Re/Naissance
A Ballet B.C. production. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Thursday, April 15. No remaining performances

Can the future of a ballet company be predicted on the programming of one evening? If so, audiences can prepare for edgy, ambitious fare from a troupe that refuses to play it safe in the face of adversity.

It was impossible not to read into every carefully selected work on Ballet B.C.’s Re/Naissance program—its first return to the stage since November, and an attempt at rebirth after a near-death financial meltdown. New artistic director Emily Molnar chose challenging works that push the ballet form—all Vancouver premieres the choreographers never would have granted to the company if they didn’t trust her and her dancers to pull them off. And that they did.

The new tone was set immediately—and fearlessly—with the night’s opener, William Forsythe’s bold 1992 piece Herman Schmerman. It’s a ridiculously difficult work set to the shifting rhythms, blurping horns, and plucked strings of Dutch composer Thom Willems. Performed en pointe, it’s a nonnarrative, intellectual play on ballet partnering and dance itself, a quick and complex exercise in tension and release. In that way, it’s challenging for audiences, but it holds a few surprises—the two-dimensional-looking, rectangular backdrop that dancers can jump into, and an out-of-place lemon-yellow skirt—and enough humour to keep viewers engaged. Still, I’m not sure what a neophyte would make of it.

While the athletic troupe nails the wrapping-and-unwrapping moves, it could have been sassier. However, Donald Sales and Makaila Wallace build electric chemistry in the second half’s duet. Sales, who has impressive technical chops and passion but also manages to put his own stamp on the moves, is riveting all night, and props to Molnar, who can take full credit for luring him back to the company after he departed during its difficulties.

Itzik Galili’s enigmatic Things I told nobody creates a completely different mood, set to the sombre strains of George Frederick Handel, Antonio Vivaldi’s “Winter”, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Erik Satie’s iconic Gymnopédie, No. 1. With dancers swathed in velvet body suits that look like shrunken corsets, Galili plays with ideas of classicism. Alexis Fletcher might lean into Léon Feizo Gas in a perfect arabesque, then they’ll suddenly start hopping around like overeager rabbits. The opening, to Handel’s achingly beautiful “Largo” aria from Xerxes, is the eerie highlight, as the corps moves in slow and low pliés on the floor, each lit by the dim golden light of an industrial pendant lamp.

The pieces became more accessible over the course of the evening, with the show wrapping up with Crystal Pite’s ever-changing, endlessly entertaining Short works: 24. It’s a creation that’s never been performed outside Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal until now—and one conservative balletomanes might even have trouble calling “ballet” at all. A cinematic projection of each number counts down the two dozen tiny, quirky exercises in fragmented movement and maniacally different emotions. It’s set to Owen Belton’s soundscape of industrial feedback and electro club beats. All the hallmarks of Pite are there: the Tim Burton–style flourishes (two dancers skitter across the rear of the stage like zombies), the humour (the males goofing around in hand-knit tuques, the women turning instantly giggly in blond Barbie wigs), and the broken-down movement and sheer joy of inventive choreography (the performers lined up in a row, on their stomachs with their faces toward the audience, “dancing” with only their bobbing heads and flexing shoulders). Forget pirouettes: Gilbert Small body-rocked some break beats, and Sales, once again, embodied the vibe, jittering in a duet with Fletcher like he had 1,000 volts coursing through his body.

So are wider Vancouver audiences ready for playful, not-so-balletic explorations like this? Or for the deconstruction of Forsythe’s and Galili’s pieces? There is no question the dancers are well-honed for this kind of work, blending their rigorous classical technique with muscular athleticism and a sharp contemporary attitude. And with a few more tastes of the cutting edge, here’s hoping people might just start to like Molnar’s Euro-flavoured menu and appreciate both its virtuosity and its gutsiness.