Emily Molnar is leaving Ballet BC and this is her last season. She has transformed Ballet BC from a predictable dance company into a force of the future. So with some sadness in my heart, and wanting to lap up every bit of the Emily Molnar genius available to us here in Vancouver, I signed up to see “Program 1”.
Perhaps the end of Emily Molnar’s illustrious Ballet BC run is a good time to reflect on the exceptional quality of work that the company produces, and which often gets taken for granted. Vancouver, we’re so lucky and we don’t even know it! Over the last few years, as part of my partner’s and my East Coast adventures, I had the good fortune of attending ballet productions staged by a variety of prestigious companies – in Toronto and in Montreal, and even in Houston, Texas. I have to say, no production has come close to even the lesser of the Ballet BC productions. The curation of Ballet BC’s works, choreographers and dancers, is years ahead of other companies. Their themes, choice of costumes, abstract concepts, and most importantly- the precision, strength, and skill levels of their dancers, are all unprecedented. You don’t really realise how much Ballet BC has spoiled us with incredibly skilful productions until you attend other ballets and they unfortunately fall short.
With that mini gratitude session out of the way let’s move on to “Program 1″’s first piece, Busk. Dressed in comfy, dark maroon sweatpants and hoods, the Busk dancers paint a visceral picture of a struggling social class. Like 2019 versions of Franciscan monks, the dancers move together to portray a community weighed down by difficulty and despair but whose members resist oppression with all the strength left in their despondent backs. Choreographer Aszure Barton’s choice of movements brings to life the anguish faced by the working class. We see impassioned movement, originating from a melee of genres – contemporary, jazz, modern and hip hop. There are two beautiful solos, one by the always awe-inducing and jaw-dropping Scott Fowler, in just a pair of harem pants in which his aforementioned despondent back emotes as much as his face and the rest of his body, and the other by new dancer Miriam Gittens whose powerfully feminine movement is a joy to watch.
The shapes the dancers create are fresh and new, and there is congruency in all the sub-dances. The solo dancers get swarmed by the rest of the crew and this large flock then moves in unison. The intricate choreography looks natural and effortless but it elongates and extends the dancers’ bodies as they reach for salvation in the air around them and on the expanse of the stage floor. All this happens as bounding choral music plays so you get an almost spiritual effect. We witness the common man and woman’s pained yearning to be saved by the divine. We get flashes of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody music video as the hooded dancers stand in a cluster, lit from above. They then sit cross-legged on the ground, moving together and then in opposition to each other, resembling birds in a nest or lemmings or better yet, anemone swaying in deep ocean waters. This is undoubtedly the most beautiful part of the piece as it portrays the collective anguish perfectly. In Busk, the marriage of high-intensity church-like symphonies and the emotional state of the dancers create a trance-like performance that is nothing short of spiritual. Creating this connection between divination and the common man summons questions about who in society gets access to spirituality, wellness, and happiness. All three of these things have become an elitist luxury, which is ironic because the common man and woman live in close proximity to what spirituality is really about – struggle, pain, difficulty, growth, change, minimalism etc. Barton’s choreography raises all these questions subtly and beautifully through dance.
Johan Inger’s B.R.I.S.A is just as speculative but definitely more on the cheekier side. It boasts of some impressive solos – mainly those of Nicole Ward who is a rising star in the company. There is the use of fans and hair dryers blowing air into the faces of the dancers to, I’m guessing, represent pleasure and our perpetual, mindless quest for it. How the dancers interact with these fans tells the story of their complicated relationships with pleasure. The majority of this piece is set to Nina Simone’s music and to music with some Latin influences. The choreography is very modern and quirky. The set is furnished with a lush carpet on which the dancers play to tactile effect. The costumes are colourful and the movement is playful. B.R.I.S.A. puts a smile on your face but it also introduces elements of sobriety, especially when Ward is rolled into the carpet to signify her death or when she anxiously goes back and forth on whether to join a group of dancers in full swing, only to have them stop dancing when she finally joins them.
Around the end of summer, Ballet BC Up hosted a free dance slash barre fitness class at Queen Elisabeth Theatre. It was great fun and a mean work-out. The dance portion of the class was taught by Nicole Ward who ended up teaching our group a good chunk of the choreography from B.R.I.S.A. (a sequence that the group repeats many times). It was a wonderful experience. To recognise the movements on stage that we actually got to feel in our actual bodies was a surreal experience. Nicole is a beautiful dancer with an upbeat personality and I think I connected most with her performance in B.R.I.S.A. precisely because of my interaction with her in the dance class. This season we’ve seen a lot of new faces on stage and Nicole has definitely made a mark in a short period of time with her strong performance. I hope Ballet BC dancers teach more of these fun no-experience classes so that audiences get to connect with them on an additional level and get to truly appreciate their expertise.
Together Busk and B.R.I.S.A. created an evening that was very youth-oriented. The difficulty of being a young person in today’s world in terms of economic strife, and social isolation and pleasure deprivation as by-products of technology, is constructed very evocatively in “Program 1”. The 2019/2020 is off to a great start and we can’t wait to see what Ballet BC, and Emily Molnar in particular, has in store for us for the rest of the season.
Check out Ballet BC over here!
– Prachi Kamble