How the pandemic inspired detour from stage to screen
Call it the dance that keeps on giving.
Robert Binet’s “The Dreamers Ever Leave You,” inspired by the stark northern landscapes of painter Lawren Harris, began life in August 2016 as an immersive dance experience at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Audiences roamed freely around and between three long dance mats laid on the floor of the AGO’s Signy Eaton Gallery, offering an unusually intimate and shifting perspective on the solos and duets performed by a cast of 13 National Ballet of Canada dancers.
The almost otherworldly experience was enhanced by Lubomyr Melnyk’s “continuous piano” score, played live by the composer, and Simon Rossiter’s atmospheric lighting.
The following year, “Dreamers” received its overseas premiere in a joint performance with dancers from England’s Royal Ballet in the vast, repurposed Printworks in London’s former docklands. Then in February 2018, Binet, a National Ballet choreographic associate, remodelled the work for a traditional theatre as part of the company’s mainstage season. Later the same year the company took it on tour to Hamburg, Germany. That fall, “Dreamers” was back in an art gallery in Algoma, performed by National Ballet apprentices.
Then Binet’s ballet had a hiatus until the company, taking advantage of what proved to be a short-lived easing of public health restrictions, planned to present “Dreamers” for a small-capacity, physically distanced presentation in Harbourfront Centre’s Brigantine Room.
One day into the scheduled run last October, we were back in lockdown. The National Ballet had already planned to film this version of “Dreamers” and was able to do so even though public performances were cancelled.
“It was a complex problem to solve,” says Binet, who had to remodel his ballet yet again to satisfy public-health authorities that everyone involved would be kept safe. “But I love a challenge. Fortunately, it’s an inherently flexible ballet and can work in a lot of different scenarios.”
This reimagining of Binet’s “Dreamers” is the latest addition to the National Ballet’s Spotlight Series of free online programming. If all had gone according to plan, the series would already have included a program of brand new works by Alysa Pires, Jera Wolfe and Kevin Ormsby, the latter two in their National Ballet choreographic debuts.
Although these commissioned works are ready to roll, shifting public-health guidelines have constrained the company’s freedom to rehearse and film them. There have been repeated postponements. Ever the optimist, National Ballet executive director Barry Hughson hopes they will be ready to release by the end of March.
On Thursday, the company announced yet more commissions, from Jennifer Archibald and Vanesa Garcia-Ribala Montoya in their first National Ballet engagements; by company principal dancer Brendan Saye and ranking male principal dancer Guillaume Côté, already an established choreographer with major full-length works to his credit.
Meanwhile, artistic director Karen Kain has dipped into the National Ballet’s video archive to assemble several attractive programs, excerpted from existing repertoire and arranged thematically in short mixed bills.
So far, these have included a program focusing on renowned contemporary choreographers Alexei Ratmansky, Jiri Kylian and Wayne McGregor, another featuring highlights from emotionally charged dance-dramas derived from literature, and a technically sparkling program called “Classical Gems.”
Later this month, the company will release a program devoted to one of Kain’s favourite choreographers, John Neumeier.