New dancers and fresh beginnings as Ballet BC re-emerges on the live stage
Meet three standout performers taking the spotlight in Unfold + Give
Jacob Williams. Photo by Brendan Meadows.
Kaylin Sturtevant. Photo by Brendan Meadows.
Sidney Chuckas. Photo by Brendan Meadows.
Ballet BC presents Unfold + Give at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on November 4, 5, and 6
IT’S BEEN MORE than a year-and-a-half since Ballet BC fans have been able to see the dance company live on the Queen Elizabeth Theatre stage—and like the rest of the world, the troupe looks a little different as it emerges from the pandemic pause.
When Ballet BC returns with its wide-ranging Unfold + Give mixed program full of world premieres next week, there will be some new faces.
Stir talked to three of the company’s more recent recruits about how they’ve coped with the challenges of the past 18 months, how they’ve stayed creative, and how they found their way to Ballet BC.
We also found out what it’s been like rehearsing the pieces in the season-opening program Unfold + Give—including world premieres by Vancouver’s Lesley Telford and Company 605, and by Toronto-raised and Canadian National Ballet– and Juilliard–trained Ethan Colangelo. The program also includes a live restaging of artistic director Medhi Walerski’s flowing GARDEN (which streamed during pandemic lockdown last season, when he joined the helm).
And so here are a few introductions to the people who are helping Ballet BC “unfold” its vision again, but also move forward with fresh new energy.
Jacob Williams
Jacob Williams graduated from Arts Umbrella’s professional dance program in spring 2020—right into a pandemic lockdown, and all that meant for the performing arts. For the first few months of the shutdown, he even moved back home with his parents in Vancouver, Washington.
But since then, his career has flourished—first as an Emerging Artist in Ballet BC’s 20/21 season and now as a full company member this fall.
Williams came relatively late to ballet, at 16. “I was in community musical-theatre groups doing some step-touch-and-pivot turns—but that was pretty much most of the dance I did growing up,” he tells Stir with a laugh. It was in that realm that a sharp-eyed choreographer noticed he had a gift for movement and directed him toward dance class. “So there I was at 16, with all the 10-year-olds, learning really basic tendues,” the self-effacing artist says with another laugh.
When Williams got his first taste of contemporary dance while watching a Christmas performance, he was hooked. “I was amazed and I wanted so much to feel what the dancers felt in that—and so I started training six days a week,” he says. That hard work would continue, taking him from Alonzo King LINES Ballet to Oregon Ballet Theatre.
Taken on as part of the Ballet BC’s apprentice-like Emerging Artists program last fall, Williams was able to keep in shape with the rest of the company, even though much of the season was cancelled or moved online.
“Everything was was up in the air—that’s why it’s so nice to have a concrete thing to look forward to now,” he says.
Out of all that uncertainty, some great things did happen for Williams, however. With live shows cancelled, some Ballet BC dancers got the chance to choreograph a mixed filmed program called TAKE FORM—and Williams’s Semble, a beautiful work for five dancers in constantly shifting sculptural formations, went on to become a finalist in the International Choreographic Competition Hannover.
And there was more good news. Williams remembers the day clearly when he got word he was joining the company.
“There was definitely a bit of anxiety leading up to that on the calendar,” he says of his meeting with Walerski late last spring. “It was a big relief because auditioning is probably the most stressful thing you have to do as a dancer—putting yourself out there and getting rejected,” he says. It tells you a bit about the modesty of Williams, whose fluid expressivity has stood out on stages right back to his Arts Umbrella days, when he adds that he was at first worried that, because Walerski “started the conversation with compliments”, the artistic director was laying the groundwork for a letdown. His fears allayed, “I remember being so happy in the moment and calling my parents.” Ballet BC had been the goal ever since he headed north to study in this city, and he had finally secured his place.
Williams’s live premiere with the company is in Walerski’s serenely elegant GARDEN, a work inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns’s Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 14, and Vancouver choreographer Lesley Telford’s intricate and technically demanding new Lean-to. In the former, he comes almost full circle, performing a pas de deux with his old Arts Umbrella dance partner and close friend Kiana Jung again.
Watch for this rising star to take the stage in solos in both pieces. And keep an eye out for him outdoors, enjoying West Coast nature, too—a passion he developed growing up in Washington State. You may even see him doing a solo performance of a difference kind on local slopes: “I’m hoping to finally learn how to snowboard and ski this year,” he says.
Kaylin Sturtevant
Pre-pandemic, as a student in USC’s Kaufman School of Dance program, Texas-born Kaylin Sturtevant had a chance to see Ballet BC in action. She travelled with one of her professors to watch the company’s rehearsal process for William Forsythe’s seminal, and insanely challenging, contemporary ballet Enemy in the Figure.
“I remember in that moment I fell in love with Vancouver and the company,” she recalls.
Sturtevant now finds herself dancing with that company—but it was a long journey to get there. From the age of six, she studied everything from jazz to tap in Plano, a suburb of Dallas, eventually training at Booker T Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and developing her love of contemporary ballet.
Flash forward to her graduation year at USC, in 2020, and—like Williams—she saw the performing arts world shutting down just as she was ready to launch her career.
It speaks to her perseverance that she was able to keep busy, pursuing her pilates certification. “I really think it is so helpful for so many different bodies,” she says. Sturtevant also went back to teaching and performed as a freelance artist at companies like DASH Ensemble and ISHITA Ensemble.
In fact, she was busy dancing south of the border right up to the day before she moved to Canada from the U.S. to join Ballet BC this season.
Look for her in Ethan Colangelo’s new Stadium on the opening program. “It’s been exciting to be in his presence, and the work is very physical and grounded,” she says. “He’s so young, and there's something beautiful about being in the process with him.”
Elsewhere at Unfold + Give, she’s looking forward to GARDEN, Walerski’s flowing, serene piece, first staged at Nederlands Dans Theater—a contrast to the physicality of Stadium.
Variety and versatility were, after all, some of the attributes that drew her to Ballet BC in the first place.
“I, and some of the other new dancers, had to learn really quickly,” she says. “Thinking about how much I’ve learned in the last two months being here is crazy!
“But it’s been really special to be in a space with other artists feeling normal again,” she adds. “And to now share it with a live audience is really exciting.”
Ballet BC rehearsals, with Sidney Chuckas at left. Photo by Michael Slobodian.
Sidney Chuckas
Also graduating from the University of Southern California’s dance program in spring 2021, Illinois-born Sidney Chuckas was getting ready to enter the Pratt Institute of Design Masters of Architecture this fall when he received a call from Ballet BC.
“It was almost like the universe saying, ‘You need to go do this,’” he reflects now.
Chuckas had auditioned remotely, by video, in February, drawn to Ballet BC’s versatile repertoire, but also its leadership.
“We had Medhi teach us a class at USC, and he was an amazing presence, and also gentle and open-minded,” Chuckas tells Stir, “and I thought, ‘Yes. I want to be in that environment and perform at that high level.’”
Chuckas brings a rich and diverse toolkit of experience to the company, beyond his undergrad studies in architecture. He’s danced for music artists like Chance the Rapper and Paris Jackson, trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alvin Ailey, and The Joffrey Ballet, and has created his own works for stage and screen.
But he also brings a larger mission to everything he creates and performs: as a Black artist, he’s passionate about inclusivity. Right in his bio on the Ballet BC dancer page, he states his aim to “dismantle the institutionalized marginalization of minoritized bodies”.
“I’m so new to the professional contemporary scene, but I know from the people I’ve met and the choreographers that I’ve worked with that there’s a lot to do,” he begins. “At the end of day we’re performing something that’s public. So I think it’s really, really important that a company that has this platform, that reaches thousands of people, has more of these conversations. Why we are picking these choreographers to represent this company in this way, and what are they bringing to the table in the arts world that is potentially going to make people think differently?
“I knew that when I signed the contract: I'm going to a company with quite a prestigious name, and what does that mean for me as an individual, as a Black man, to step into that space?” he adds. “How do I bring my ideals here and challenge them to think differently about gender, about how we represent race and culture onstage?”
For now, as an Emerging Artist with the company, Chuckas is working hard on the sidelines, understudying roles in Company 605’s After We Glow (a piece Chuckas praises as a “huge mind game” with intricate choreography) and for a nuanced solo in GARDEN.
“I feel I’m starting off in one of the best positions possible,” Chuckas says. “I’m getting to learn two parts that are quite contrasting in style and also are two roles that are contrasting in the type of artistry they require.” Deferring that masters in architecture appears to be paying off—for Chuckas and Vancouver audiences alike.
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