Back from Luxembourg, Ballet BC brings home a large-scale new work for Reveal + Tell
Energized by touring again, troupe is ready to unveil a triple bill of contrasting creations
Ballet BC dancer Zenon Zubyk. Photo by Marcus Eriksson.
Medhi Walerski. Photo by Rahi Rezvani
Ballet BC presents Reveal + Tell from March 3 to 5 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
HEADED TO LES Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg earlier this month, it felt like Ballet BC was holding its collective breath.
Was it possible, with the loosening grip of the pandemic on the world, that they could carry through with their planned residency at the major European venue, finish creating Medhi Walerski’s world premiere, and then present it to full houses?
The answer turned out to be a resounding “Yes”—although, admittedly, the “full house” came on the night after opening, when Luxembourg opened its capacity limits from 30 to 100 percent.
“During the few weeks before, here in Vancouver, we weren’t quite sure if the residency would happen,” Walerski tells Stir. “There was a bit of a dark cloud over my head, worrying we might have to cancel it….But wow. We did it.”
He adds the tour, the first for Ballet BC—a company that’s made its international name touring—since COVID hit the world, was a major morale boost. “It really brought the company together,” Walerski reflects.
The bonus for Vancouver audiences is that the troupe is now back in town with a large-scale new creation for the full 19-member company. It joins a triple bill of fresh works on the Reveal + Tell program in the coming week.
The Ballet BC artistic director was able to develop his premiere, titled just BEFORE right AFTER, with the dancers during a two-week technical residency at Les Théâtres—an architectural landmark that is a transformed former monastery and sits in the heart of the city.
“It was really incredible,” Walerski reports. “It allowed us to keep creating the work and adapting it onstage with both the composer and the lighting designer there the whole time. It gave us that extra space to experiment—and as a matter of fact, the piece changed quite a bit from before we went.”
Walerski had decided that, after long months of limitations on dance since he took the helm of Ballet BC in 2020, he wanted to create a piece that would celebrate the entire group of dancers.
His work has always felt cinematic, and you can expect the same feel with just BEFORE right AFTER—a piece so named because there’s a significant shift in the middle of it. We won’t give away more, except to say that Walerski is expressing a bit of a metaphor for the pandemic experience: at first the dancers move forward as a group, and then they’re forced to let go, to abandon what they’re doing, and to take a reflective pause.
Belgian composer Adrien Cronet was able to expand the electroacoustic score as he collaborated directly with Walerski and the dancers. And the lighting, by Pierre Pontvianne, became a striking feature of just BEFORE right AFTER.
“It was about playing with timing and almost using the light as a choreographic component,” Walerski explains. “It follows the dancers.”
The work creates a vivid contrast to the other two works on the Reveal + Tell program—both new to the company’s repertoire.
German choreographer Marco Goecke’s Woke Up Blind is on deck for its Canadian premiere. He uses two different Jeff Buckley songs – “You and I” and “The Way Young Lovers Do” – to depict two different forms of love through intensely emotional and intricate movement. It’s the first time Vancouver audiences have seen a piece by the choreographic star, who has created work for the likes of Nederlands Dans Theater, the Norwegian National Ballet, and the Stuttgart Ballet.
Elsewhere on the program, Vancouver dance icon Crystal Pite debuts her much-anticipated The Statement here. She has set it to a script by Canadian playwright Jonathon Young, with whom she created the international hits Betroffenheit and Revisor. Originally commissioned by Nederlands Dans Theater in 2016, The Statement features four dancers locked in a battle for control, moving to pre-recorded spoken word—a form Pite explored in a much different way in Revisor.
“The works will really highlight the versatility of the dancers,” Walerski says. “Crystal’s is so theatrical; Marco’s is so vital; and mine is technical and features the big group work.”
Still riding the high that comes from its return to European touring and residencies, and featuring some standout new talent, the corps seems ready to return full-swing again. “They are an incredible group of unique individuals—they all have something unique about them. It’s something more than being talented, which they are,” Walerski says. “With their versatility and their generosity, it has been a great process. And it is something just to witness them onstage.”
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