The Four Seasons

A Ballet B.C. production. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Saturday, February 16. No remaining performances

Choreographed by artistic director John Alleyne, Ballet B.C.’s ambitious The Four Seasons employs not just dance but visual art and installation, along with a sprinkle of community involvement. Call it the VANOC makeover.

In mid June 2007, the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee put out a long-overdue call for applications to take part in the 2008 Cultural Olympiad. Groups were given only a month to come up with proposals before the funding deadline, which left many scrambling to cobble something together. Rather than pull together original productions, many groups—including Ballet B.C.—chose to look at their February programming and beef it up, as it were, in order to secure extra funding.

Which is why, as the dance company explained to the Straight during a conversation in December, The Four Seasons was expanded to include the presence of local painter Tiko Kerr, who completed a work on a glass pane on stage during the performance, and a “drawing machine” by installation artist Alan Storey, which tracked the movements of lead dancer Makaila Wallace during the ballet’s prelude and postlude—these featuring original music by local composer Michael Bushnell. It may also explain the participation of young dancers from Arts Umbrella, who were featured during the first movement of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Fall” concerto.

Whether these added components helped or hindered the overall work depends on your level of cynicism. Certainly, the piece would easily have stood on its own, without what some might deem as distractions. The ballet, conceived by Alleyne after the loss of his parents, is touching in its juxtaposition of joy with torment and loss. In “Spring”, as the male dancers strut with cocky energy, the women make a shushing motion, hinting that all may not be what it seems. When Wallace ends a tortured duet with a prolonged, pained look at the audience, the message of betrayal is unmistakable. And Chengxin Wei’s solo, with its self-battering movements and rasping vocalizations, is gripping in its anguish.

But with Kerr painting rhythmically on a sheet of glass in time with the music, it’s difficult to keep your eyes on the dancers with whom he shares the stage. And intriguing as Storey’s drawing machine is, as it created what was later revealed to be a large scribble, whether it was anything more than a curiosity is debatable. A more forgiving critic might point out that Kerr, having had his own brush with death in 2005 when he fought the feds for permission to receive an experimental cocktail of HIV drugs, was a potent witness to the action on-stage—and that Storey’s installation poignantly captured the futility of trying to predict life’s path. Even so, if asked whether removing these elements would leave the work wanting, that same critic would have to answer no.