Ballet BC opens season with the wow factor of a speed-of-sound William Forsythe work

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      A Ballet BC production. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Thursday, November 1. Continues until November 3

      What can we read into Ballet BC’s choice to open its season-launching program with William Forsythe’s driving, delirious Enemy in the Figure­?

      On one level, staging such a breathtakingly difficult piece announces the high physical and intellectual sophistication of the company. It also marks a troupe eager to push forward—an energy, an audacity, an ambition, but most of all, a commitment.

      What’s most remarkable watching this piece, staged for the first time in Canada, is that even though Forsythe created it in 1989, it still feels cutting-edge.

      Enemy in the Figure is unflinchingly challenging, with its speed-of-sound motion, its shifting set pieces, and its gruelling demands for technique. It’s a puzzle box of ever-moving parts, dancers jumping to avoid a thick rope that ripples across the stage or catching the glare of a rolling floodlight. They throw dynamic shadows against a wavy central wall, push up against it, dance behind it with only their limbs showing, and sometimes disappear into the darkness. The intricately designed frenzy has the mystery and thrill of film noir, abstracted into conceptual art.

      It’s an exhilarating dreamscape that scatters the viewer’s attention, with dancing often going on at opposite ends of the space, or sometimes partly obscured by the wall.

      The male artists, especially relative newcomers like Justin Rapaport and Patrick Kilbane, pull off sharply defined jetés and athletic kicks and spins across the stage. But the work also celebrates the women’s skill level, as the famous choreographer distorts and pushes the language of classical ballet to angular extremes.

      While Forsythe carves out such a fascinating space, Thom Willems drives the action with his pulsing electro score. It’s a marvel artistic director Emily Molnar has spent years wanting to stage—and it’s been worth the wait.

      She’s celebrating a decade as artistic director of the company, and the mixed program is an apt ode to her journey. Forsythe, after all, was her mentor back when she was a dancer at the Frankfurt Ballet.

      To this day.
      Michael Slobodian

      She follows Enemy in the Figure with her own To this day—a piece that could not feel any freer and looser, as it is meant to, by comparison. Wearing primary-hued costumes, dancers ride the wild grooves of Jimi Hendrix’s posthumous Blues album. The piece’s biggest strength is showing the dancers as individuals, and letting them find a rawer, more idiosyncratic new side. The performers display their considerable physical chops in this work, too, but it’s just fun watching the statuesque Nicole Ward tippytoe weirdly across the back of the stage, or emerging artist Zenon Zubyk performing his own wonky little freak-out mid-show.

      As for the show-closing Petite Cérémonie, one of the most successful pieces Ballet BC has staged under Molnar’s reign, it’s like dessert to all this—a nostalgic treat that’s a company and audience favourite alike. Parisian choreographer Medhi Walerski opens the stage to the flies, and sends out dancers in formal black suits and cocktail dresses, between two rows of white boxes. Even if you’ve seen the playful ode to the behaviours of men and women before, you’ll find new quirks to love about it.

      In all, Program 1 celebrates where Ballet BC has been, and asserts where it’s going—and judging by the audience’s enthusiastic reception, viewers are ready to go along for the ride.

      Emily Chessa and Justin Rapaport in Petite Ceremonie
      Michael Slobodian

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