Some of my favourite shows at the National Ballet of Canada through the years have been the mixed programmes. These performances, made up of two or more shorter dance works, can be fascinating, infuriating, boring, stimulating, forgettable and utterly memorable -- all in one afternoon. One of the intriguing aspects is experiencing the ways in which quite different dance works can and do somehow comment on or illuminate each other by being placed together in a single programme. A key part of the experience is the frequency with which these programmes introduce brand-new works, having their world premieres, or company premieres of works previously staged elsewhere. In recent years, there's been a decided trend to including works created by members of the company on their colleagues.
All this, and often much more, for the price of a single ticket!
The mixed programme of this winter season includes no less than three world or company premieres -- more on that as I come to the individual pieces.
These performances also mark the final appearances of another long-time (22 years) and much-loved member of the company, Principal Dancer Jillian Vanstone.
As fully versatile as any other member of the company, Vanstone yet has one remarkable ability which I will certainly miss -- an ability which is perhaps as much a gift of birth as a learned skill. Vanstone has the most remarkable way of getting right into some of the younger characters in the canon, and convincing us utterly that she herself is actually just 14 or 16 years old, or whatever number is called for by the particular choreographer.
Many of her colleagues do a beautiful job of such roles as the young Princess Aurora, Juliet, Alice, Cinderella, Perdita, and others -- yet I'm still conscious that they are adults acting the role of a teenager. Jillian Vanstone becomes, for the moment, a girl again herself -- and for a woman of her age, this is a remarkable gift that is uniquely hers. The only other dancer I can remember in my entire career who could do this so successfully, and it was in rather a different way, was Veronica Tennant.
So I will certainly miss Jillian Vanstone, and think of her often, at future stagings of such ballets as Sleeping Beauty (coming next week, by the way), Cinderella, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Romeo and Juliet, The Winter's Tale, and more.
And, with that, on to the actual performance.
The first work was the world premiere of Skyward, created for the company by Choreographic Associate Alysa Pires. For Pires, and for many of the dancers, this was the first new creation made in the studio after the lockdown, and the excitement was intense. As Pires said, "I wanted to bottle that feeling." She succeeded. Skyward bubbles over with intense, affirming, aspirational energy and power. As I've noticed in previous reviews of her work, Pires is an intensely musical choreographer, and the dance throughout this piece grew as one with the music. The title was affirmed again and again by the frequent lifts, the sense of near-weightlessness, the urge to become airborne in so many places.
The second work was the company premiere of Christopher Wheeldon's 2005 work for New York City ballet, After the Rain. This was the piece which Jillian Vanstone specifically requested for her swan song, and for once the Saturday matinee audience was actually fortunate to see the retiring dancer in her selected last role (this is a great rarity). Vanstone had requested this work specifically because of her long and fruitful professional relationship with Wheeldon, who chose her as the first dancer in North America to perform the role of Alice when his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was staged with the National Ballet.
We're told in the programme notes that the second half of the work, the awesomely beautiful pas de deux, is a favourite stand-alone number for many dancers. To me, this seems a great pity as it is both finely balanced by and searchingly contrasted to the preceding pas de six. The true impact of the work depends on seeing it as a whole, and those who just take the pas de deux out of context are, I think, short-changing their audiences -- wonderful as it is.
The first section, the pas de six, had a clearly ritualistic character. This quality comes first of all from the music Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa (literally, "blank slate"). The strings march at a precise tempo through a kind of fugato which then lands on a suspension and holds there, while one of two solo violins plays a looser kind of rhapsody or cadenza, using a melodic figure from the fugue as a basis. This pattern repeats a number of times. Each time the solo violin appears, two of the three couples on stage stand still while the third goes through a series of movements seen only in these brief duos, and completely separate from the movements of the six dancers during the fugue. In short, both music and dance are highly stylized and severely structured.
The contrast with the heartaching humanity of the succeeding pas de deux (set to Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel) makes the case for staging the entire work. A quick costume change puts the lead couple into simple costumes, with the woman dancing in soft slippers and (most unusually) with her hair down. Vanstone's long hair is so unusual to be seen in classical dance that it becomes almost a third character, by turns revealing and concealing the all too human emotions of the woman and man. In that total contrast to the first part, the flowing movement comes to the verge of articulate speech time and time again. Jillian Vanstone and Harrison James projected strong waves of human vulnerability, tinged with the sorrow of farewell which was -- of course -- heightened by the occasion. A treasurable moment in ballet to remember.
After the intermission, we next saw the world premiere of On Solid Ground, created by Principal Dancer Siphesihle November. I found the title a bit ironic for a work which again seems to aspire frequently to cast aside the surly bonds of earth. November stated that his intention was to translate for the audience the joy of internal self-exploration and self-awareness in movement. That's a challenging intention, to be sure, so it intrigued me that the choreography so often created a feeling of being a Rorschach ink blot test in motion, as much designed to trigger the self-awareness of the viewer as of the artists. This kind of dance fascinates me -- choreography which, although abstract, often seems momentarily on the verge of making some kind of concrete statement. I love the constant flow of my own thoughts and feelings demanded as I watch such a work.
In contrast to three premieres with varying degrees of seriousness, the final work in the programme was a golden oldie which can only be described as a joyous romp. Elite Syncopations (the title comes from the second song on the playlist) makes no deep statements, asking us only to relax, banish care, and join the company in the spirit of fun.
Kenneth MacMillan created this jovial piece in 1974 on the Royal Ballet, using music by Scott Joplin and others of his contemporaries at a time when his music was much in vogue -- due to the use of the rag The Entertainer in the Hollywood film, The Sting. The National Ballet gave the piece its company premiere in 1978 and it's been a firm audience favourite ever since.
It's hard to resist the colourful and elaborate costumes, actually all painted by hand on tights, worn by the various dancers, or the sight of the musicians of the orchestra dressed in light jackets and straw boaters, up on risers at the back of the stage -- led by pianist Edward Connell, who switches from time to time between a concert grand and an old, out of tune, honky-tonk upright.
The setting is a 1920s dance hall, and a community social dance is in progress. Characters present include the hot-shot handsome stud, the sexy girl that every guy wants, the little wallflower guy who never gets to dance with anyone (especially not with the sexy girl), and so on and on. MacMillan's choreography harks back to dance styles from the 1880s on forwards to the 1920s, and deliberately exaggerates many movements in a preposterous way designed to enhance the fun.
Because this is such a company piece, with every number featuring different dancers, it seems almost unfair to single anyone out. But I was delighted with the partnership of Svetlana Lunkina as the sexy girl and Brendan Saye as the hot-shot. Equally funny, and equally absurd, was Noah Parets as the little wallflower. When he finally does get to dance with the tallest girl present, played with real verve by Jaclyn Oakley, the audience is in stitches at their preposterous antics -- all fueled by the fact that Oakley dances on pointe to exaggerate the height difference.
Since it's now, in effect, a historic artifact taking a comical spin at an even older historical period,the historian in me is fascinated by how well Elite Syncopations has weathered the years. I suspect it is, as much as anything, our desperate need to find something -- anything -- to make us laugh in such turbulent, uncertain times. Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the near-full house laughed uproariously, especially at the antics of Parets and Oakley. The need has certainly been met.
And my need for a challenging, rewarding, fascinating mixed programme of dance has been more than definitely met.
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