasons tickets for next year. Without seasons tickets I would miss so many wonderful shows because frankly on Friday night or Saturday in the winter rain and cold It would be so much easier to stay home and watch tv.  With seasons tickets I'm moved to go, the decison made.   Vancouver is a richer more cultured and complete experience thanks to Ballet BC.  I lose myself in amazement at the sculptured sensations of movement and elegance..

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Ballet BC

March 18 -19, 2011, Ballet BC presents the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Judith Jamison Artistic Director.  Emily Molnar, Artistic Director of Ballet BC opened tonight's unforgettable evening  welcoming  the Alvin Ailley African American troupe as part of Ballet BC's 25 Anniversary Season.  Emily Molnar graciously put  in a plug for this season's  last performance of Ballet BC next month with Canada's chamber orchestra, Turning Point Ensemble.
Then the curtain rose to the spectacular opening number, "Memoria" , dedicated to joy,  with Alvin Ailley's unique modern dance.  Such long limbed women and powerfully muscled men.  "Cry" choreographed by Alvin Ailley, celebrated black women everywhere.  The Hunt choreographed by Robert Battle was stylized  primal male tribal dance that had the audience leaping to their feet with resounding applause.   Tall people with high lifts and long leaps.  "Revelations," from 1960,  Gospel music and a history of black women and men in dance in the American south was a story in magnificent movement  Costumes, lighting, dance, everything was truly splendid.  It was an exhilerating experience.
Two or three decades back, I first saw Alvin Ailley American Dance Theater perform in Winnipeg. I never forgot that glorious night and often spoke of it.  Seeing tonights performance I understood why it so moved me that first time. It still does today.

Robbie Burns Dinner

It was another fine night at the Scottish Cultural Centre. This year's Robbie Burns Dinner was most memorable for the children. There were gaggles of them. The young dancers were out in full force and never was the haggis piped in sweeter. The toast to the Haggis was delivered with appropriate flair. Laura gave me her haggis and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the roast beef dinner with that added special something, called Haggis, but an acronym for Holy, Ascending, God of God, Intestinal, Solution. If only everyone on earth would eat Haggis there would be peace on earth, good will to men and general enlightenment and increased intelligence and beauty in the rest of the world. As the man beside said, there are really only two types of people, those who are Scottish and those who want to be. The man across the table told a joke about an octopus that could play every musical instrument but when offered the bag pipes didn't realize they were a musical instrument but instead thought it was an octopus wearing a fancy night gown. Many men wore kilts and the ladies were dressed most beautifully with amber broaches a plenty. Laura had pressed heather earrings and I had my most marvelous dirk that comes accompanied with a fork and small knife. The scots are a practical lot or the weapon is meant to put fear in the enemies as it suggests that we're ready to eat you if we have to fight you. Ski in doos were the ornate socks knives that were as common tonight as the Sporin's. The Mad Celts played Highland Dances, waltz's, twists, Gay Gordons and the YMCA song. One minute were were doing the jerk to a sixties song, then we were doing the latest line dance from the slums of Glasgow they we were in a circle doing group dances being called, though no one seemed to pay much attention to the directions, as there was confused bumping about with much laughter. It was a wild night of great hilarity. I danced with an elderly lady who remembered me from last year when we'd tripped the light fantastic. The Scottish Cultural Centre has dances Friday nights and we must make a point to get out to them. Apparently some of the people had been given cheat notes for a couple of the numbers where most of the rest of us milled about and laughed a lot. Laura and I jived but there was a young couple who really did cut up the rug with the latest in ball room coupled with youth. The kids were dancing with the grand parents too. It was that sort of really fun dance. On the other hand it may just have been the Haggis.

Ballet BC IGNITE!

The standing ovation said it all. Emily Molnar's, World Premiere, Dedica, was contemporary ballet at it's finest. Rich in symbolism and flowing with powerful emotion the dancers performed sensationally individually and as a troop falling, twisting, turning, frollicking and leaping with sheer abandon. Arms, legs, heads and torsos reeled with grace and poise to the joyful strains of Vivaldi. What pleasure it was to see the Ballet BC dancers back after such a threat to the company. Makaila Wallace,Shannon Smith, Donald Sales, Alexis Fletcher, Shannon Ferguson, Leon Feizo-Gas, Maggie Forgeron, Racheal Prince, Marianne Bauer-Grobbelaar, Delphine Leroux, Gilbert Small, Peter Smida, and Connor Gnam with apprentices, Alyson Fretz and Alex Parrett. These are truly great names of dance.

In addiction, dancers from the National Ballet of Canada, artistic director, Karen Kain, performed classical works like the delightful Pas de Deux from Sleeping Beauty. Guillaume Cote danced as powerfully as Tchaikovsky's music while Heather Ogden created beauty with the delicacy of her every move. The Pas de Deux from Lady of the Camellias to Chopin was danced most touchingly by Sonia Rodriguez and Piotr Stanczyk. Their opening piece was the George Balanchine Apollo in which Three Muses, Calliope of Poetry danced by Jillian Vanstone, Polyhymnia of Mime, danced by Stacey Shiori Minagawa and Terpsichore of Dance and Song, instruct the young God, Apollo danced by Guillaume Cote.

The first intermission followed this number and the vestibule was buzzing with appreciation.

Dr. Leslie of the Board had proudly shouted ,"Ballet BC is Back!" to cheers before introducing Jay Rankin from Toronto Dance Theatre as the new Executive Director and Emily Molnar as the new interim artistic director. Jay and Emily expressed their heartfelt thanks to all the Ballet BC supporters.

The atmosphere was one of almost family festivity as friends celebrated together this grand community event. For whatever reason the ladys had collectively come out in the finest display of beautiful shoes possibly to be seen in Vancouver. Compared to opera and theatre the ballet audiences are above and beyond the most tastefully and interestingly dressed. Intermission people watching was at a premium as everyone somehow knew this was one of those rare nights that would be long remembered.

Ballet BC http://www.balletbc.com/ the National Ballethttp://www.national.ballet.ca/ with the works of Karen Kain and Emily Molnar and dancers of the finest orders, We were truly priviledged to be present. It portends so well for the rest of the season. Ballet BC certainly is ignited!