Young new energy fuels Ballet BC’s season opener
dancers shuffling, heads down, in the eerie beginning, then letting loose in stark spotlights and clouds of steam later on.
Barton’s BUSK, which she originally created for her own Aszure Barton & Artists, makes an ideal pairing with Inger’s multilayered offering. The Canadian-born, Los Angeles– based choreographer’s intricate, multitasking movement allows for multiple readings.
On one level, it plays on the idea of busking, especially in Justin Rapaport’s expressive opening solo, with its white gloves and bowler hat. But Barton has also said she was inspired by the Spanish word buscar, “to search”, and there’s a yearning and reaching that underlies the creation.
Gorgeously innovative group work abounds, with the dancers wearing hoods and interweaving their limbs together on the floor, huddling against the world. They resemble the homeless masses at one moment, or, at others, move along the stage like a mass of monks in some otherworldly ritual. The soundtrack, an eclectic mix of Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin’s Romany-style violas and men’s folk choir (Sweden’s Orphei Dränger and Eric Ericson), adds to the dark-carnival feel.
Barton uses all parts of the body, often at the same time, heads pivoting back and forth, legs and arms stretching and bending in opposing force, then collapsing, slumping, and loosening. The result is often a rich spectrum of emotion in a single, complex phrase; just watch the fluidity of feeling in Scott Fowler’s solo, from a kind of hunger to melancholy to resilience.
Humans are complicated, and in their poetic creations, both Barton and Inger seem to capture all those colours in the most entertaining of ways.