Fall arts preview: Thibaut Eiferman gets extreme at Ballet B.C.

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      Thibaut Eiferman spent his childhood in Paris, his teen years in New York City, and has toured and trained as a dancer as far afield as the Netherlands and Israel.

      “I’m most comfortable when I’m on my way somewhere—like when I’m on a plane,” the 21-year-old dancer tells the Straight on a break from rehearsing for his second season with Ballet B.C. He says it’s a trait that has made his new company feel like home: “I never want to be too comfortable—and what’s great about here is you’re taken completely out of your comfort zone.”

      Lean, dark, and expressive, the close-cropped Eiferman has already made his mark on Ballet B.C.’s stage, morphing into each show’s style and mood. He’s proven as able to angle and convulse in Jacopo Godani’s avant-garde A.U.R.A. (Anarchist Unit Related to Art) as he is to perform an aggressive, semi-animatronic pas de deux in Medhi Walerski’s quirk-filled Petite Cérémonie. As he puts it: “I feel like I’ve been about six different people here already.”

      The cutting-edge company is the perfect outlet for Eiferman’s balletic and contemporary sides. In fact, for the first time in his career, he is finally reconciling them.

      As a child growing up in Paris, he would often attend the Paris Opera Ballet with his grandparents, but it wasn’t till his preteen years in New York that he discovered his passion for the art form. From 13 to 17 he studied at the acclaimed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in New York City. And then, progressively, he started to feel like he’d had enough of the rigid classical form. “That’s when it really got serious, but it got too serious and I left,” he explains of those years. “I didn’t really have my own voice. I was at school till 12 and the ABT all afternoon. I had school friends and dance friends, but nobody that knew all of me.

      “Then I saw contemporary dance and I saw people that knew themselves. I saw that in contemporary dance there’s a real voice.”

      He delved into Gaga, iconic Ohad Naharin’s explosive, full-bodied style of movement, in Tel Aviv, and eventually joined Washington’s Company E in programs of edgy Israeli choreography, before meeting Emily Molnar at Springboard Danse Montreal and hitting it off.

      Recruited to Ballet B.C., surrounded by other dancers who meld both traditional and contemporary technique, he began to see his ballet base as his biggest asset. “Your past can be really separated from you. But then, when I came here, I was really proud of the technique I had learned and I realized I should be thankful,” he says.

      He may be proud of his ballet skills now, but it’s the edgier repertoire that’s really feeding Eiferman’s soul here in Vancouver. On this day, he’s pumped about working on Johan Inger’s Walking Mad, which debuts on the Tilt program with new works by Jorma Elo and Molnar from October 17 to 19 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The surreal ode to insanity lets him go wild with expression. “I think I like more extreme things as a person and in my tastes,” he says with a smile.

      “To be part of something that’s moving and nobody knows where it’s going yet is great,” he adds of Ballet B.C. blazing a bold new path with choreographers from around the world. “Here you have a voice and you’re part of that rebuilding of the company. My personality counts, and it shows in the work.”

      Comments