Ballet BC's Medhi Walerski and Vancouver mixed-media art star Lyle XOX set to premiere collaborative creation
Mixing strength and fragility, new sculpture made from found objects will feature in season-closing program devoted to choreography by artistic director
Lyle XOX and Medhi Walerski. Photo by Peter Smida
Ballet BC presents FOR EVER from May 9 to 11 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
WHAT DO YOU get when a celebrated mixed-media artist—famous for taking self-portraits with elaborate found-object sculptures attached to his face and head—joins forces with a cutting-edge contemporary-dance choreographer and his entire fleet of 20 dancers?
The results promise to be mesmerizing when Vancouver’s Lyle XOX unveils a new large-scale sculpture for Ballet BC at its FOR EVER program next week. Neither the artist nor choreographer and artistic director Medhi Walerski want to give away too much about the piece, except to say that it’s gold, it’s made from discarded objects, and a dancer will wear it and move it. The artist and the choreographer refer to the towering piece as “The Deity” or “The Spirit of Creation”.
“A lot of time and a lot of love went into it,” Lyle XOX, who puts months into the meticulous construction of his sculptures, tells Stir. Speaking from the Ballet BC studios where the in-demand artist has just returned from work in Milan, he adds: “Seeing the dancers moving in it and seeing it come alive for me was very impactful and moving to witness it.
“It was an amazing experience and quite emotional,” he adds. “This collaboration has been such a beautiful gift that has come into my life when I needed it most.”
The untitled new work debuts at a full, season-closing evening devoted to the choreography of Walerski, the Paris Opera Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater alumnus who has led Ballet BC since 2020. The artistic director reveals that he and Lyle XOX have been in discussions about creating this vast, full-company work for two years.
“We realized we had similar interests in ideas of beauty, of legacy—of objects that are being abandoned and giving them new life,” Walerski tells Stir in a separate interview from the same Granville Island studios. “There’s a strong symbol of creation and recomposing existing things in the work. I spoke with dancers about that idea of legacy: I’m always curious about my past, where I come from, and my training, and embracing the past and giving it new life.”
Lyle XOX’s book Head of Design, full of his facial collages and head sculptures, published by Rizzoli New York.
For a better understanding of what might await in the new work, it’s important to know how Lyle XOX’s practice fits in with those ideas. Born in small-town Saskatchewan, the artist also known as Lyle Reimer moved to Vancouver to study makeup design and worked at MAC Cosmetics for years as a makeup artist and trainer. In 2013, he started posting selfies to Instagram in which he modelled makeup looks with his mixed-media face and headpieces, fashioned artfully out of everything from doll parts to shredded magazines, orthodontic gear, spoons, ballet slippers, and empty toothpaste tubes. Soon he had 150,000 followers and was in demand globally, collaborating with the likes of Gucci and singer FKA Twigs, and being named by Vogue magazine as one of the top 100 people around the world pushing the boundaries of art, beauty, and style. In 2019, he put out a glossy book of his images, published by Rizzoli New York, called Head of Design.
Behind his endlessly creative trash-to-opulent-treasure self-portraits is a heartfelt philosophy that also grounds the new Ballet BC work.
“Reusing is at the core of what I do—at the heart of everything I do,” the artist stresses. “I work with recycled garbage—people from all over send me their garbage. So it’s connecting people and it’s creating dialogue around the topic.
“Objects are loved and then, for whatever reason, they are discarded and that is the end of their life,” he adds. “So for me to see those objects after they have been discarded and to know stories are embedded in them is really important. But I also see that expanded into how I see people and relationships. People can be really, really loved and, for whatever reason, those relationships deteriorate. It’s about finding the beauty of that, after the discarding has taken place. Those are the moments that really resonate with me.”
Ballet BC artists Éline Malègue and Luca Afflitto rehearsing new works. Photo by Peter Smida
He says the sculpture, when put on by the dancer (“I’ve never thought of it as a costume,” Lyle XOX says), offers a play between strength and fragility—a tension Walerski says he’s also exploring in the work.
The piece joins a program of previous creations by Walerski that have never been seen in Vancouver before.
Chamber, created by Walerski for Nederlands Dans Theater when he was also a dancer there, is an “echo” to The Rite of Spring, set to a score by Joby Talbot that reimagines the iconic frenzy of Stravinsky’s original.
“I really wanted to bring back a work that was a stepping stone in my career, and I wanted to revisit it,” the choreographer, who has danced in The Rite of Spring himself, says. “Chamber is very bombastic—the piece is epic. I wanted the work to be primal and ritualistic, and I’m constantly looking for the balance between order and chaos; that’s something that has been following me in my career. So it’s intimate, vulnerable, with these shifts of energy and human experience.”
Dancers move about in flesh-toned bodysuits amid a striking set that incorporates towering doors. “It was about putting people in a closed space but having them portray the opposite,” Walerski says, explaining it builds the sense of tension in the work.
SWAY, also created for NDT, plays strength off fragility in different ways, featuring a smaller group of seven dancers on a wide-open stage. It marks the first piece Walerski made with frequent collaborator and composer Adrien Cronet, developing a gorgeous soundscape. Walerski was inspired by the Emily Dickinson poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”. “It’s about: Where does hope reside? In the soul,” he observes. “It’s the human capacity for optimism in tough times.”
Walerski describes the three-part program as a journey—and an apt way to celebrate his successes over the past four years, accumulating what he describes as “the company of dancers I always wanted to have”. “We are in the thick of it, and finally feeling the fruits of the labour coming out of the pandemic,” he says. Giving a nod to the company’s new headquarters on Granville Island, he adds: “What I feel is it’s really vibrant, having the time and space to create.”
As for Lyle XOX, a lifelong dance fan, the evening debuting his first collaboration with Ballet BC will be a major milestone and a chance to celebrate as well. As a busy international artist, he says the project allowed him to slow down and find fresh inspiration. “I have a lot of loved ones coming in, and people who have been supporters of mine for a long time,” he says of opening night. If the first rehearsal with his intricate sculpture was any indication, it could be an emotional evening: “I couldn’t stop crying. I was totally overwhelmed and it felt really special.” 
Related Articles
