In Conversation With... Ballet Kelowna’s artistic director
Simone Orlando is the artistic director and CEO of Ballet Kelowna. Founded in 2002, Ballet Kelowna is the sole professional dance company in the B.C. Interior and annually performs for more than 10,000 audience members in Kelowna and on tour. It encourages, promotes and develops Canadian dancers and choreographers while providing unique dance training opportunities and outreach programs.
Orlando is an award-winning choreographer and former dancer with Ballet BC and The National Ballet of Canada, and was the first choreographer commissioned to create a new work for the company in 2005 before she became artistic director in 2014.
She took time from rehearsals for Elle: Extraordinary Dance Created by Women to talk to Daily Courier reviewer J.P. Squire.
COURIER: It’s a time when women’s vision is roaring to the forefront across a range of artistic endeavours. And now we have Elle. Coincidence or do you have a crystal ball?
ORLANDO: Our programming happens a year or two in advance. For a lot of our productions, we’re applying for grants in advance. This has been in the works for quite a while. The organization has really had a proud history of promoting women in dance and female choreographers. In the ballet world, you don’t often see women being commissioned to create works in the big ballet companies.
COURIER: And your choice of Gioconda Barbuto for Rooms, Alysa Pires for Mambo, Michael Oesterie for Folie a Cinq and Andrew Boyd for Glas?
ORLANDO: These are choreographers who are both emerging and established and working today in Canada and creating some of the best work, period. As a choreographer myself, it has been challenging for me to find opportunity, and I feel very lucky in a sense that the former director of Ballet BC John Layne as well as former artistic director of Ballet Kelowna David LeHay were two directors who really supported what I was doing at that time where others really weren’t providing an opportunity.
COURIER: Gioconda Barbuto is an example of that.
ORLANDO: She is a very established choreographer who has created over 50 works. She’s really had to fight in a way to find opportunity within ballet companies in particular because it’s just not something that’s very common. There definitely have been barriers that we (she and Barbuto) have experienced. One, it’s important to promote good work, first and foremost. And second, in the case of Alysa Pires, it just so happens that all of this good work is being created by women. There is some gender inequality within the ballet world, but in the world of contemporary dance and with smaller companies in Canada (some run by choreographers), you see a lot of women. But in those bigger institutions, it still seems to be a world somewhat dominated by male choreographers.
COURIER: In that way, Ballet Kelowna is leading the way.
ORLANDO: It’s providing an opportunity for someone like Alysa Pires, who is an emerging choreographer, to get some experience working with a ballet company. She has already had experience just recently doing a choreography workshop for The National Ballet Company of Canada but seeing her bridge into and start working for the ballet companies in this country and maybe beyond.
COURIER: And her dance, Mambo?
ORLANDO: The work that she has created is incredibly contemporary, which I think is fantastic. The dancers are in bare feet — they are not in pointe shoes. It’s not about tutus. It’s not about tiaras. I think the work that we are trying to produce on this program is really the ballet of today. And it’s really meant to be reflective of where society and where culture is at today.
COURIER: And what is your reaction so seeing Elle come together?
ORLANDO: I feel incredibly proud of this program. When you are commissioning new work as an artistic director, you’re kind of taking a leap of faith. You don’t know what that end product, so to speak, is going to be. There is so much riding on it. And in this case, I think both of the works have incredible artistic merit. They are unique and they also challenge the dancers, both very physical and very athletic.
It’s a win-win situation on both sides. It pushes our dancers to become better dancers, better artists, more athletic, (all four choreographers) pushing the art form alone on so many different levels and elevating the reputation of Ballet Kelowna. We are creating work right here that’s stamped Made in Kelowna. The rest of the country is going: “Oh, let’s check out what Ballet Kelowna is doing?” The Globe and Mail listed this show as one of the hottest tickets across the country. So we are getting that national recognition.
COURIER: And your reaction to see these two works come together?
ORLANDO: When I saw the very first run-through of Gioconda’s piece in the studio, I did get teary-eyed because you know you’re watching something for the very first time. And you’re seeing something that has been in the works for two years. You see it suddenly come to life. It is magical. It really is. On Friday night, just those people sitting in the audience will be the very first audience to see this work come to life on stage with all of the lights and all of the costumes. That’s not something that you can ever repeat, that moment.
COURIER: And where will you sit on Friday night? Backstage, watching the dancers, or in the theatre seats, gauging the audience’s reaction?
ORLANDO: I stand at the back of the theatre close to the production table so I can see and get a sense of what that audience response is. But oftentimes, the dancers tell me they actually hear the audience better than I can because everyone is obviously facing the stage. Certainly in the productions that we’ve done in the past year, the feedback that I get from the dancers is like: “Oh my gosh, the audience was so excited tonight. They were laughing or they were clapping.”
That’s the other interesting thing about live performance. (I don’t know if the audience realizes this,) but the dancers really pick up on the energy of the audience. If that theatre is full and you hear people talking loudly before the curtain comes up and you get the sense that people are excited about what they are about to see, that resonates with the performers and that nudges them up. It’s really a reciprocal kind of engagement. That’s the difference between live performance and sitting at home watching a dance production on TV. There’s not that same kind of energy or dynamic.