A boundary-stretching work of Genus
National Ballet performing North American premiere of top choreographer’s work
If past experience is any guide the National Ballet of Canada can look forward to another major success in Wednesday’s North American premiere of Genus, a prodigally inventive, physically thrilling ballet by British international A-list choreographer Wayne McGregor.
It’s likely to be the big draw in a mixed bill that includes shorter works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and company choreographic associate Robert Binet.
Though essentially abstract, so far as a work populated by living bodies can ever be truly abstract, the 45minute Genus is inspired by McGregor’s fascination with science.
Specifically, McGregor says his imagination was spurred reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. It’s the magisterial tome whose 1859 publication blew apart prevailing theories about the divine advent of humankind and emitted shock waves that penetrated almost every corner of intellectual inquiry.
“Genus was one of my early ballet pieces,” McGregor says. “There’s always something that sparks the act of imagination and gets you motivated to get in the studio and start trying things out. I was interested to see how a ballet vocabulary could morph and mutate through a series of iterations, different kinds of physical attitudes, and all that seemed to coalesce around this idea of what is the origin of something.”
When the company first danced a McGregor piece in November 2010 audiences responded with deafening approval. It created a buzz that sounded far beyond the regular ballet crowd and lured a notably younger audience into that sanctuary of mostly high art, the Four Seasons Centre.
That work was Chroma, originally made in 2006 for the Royal Ballet. It was on the strength of Chromaand to the surprise of many, given McGregor’s non-ballet background in experimental contemporary dance, that he was soon named resident choreographer with the venerable British troupe.
The National Ballet was privileged to be the first of what are now several international companies beyond the Royal Ballet to dance Chroma, a privilege repeated with Genus, which began life a decade ago at the Paris Opera Ballet.
“Lots of people have asked for Genus,” McGregor says during a rehearsal break, “but I like (National Ballet artistic director) Karen Kain a lot and somehow this felt like the right moment. Also, we get the time we need here, which is always important, and I feel the dancers have a voracious appetite for the new, so they’re really a pleasure to work with.”
Chroma, with its strikingly architectural John Pawson set and equally space-shaping Lucy Carter lighting, deployed a propulsive score by Britain’s Joby Talbot, sections of it “reimaginings” of songs by Detroit garage-rock revivalists the White Stripes.
Talbot, in company with American composer Deru (a.k.a. Benjamin Wynn), is also responsible for the atmospheric score featured in Genus, music in part shaped by the composers’ imagined recreation of natural sounds, but McGregor is quick to emphasize that the two ballets are notably distinct.
“Genus is a very different kind of piece,” McGregor explains. “It’s a very different temperature from Chroma.”
Although video artist Ravi Deepres and designer Vicki Mortimer reference some of Darwin’s inquiries, McGregor insists Genus is neither biographical nor literal. Yet, in an art form such as ballet where survival of the fittest is inherent, Darwin’s theories might seem a natural.
However, it was more than a fascination with origins and evolution that sparked McGregor’s choreographic imagination. He was also enthralled by a late 20th-century ana- tomical investigation, the Visible Human Project, which provided new insights into the technology of the body, its structure and workings.
“I always have lots of ideas buzzing around,” says McGregor with almost schoolboyish enthusiasm. “With a new piece things sort of hover in the air, but there’s always an ideal moment for them and they kind of conspire to make themselves.”
All this could sound a teeny bit egg- heady but, as those familiar with McGregor’s work already know, the sheer physical excitement of his choreography, its speed and unfamiliar articulations, the way he reshapes and pushes the limits of human movement, is reward in itself.
Still, McGregor thinks it’s helpful and even important for audiences in search of deeper insight to know about the process, about where he’s coming from.
“I’m happy for audiences to navigate their own way through,” McGregor says, “but what I do want to do is for them to actively watch, to ask ‘What do I see?’ I might see two bodies in competition or a body that is morphing out of a box.
“Genus really is a strong dance work. It’s the physical language that signifies the most stuff, but it’s in a context that hopefully imbues it with other meaning, which I think is interesting as a kind of debate in the head or a question. Why is that happening like that? Why did you place that like that? It keeps the mind active.” Genus is at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W., March 29 to April 2; national.ballet.ca or 416-345-9595 or 1-866-345-9595.