BALLET B.C. AT 30
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What: Ballet B.C. Where: Royal Theatre When: Friday, Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: Starting at $29 (Royal box office, 250 386-6121)
This weekend, Ballet B.C. performs Cayetano Soto’s dance Twenty Eight Thousand Waves at the Royal Theatre.
The work is inspired by an idea both simple and compelling. Soto was struck by the fact seaborne oil tankers are struck by 28,000 waves each day on average. His dance is about resilience in the face of adversity and humans’ basic instinct for survival.
Ballet B.C. is a poster child for resilience and survival. Seven years ago, the Vancouver company was teetering on bankruptcy, laying off dancers and staff. And then Emily Molnar, a choreographer and former dancer with Ballet B.C., was hired as artistic director.
Things took a pirouette for the better under her leadership. Molnar successfully pushed to make Ballet B.C. a hotbed for the creation of new work, both Canadian and international. The company is now celebrating its 30th anniversary, a milestone some thought it would never reach. Artistically, Ballet B.C. is flourishing. And the company is in solid financial shape.
“Most people thought I was nuts [when I took the job]. But I always thought this was a wonderful opportunity,” Molnar said recently from Vancouver.
To celebrate Ballet B.C.’s three decades, Dance Victoria will allow those age 30 to attend Friday and Saturday’s performance for free (photo ID is required).
Ballet B.C. will offer three works at the Royal on Friday and Saturday night. As well as Twenty Eight Thousand Waves, set to music by David Lang and Bryce Dessner, there is Awe by Stijn Celis and Solo Echo, choreographed by Victoria native Crystal Pite.
Twenty Eight Thousand Waves was premièred by Ballet B.C. last year. Soto, the creator, is the company’s resident choreographer. Molnar says he uses the idea of lapping waves as a metaphor for the cyclical patterns of nature and human life. It starts mysteriously and crescendos to an energetic finale.
“He’s a real architect of space and body and time,” she said. “He does all his own lighting and costume design.”
Belgium choreographer Celis created Awe to be performed with Chor Leoni, a Vancouver men’s choir. (It was performed in Vancouver with the 50-member choir; in Victoria the audience will hear a recorded version of the music.) Awe is danced to liturgical music by Piotr Janczak and Carl Orff. It also includes secular music by Eriks Esenvalds set to Leonard Cohen’s poetry.
Like Soto, Celis had the natural world in mind when he choreographed Awe. The dancers will perform in nature-coloured costumes: blues, browns, greys and greens.
“Weather formations were an inspiration, the way clouds form and they disintegrate,” Celis told the Times Colonist.
Molnar says Celis — an indemand choreographer collaborating with Ballet B.C. for the first time — has created a varied piece that’s abstract while offering a sense of narrative as well. His background as a dancer, choreographer and director of his own company (he’s ballet director of Germany’s Saarlandisches Staatstheater) makes for choreography that’s rich and sophisticated.
“All of this feeds into his work. You feel this history of language and dance and understanding of the expression of human nature,” Molnar said.
Pite’s Solo Echo was originally premièred by the Nederlands Dans Theater in 2012. A former member of Ballet B.C., Pite studied dance early on in Victoria with Maureen Eastick and Wendy Green. Today, she has a global reputation as a choreographer.
Solo Echo is set to two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms, one from his early years and another composed in late career. The notion is that seven dancers perform in a way to suggest a single person (one critic noted the performers were “coiling like a caterpillar”).
“It’s this idea that we’re all one and we’re all many,” Molnar said. “It exemplifies so much that is signature Crystal Pite.”
Molnar’s bold rejuvenation of Ballet B.C. was based on simple principles. She wanted to build a stylistically versatile company that might function as a “clean slate” for different choreographers. (Since 2009, Ballet B.C. has developed a repertoire of 35 new dances.) Monar also wanted the dancers to feel a sense of ownership in the company. And she wanted the focus to be on dance.
The latter sounds obvious — what is a dance company about if not dance? But Molnar says it’s not. Sometimes, for instance, an emphasis on production values can cloud the art form’s essentials. Sometimes it becomes more about who’s in charge and who’s not.
Molnar says she recast Ballet B.C. in an egalitarian manner. Instead of using the usual hierarchical structure, the company considers all dancers soloists and artists whose ideas are heard.
“No one’s ego is more important than the art itself. And that is, in the dance world, sometimes unusual,” she said.
“Making the art is the most important thing that we all do. Giving over to something greater than yourself, that allows us to create meaning and change to the world.”