Ballet BC shape-shifts, surprises

DANCE PROGRAM 3 A Ballet BC presentation. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Thursday, May 11. No remaining performances

A true test of an audience’s support 2 is interaction, and judging by the number of people who threw themselves into Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16 on opening night of Program 3, Ballet BC is doing just fine, thank you very much.

Those who saw Naharin’s Batsheva Dance Company perform at Dancehouse in 2009 witnessed the thrilling opening excerpt of Minus 16: a half-circle of 16 seated, black-suited and -hatted dancers who create a sort of repeated human wave, arching violently backward as if lightning bolts were hitting them, one by one, to the music’s pounding folk rhythms. But with typical Naharin black humour, the last one falls flat, dead, on the floor with each round.

Naharin, whose 1999 work still manages to surprise, has more tricks up his sleeve, too. Scott Fowler performs a wonky soft-shoe to zootsuit jazz during intermission. Emily Chessa and Brandon Alley pull off a sensual duet full of strange, unearthly lifts to Antonio Vivaldi’s baroque strains. To the considerable delight of the assembled, footwear, hats, and clothes eventually come off, thrown in giant arcs to rain down at centre stage. And then the dancers have to push right out of their comfort zones, into cheesy mambos and Dean Martin territory, fearlessly venturing out into the crowd to find partners. By the end you had nonprofessional dancers, old and young, cheerfully givin’er alongside the pros.

That this highly honed crew could pull off both Naharin’s explodingfrom-the-core movement and the ballroom work, plus take such comedic glee in the audience interaction, speaks to the troupe’s incredible range. The payoff was huge.

Minus 16 lets off a bit of steam after an evening dense with complex choreography and music.

Emily Molnar’s new Keep Driving, I’m Dreaming is a swirling, mindbending delirium set to Montreal composer Nicole Lizée’s layered, cinematic score.

True to its title, it follows the logic of a dream, the dancers leaning perilously off-centre, running backward, and partnering like they’re just flashes of memory. The performers are as liquid as the concepts of time and space here, Chessa and Alley again the fluid standouts amid the ever-shifting tableaux.

Driving it all is the eerie, elaborate soundscape, with sumptuous strings and jazzy lilts that evoke a hundred old movie thrillers.

It was a lot to take in, and so was Emanuel Gat’s new LOCK. At times, absorbing the 16-dancer effect is like trying to comprehend the particle theory of matter, watching all those flickering limbs and perceiving the forces that seem to pass through the sculptural mass.

This is a pure experiment in complex, nonunison movement, heightened by Gat’s own industrial-tinged, atonal score and shadowy lighting. The dancers have an odd, zombielike remove, often partnering without touching each other at all.

It’s existential and intense to the point of being exhausting. Still, you can’t help but marvel at the precision, commitment, and versatility of these shape-shifting dancers.