Fear inspires new dance creation
Soto’s recent illness and response inspires Eight Years of Silence
Ballet B.C.’s resident choreographer Cayetano Soto’s new work Eight Years of Silence is inspired by an emotion we all feel — fear.
The new piece, along with the North American premiere of choreographer Johan Inger’s B.R.I.S.A., opens Ballet B.C.’s 2017/18 season on Nov. 2.
“While it is very personal this feeling, it is also very universal. At the end of the day, everybody will go to that feeling. We all have fears,” said Soto.
A recent illness and his response to it became the foundation of the new work.
“We start at a very complicated moment of my life and through the choreography we will work through the very hard and complicated things, but the result has to be very easy,” said Soto about the one-act piece. “The people don’t see the trick.”
Soto likes to work from dark to light, take us from our worst days to our best. In the Barcelona-based artist’s world, life’s complications can lead to something beautiful.
“I always like to give a negative point then see how we can transform it, because in all of our lives everything is about transformation. Every moment we transform, constant movement,” said Soto.
Ballet B.C. dancer Scott Fowler welcomes Soto’s evolving dance language and sees a piece like this new one as just the type of work he craves.
“It’s always a journey, but that’s a great thing. That’s why I dance — to find a new journey and to experience something that I might not know,” said Fowler, who is in his sixth year with the Vancouver company.
Working with Ballet B.C. since 2014 Soto is always eager to come back here to this company.
“British Columbia and Canada is very lucky to have Emily (Molnar, artistic director) and Ballet B.C. right now on the map. The work they are doing is unbelievable,” said Soto. “I feel Emily and me, we speak the same language. She is such an inspiration. We have to look at the world. It’s important to be contemporary.”
Soto’s introduction of a new piece to the company begins with a small, often-familiar movement/phrase. The dancers are then asked to work together and build from that base.
“Tangents start to happen and new things are exposed and then that’s how he kind of takes the dance and the artistry and style into a new work,” said Fowler. “He starts with one thing then, like branches on a tree, he will start with that one base or one route and build.”
While his relationship is still fairly young, Soto is confident when it comes to this company’s dancers’ growing relationship to his work.
“The thing is you start to know better all the colours you have to play with,” said Soto who also designed lighting and the costumes for this new piece.
“I see the company here like a rainbow because they have so many colours. The dancers here are like chameleons and they are changing constantly.”
By giving the dancers a lot of input and room to inform works, Soto is asking them to push themselves and discover other threads in the story.
“He demands a lot creativewise and physicality-wise and it takes you to new places in your artistry and new places in your instincts, your gut feelings,” said Fowler.
“Things come out of you you weren’t planning on. It takes the process to these other places that weren’t pre-conceived and that’s what I think he wants to find in people.
“He gives you the liberty to try and fail and try and succeed.”
“It’s very challenging but there’s a very rejuvenating and exciting aspect to his work always,” added Fowler. “It really makes you go back and think how you want to do things and how you want to react to people and what you want to say to them on stage.”