Young new energy fuels two captivating works at Ballet BC season-opening Program 1

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      A Ballet BC production. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Friday, November 1. Continues November 2

      Aszure Barton's witty BUSK and Johan Inger's surreally fun B.R.I.S.A. are ideal showcases for all the exciting young talents that have just joined Ballet BC.

      Audiences noticed a bunch of new faces on-stage in the season opener this week, and the revitalizing surge of youthful energy was a rush to watch. In an interview before the show, Barton had marvelled at the high level of the dancers coming up today, and they illustrated her point with polish, mad skills, and—perhaps most importantly to this double bill—attitude to burn.

      Both pieces in Program 1 ride a challenging range of styles and moods—from the haunting and vulnerable to the bold and funny. Each allows individuals to show their considerable stuff in the spotlight, and each creates a fully staged world that's a blast to watch. Vancouverites can be reserved audiences, but the crowd gave the troupe unusually wild and adoring curtain calls for each piece.

      Standouts amid the new names? Fresno-born, Juilliard School–trained Miriam Gittens is a knockout, whether she's killing a sudden back flip and breaking out tap and hip-hop moves in BUSK or sheathed in black shiny leggings, pulling off a fierce but sensual pas de deux with lithe young Dutch star Dex van ter Meij. Fellow Juilliard find Chase Buntrock is athletic and expressive in B.R.I.S.A, sinking into its groin-punishing squats with powerful outstretched arms, and Louisiana-born Parker Finley, in her third season with the company, builds to an ecstatic whirlwind in her red, leathery dress. Elsewhere in the same piece, leggy Arts Umbrella alumna Sophie Whittome seems to channel some kind of fury, long hair flying in the wind from one of the blasting fans.

      Dancers shuffle through a dark world at the beginning of B.R.I.S.A.
      Michael Slobodian

      Ballet BC staged a strong B.R.I.S.A. a few years ago, but in this rendition, you really feel the message of resistance. Inger has set the work to the sultry songs of civil rights voice Nina Simone, and when a crowd pushes and crawls against the force of a giant fan's wind, it's a genuinely moving metaphor for social struggle. Of course, the piece, with its thick carpet, blowdryers, and all manner of breeze-making devices, is warped fun as well. And he conjures a constantly moving dreamscape, dancers shuffling, heads down, in the eerie beginning, then letting loose in stark spotlights and clouds of steam later on.

      Barton's BUSK, which she originally created for her own Aszure Barton & Artists, makes an ideal pairing with Inger's multilayered offering. The Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based choreographer's intricate, multitasking movement allows for multiple readings.

      On one level, it plays on the idea of busking, especially in Justin Rapaport's expressive opening solo, with its white gloves and bowler hat. But Barton has also said she was inspired by the Spanish word buscar, "to search", and there's a yearning and reaching that underlies the creation.

      Gorgeously innovative group work abounds, the dancers wearing hoods and interweaving their limbs together on the floor, huddling against the world. They resemble the homeless masses at one moment, or, at others, move along the stage like a mass of monks in some otherworldly ritual.  The soundtrack, an eclectic mix of Lev ‘Ljova’ Zhurbin's Romany-style violas and men's folk choir (Sweden's Orphei Dranger and Eric Ericson), adds to the dark-carnival feel. 

      Barton uses all parts of the body, often at the same time, heads pivoting back and forth, legs and arms stretching and bending in opposing force, then collapsing and loose. The result is often a rich spectrum of emotion in a single, complex phrase; just watch the fluidity of feeling in Scott Fowler's solo, from a kind of hunger to melancholy to resilience.

      Humans are complicated, and in their poetic creations, both Barton and Inger seem to capture all those colours in the most entertaining of ways. 

      Hooded figures sometimes seem to evoke the homeless masses in BUSK.
      Michael Slobodian

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