EMOTIONAL POWERHOUSES
Alberta Ballet performance tells timeless tales of lives lived with robust intent
Alberta Ballet held an unveiling of sorts on opening night at the Jubilee Auditorium, as fans lined up quite early to see a rare performance of a Jírí Kylián work entitled The Forgotten Land, followed by a much-anticipated world première of Yukichi Hattori’s Carmen.
At first glance, the two ballets seem to be cut from disparate cloth. However, both weave an underlying theme about the outsider, amid strong recurrent leitmotifs of loneliness and strength of the human spirit.
All in all, it was a splendid night of inward reflection, yet always bound up with plenty of artistically visceral moments to take away from these remarkable performances.
Indeed, I’ve never heard so many people praising a ballet as they made their way out the doors of the Jubilee and into the parking lot.
Kylián’s Forgotten Land was lovely and mysterious, starkly evocative of a cascading tide overwhelming the land. Bleak at times, yet always eloquent in its six pairs of dancers individually clad in black, grey, beige, white, pink and red, the movements were arc-line drawings depicting the tidal forces of time over-sweeping the lives of those represented onstage.
Kylián set his dance closely to Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, a three-movement symphony mourning the dead, and more acutely, the memories of the departed, all represented by the erosive power of tidal forces obliterating a shoreline. The metaphor was clear throughout: Both music and dance were filled with syncopations, frequent angularity of line, both in its broad use of sevenths in the melody and arm extensions and swooping patterns in the dance. Contrasting movement included furious rhythms in the middle section matching intensely rapid, cross-floor footwork, but counteracted afterward with sublime harmonic textures which the dancers all emulated to gliding perfection.
At times, quite cleverly, such angularity could change meaning, such as when the white-clad couple (Reilley Bell and Chris Kaiser) took the stage in their concentrated, energetic pas de deux that seemed to provide a symbolic bulwark against the temporal ravages of the ocean’s erosive power.
John Macfarlane’s use of monochrome costumes and his dramatic roaring seaside backdrop derived from the darkly-hued palette of turn-of-the century Edvard Munch paintings such as Dancing on the Shore, the final image of which we are left in the beautiful ending to Kylián’s masterpiece.
Hattori’s Carmen was a perfect followup: adventurous, ambitious, and athletic — all attributes we have come to expect from his work.
What pleased me most was that Hattori didn’t reduce his choreographic/dramatic approach to a one-dimensional view of Carmen. With Hattori’s directorial vision, and thanks to exquisitely fine lighting by Pierre Lavoie and glowing costumes by Yannick Larivée, we received a more mature multi-dimensional treatment of literature’s most famous femme fatale, instead of a coquettish Carmen.
And it couldn’t have been pulled off better by anyone other than the multi-faceted Hayna Gutierrez. She danced Rodion Schedrin’s luminously re-orchestrated score with considerable maturity of phrase and resisted tedious descent into impersonating Bizet’s overplayed melodies — a tribute to Hattori’s strong characterization.
It was a strong cast all around, from Jaciel Gomez’s excellently danced Jose, himself a character of considerable personality, strength and dimension, to the magnificent corps work within the broad tableau of the General’s Ball party scene.
The pacing throughout the party scene was constant, much like the rest of the ballet, and was always engaging.
But above it all, there was Carmen, her allure, her magnetism, and the sense that we couldn’t keep our eyes off her, thanks to Gutierrez, who seemed to be having as much fun with the role as any Carmen I’ve ever seen.
Hattori’s Carmen is a perfect metaphor for living a life full of robust intent. In fact, the entire cast orbits around Carmen’s energy, and all characters dance with similar ferocity of line and attack, as though living life to the fullest in every movement.
Alberta Ballet conveyed strong messages throughout both works about the emotional power of lives lived, committed to a radiant independence of spirit, asserting their presence in this world within the time allotted, until time and tide swept them away.