A Small Stage with Ballet BC production. Presented with the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. At the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and Deer Lake Park on Thursday, June 23. Continues to June 25

From surreal woodland creatures posing chicly in the forest to a moody vision of a lone man dancing on a bobbing lake dock, Live at the ’Bolt holds some magical and often fever-dream-like surprises for a summer’s evening at the park.

Never mind the atmospheric setting—which on this night was replete with shifting grey clouds, herons flying majestically overhead, and a cool breeze that rustled leaves and long grass. This is a chance to see the virtuosic dancers of Ballet BC—right on the heels of a major tour to both the U.K. and New York City—getting experimental in the outdoors, up close. In one piece Christoph von Riedemann and Nicole Ward even dance barefoot on a lawn.

Many of the 10 offerings on the program are memorable, each putting the Ballet BC dancers together with Small Stage artistic associates and using the nooks and crannies of the park in imaginative ways.

A crowd favourite was Peter Smida’s creation, let me leave so you may continue, which found dancers Alexis Fletcher, Scott Fowler, and Zoe Michalik sporting Perryn Kruth’s beautiful, handmade forest-creature masks—a bunny, a badger, and a fox, dressed in black-and-white streetwear, all while an unnamed owl looked eerily on. What made the piece cool was how the dancers nonchalantly wore the heads, staring down the audience or looking off into space like there was nothing amiss to, say, a long-eared rabbit hanging out by Deer Lake in a spiffy white shirt and black skirt. When they lurched into motion to the mixed electronica of Moby, Die Antwoord, and others, Fletcher’s fox stretched and preened, but got dragged off by her fellow critters, sending grass stains up her back. It was fun seeing the ballet dancers take on such different personas, playing with both the animal and the urban, most memorably with Fletcher—normally one of the company’s most elegant dancers—offering up an absurdly extended middle finger to the audience at one point.

For both the story behind it and sheer atmospherics, another favourite was creator Kirsten Wicklund’s A wall is for climbing, for a brief while. The piece was set in an abandoned cottage on the grounds—one overgrown with vines, its steps removed, but which was once inhabited by Wicklund’s own grandfather. Lighting the house from within, and projecting hazy, memorylike imagery through its window, she had Albert Galindo dance through the neglected yard like he was recalling the ghosts of the house—at one point reaching up to the foggy window pictures like a person desperately trying to recapture the happy events of childhood.

Choreographically, Fowler’s solo on the dock, Alpha Compass created by Karissa Barry, cast an unshakeable spell amid the wavering lilypads and in the twilight. Finding his footing on the wood and arching back at one point till his head almost hit the water, he became an existential portrait of a man alone—made eerie by a soundtrack that mixed audio text from TV’s noir True Detective with a hauntingly slowed-down Moonlight Sonata. And Vanessa Goodman’s Inside Sound, in which Von Riedemann and Gilbert Small scaled the inside of what looked like a giant gramophone and curled around each other like some alien organism, was a striking way to start the jaunt through the park. Ballet BC dancer Emily Chessa also showed some promising choreographic chops in the yearning youareyou, with the always watchable Von Riedemann and Ward moving amid the hostas and primulas on the grass, and pulling their faces into silent screams.

It wasn’t all so serious: there are some silly numbers, including an ode to ugly Christmas sweaters and a girl chasing a guy who’s just not that into her up the Shadbolt lawn. There’s also a dance riff on boxing matches set in an actual outdoor ring.

In other words, there are surprises around every corner, executed with the usual quality of the Ballet BC team—and well worth the jaunt out to this lush urban oasis, where you follow volunteers with orange flags and bug spray around the park. Just don’t be surprised if the cute-but-creepy owl or rabbit turns up in one of your dreams afterward.