Ballet BC Artists Orlando Harbutt and Jaclyn Tatro in Pieces of Tomorrow by Medhi Walerski.Michael Slobodian/Supplied
- Title: Pieces of Tomorrow, PASSING
- Choreographer: Johan Inger, Medhi Walerski
- Company: Ballet BC
- Venue: Bluma Appel Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Ballet BC’s tour continues internationally through to April 18; see balletbc.com for details.
What are we looking for when we sit down to watch contemporary dance? To be moved? Impressed? Surprised? Awed? Unsettled? Entertained? What can make a sequence of abstract movement feel cohesive and charged with meaning? Is novelty critical or a cheap thrill?
These are the questions I found myself asking during Ballet BC’s double bill in Toronto on Friday night, marking the company’s second stop on a tour that will take them across the U.K. this spring and summer (with additional shows in Germany and at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts). There’s no overstating Ballet BC’s importance in the Canadian dance scene. Contemporary ballet companies exist all over Europe, while the landscape here can feel divided into two camps – companies wedded to technique and companies that shun technique to pursue more conceptual explorations.
Ballet BC straddles both worlds. Each of its 20 dancers have beautiful lines and 180-degree penchés (mandatory in ballet), but they are also invested in asking very contemporary questions about presence and performance. This was especially evident in Swedish choreographer Johan Inger’s PASSING, the second work on the program, which he made for the company in 2024.
Artists of Ballet BC in PASSING by Johan Inger.Michael Slobodian/Supplied
The 55-minute piece suggests a sweeping panorama of life. Inger uses his dancers to evoke themes of love, birth, companionship and community. Working from a classical foundation, his choreography is infused with folk-dancing undertones and, at times, a jazzy dynamism redolent of Jerome Robbins. But it’s most defined by its expressionistic style: Inger is interested in symbolism and exaggeration, an approach that presents both possibilities and limitations.
This idiom pays off in the piece’s long opening sequence, which begins with a buoyant duet between Sarah Pippin and Orlando Harbutt set to Erik Enocksson’s acoustic guitar. The couple gives us the Coles Notes of a relationship: lust, joy, squabbling, sex and, finally, childbirth. Pippin is ebullient and (intentionally) over-the-top – a mannerism that peaks when she appears to give birth to the other 18 members of the company, each dancer entering the stage by crawling through her open legs. There is also a powerful ending: the dancers, stripped of their colourful dresses and slacks, become denuded bodies caught in a snowfall.
But a tap-dancer (Rae Srivastava) stomping across the stage in the middle of the work feels like heavy-handed symbolism for social disruption, while some acapella singing seems intrusive and disconnected from the established world. At other times, Inger’s command of the space lapses, the ensemble becoming frenetic, misshapen.
I’m not the first critic to compare Inger’s work to that of fellow Swedish choreographer Mats Ek; there are similarities in their ability to tell physical stories through fluid partner-work and supple shape making. But Ek is typically also interested in intimacy and naturalism in a way that Inger doesn’t leave himself room for. In fact, PASSING may be better compared to London-based choreographer Hofesh Schechter’s Grand Finale, another sweeping work that gestures toward the circle of life – birth, death, resurrection – while touching on themes of love and war. But Schechter’s work is sharper and more fully-realized; it has a cohesion and urgency that PASSING lacks.
The first work on the program, artistic director Medhi Walerski’s Pieces of Tomorrow, inhabits a more abstract world. Set to Johan Ullén’s Infinite Bach (a rearrangement of several Bach violin concertos), the 25-minute piece makes use of the entire company, shifting fluidly from duets, to trios, to ensemble configurations. Walerski can be inventive with his partnering choreography, and the effect of the structured, dramatic music vivified by 20 dancers dressed in white, dancing in darkness dripping in dry ice is striking.
But here’s where we get back to the questions I posed at the beginning of this review. Pieces of Tomorrow ticks many boxes as a touring piece – it uses the entire company, showcasing their musicality and swift technique. It’s the kind of contemporary dance that’s easy to describe as beautiful. But I couldn’t help but find the work very familiar and unsurprising – we’ve seen all these twists and lunges before. It wasn’t the absence of originality that I found at fault; I wouldn’t consider myself someone who seeks out novelty in choreography. Instead, it was the sense that the work fulfilled criteria instead of striving to push further.
None of this diminishes the quality of the dancing or Ballet BC’s enduring importance, both in Canada and internationally. The company will take PASSING on tour with them, while replacing Walerski’s piece with Crystal Pite’s 2008 Frontier. International audiences are sure to enjoy the company’s skill, commitment and energy – it will be interesting to see if their appreciation runs deeper.
