Ballet BC Songs of a Wayfarer and Other Works: polished and modern
Ballet BC opened its 25th season with Songs of a Wayfarer and Other Works. The evening began with the titular work, “Songs of a Wayfarer,” a four-movement piece set to the music of Gustav Mahler, choreographed by Emily Molnar. In many respects, the piece radiated the aura of classical refinement that one associates with ballet: cherished music is translated with lyrical gesture by dancers whose bodies are highly-trained instruments of interpretation. Mahler's Songs 1-V and VII suffused the theatre with an atmosphere of delicate melancholy, and the setting felt like a moody, early 19th century Romantic painting: dancers navigated a twilight stage accented with slender white birch trees, warmed only by the dim glow from a tall recessed window at stage left. Their bodies performed magnificent leaps and subtle movements at will, with an apparently effortless grace – like wind rippling across water rather than muscle moving over bone.
Oddly enough, I found that this skill left me unmoved -- there was so little conflict or tension to trouble the dancers' flawless movement, which was itself so perfectly in sync with the score. The dancers were beautiful empty vessels, devoid of character and lacking any expressive feeling that was not dictated by the music itself. What stood out was not embedded dramatic tension, but a strangely modern choreographic overlay on what was at heart a classical piece. Although the music was traditional, performed by an apparently traditional corps-de-ballet, the choreography itself was notably contemporary. Dancers would turn out their legs or grasp the air with their fists in motions that suggest the deliberate awkwardness, the throwing-off-of-traditional-grace that lies at the roots of Modern dance. Yet rather than creating a dynamic energy within the piece, it felt as though the dancers were working very hard to “dirty” their aesthetic, to acquire a suitably grungy patina so that the piece could credibly be called cutting-edge. Rather than feeling fresh, result was awkward and disjointed.
“Face to Face” was a stronger work. Choreographed by Kevin O'Day, it was a spooky, unsettling work that more successfully blended the refinement of classical training with an edgier 21st century sensibility. Dancers emerged from behind irregularly shaped risers: their movements were subtle but physically impressive – the pale arms and legs that seemed to rise weightlessly and hover above the floor, figures that blended into shadow, so that their bodies were knots of density on the dim stage. Emerging from behind the grey risers, they seemed ghostly and undead, and moved to a warped music, like a record playing backwards. Everything about their movements showed a physical confidence – as the music shifted to break beats, their forms suggested hip-hop, but so casually that the reference never marred the flow if the piece itself, which was hypnotic and graceful. In this piece I found the blend of multiple styles and sources of inspiration convincing. The choreography drew on novel and diverse sources but made a fluid whole from the parts.
The final work on the program was “the bliss that from their limbs all movement takes” choreographed by Jose Navas. This was the evening's requisite showstopper: a full-frontal balletic assault on the senses, set to the bold (but always strangely detached) music of Phillip Glass. Spectacle was the objective here, and the show was visually impressive: the cyclorama behind the stage was washed with shades of bronze, gold, silver, and vivid purple, the patterns of which resembled fire, cloud formations, and burnished metal. Fifteen dancers occupied the stage, and their bodies moved like elemental forces: rough water or strong winds. Both male and female dancers expressed an athletic strength and obvious physical striving in their movements. The piece built to a last crescendo that saw dancers leaping to great heights across the floor as the final, percussive rhythms sounded through the theatre. This was a bold piece, something to get the heart pumping and the blood moving, and as such it was almost too easy to enjoy. Like the dancers' equivalent of a military march or a sports anthem, it brought all the energy to the stage and asked little form the audience in terms of emotional or energetic commitment. That said, I do sometimes genuinely appreciate this kind of over-the-top showiness in dance. It is a reminder that ballet is a physically demanding art, and that as much as they are aesthetes, the performers are athletes as well.
Ballet BC's season opening was to my mind a modest success, in that the works presented were varied and complimented each other though contrast. Of the three, only “Face to Face” seemed to be reaching beyond its precedents in order to offer something unique to the ballet's 25th season audience.