Produced by Dance Consortium

Review by Marina Funcasta

Canada’s leading dance company, Ballet British Columbia, has been touring two pieces, Frontier and Passing, choreographed by Crystal Pite and Johan Inger, respectively. Though critics have seemed to strongly prefer one over the other, I can certainly say that both pieces were far-reaching and spoke to each other delicately.

The first, Frontier, has been lauded as a stand-out demonstration of Pite’s gravity-defying and physically demanding vision. Concerning itself with what we don’t know, the piece engages the BC dancers as if they were themselves embodiments of the other. Be it monsters, shadows, or even the flying monkeys from Wicked: they become creeping shapes and forms, overcrowding the stage and the scattered, more luminous figures which emerge fleetingly throughout the piece. Easily identified thanks to Nancy Bryant’s assiduous costume design, the dancers who are dressed in white are effortlessly underlined, lifted by their own bodies or those of other dancers to very impressive heights. Indeed, the effect of the overall performance is that of suspension; the dancers’ bodies hang in the air between moments of adumbration and enlightenment. Underscored by Owen Belton’s whispering composition, there are some instances of brilliant and muscular attempts to break through the darkness by individual company members. Ending in a similar way to which it began, doubt seems to overcome our flickers of hope throughout the piece, albeit in a changed dimension; the classical, almost choral, echoes of Belton’s score are married with choral dancing which achieves Epic proportions, in styles which can’t help but have reminded me of Milton’s Paradise Lost, or scenes from Picasso’s Guernica. Cultural allusions aside, however, the piece is shrouded in struggle, and while relieving at points, it leaves the audience with a profound understanding of Pite’s philosophy of pain – albeit bleak, is a perfect invitation for an interval drink or sweet treat!

The second piece begins much less ominously, encouraging a bit of comedy and folkish charm from its audience. This was refreshing for me, as I find physical comedy, especially of the balletic category, very hard to tread the line between formality and silliness. Watching our heroine repeatedly give birth, however, definitely set the precedent for a lighter note. This said, the sheer number of repetitions bent the humour into discomfort rather rapidly, pointing the audience towards the pain which underpins most rites of passage. Indeed, Inger brings to light an understanding of the multi-fold shades of the maturation stages of human life, taking the audience on an emotional journey which fluctuates with vitality. Although I did at points feel lost, I can’t help but wonder whether this was Inger’s intention- the subconscious is unknowable, and to follow the middle stage of the journey between the beginning and end point often itself requires a form of blindness. Even so, the stage design provides a contained space for expression which suitably frames the performance – the dancers exiting and entering as their life stage requires them.

Both pieces struck me in the volume of ensemble movement – even when dancers are alone on stage it is not soon before they are engulfed by a river of people, inundated in their synchronicity. The authenticity of movement is compromised. Inger seems eager to impress this, his dancers fragmenting into different dance styles, or often positions, exploding the different speeds we are confronted with on stage. Also concluding in a more despondent light, Inger’s Passing leaves the audience with a bare stage, death having supposedly overtaken all of the lifelines of his dancers, sweeping them of their weapons. This piece is more overtly resistant, I would argue, as the movements echo punches and attacks. The human condition is taken to the fighting match in both these cases and suffocated into submission.

BC’s balletic investigation of these themes provides for a thoroughly engaging evening. Even if at times unsettling, it provides sufficient catharsis to make the audience leaving the theatre feel ultimately less alone. 

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