Dance review: Ballet BC conjures distinctive worlds at ZENITH
Cosmic circles, monumental walls of light, and inventive partnering as new Andrea Peña and Fernando Hernando Magadan works bring audiences to their feet
CAELUM. Photo by Michael Slobodian
Ballet BC’s ZENITH continues to March 8 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
A TRIO OF STRIKING, visually sophisticated works had the audience jumping to its feet three different times at Ballet BC’s packed ZENITH show opening.
Making her choreographic debut with the company, fast-emerging Montreal-based choreographer Andrea Peña’s dynamic and meaning-filled SACRA was rapturously received.
For the opening half of the new Ballet BC commission, the dancers were attached in pairs by harnesses and ropes at the pelvis, pulling each other off-axis in an intense exploration of balance. What might have come across as gimmicky in another choreographer’s hands was instead a deep exploration of ideas around human labour and connection, and pure spatial artistry (Peña is trained as an industrial designer).
SACRA’s opening was stunning, the duos organized in rows, bodies curling backward from the tensed ropes. Soon dancers started dragging each other across the floor as Peña played cleverly with lines in horizontal space. Later on, one dancer carried another surreally by her hip harness, like the world’s most beautiful tote bag.
The harness experiments worked on both metaphorical and literal levels: the imagery alluded instantly to physical labour, while you watched humans negotiate weight and connection in real time.
For fans, SACRA felt bracingly fresh—a new, pelvic-centred movement for the troupe, and no doubt punishingly challenging, even for Ballet BC’s honed dancers. Peña has spoken of “queering” her choreography, and the physical strength of the female members, who often hoisted and heaved their male partners around, was revelatory.
On a deeper level, the Montrealer said in the preshow talk that the work was an ode to the undersung, oppressed labourers of the developing world, inspired by her own background as an immigrant from Colombia. By the end, the dancers had freed themselves from their bonds, and, amid the innovative partnering, climbed each other’s bodies to new heights and cradled their comrades in their arms.
Dancers Kaylin Sturtevant and Luca Afflitto in SACRA by Andrea Peña. Photo by Millissa Martin
Heightening the messaging were Kate Burrows’s SACRA costumes, with their worker-like cargo-parachute pants, and CIBER1A’s score, with its electro-acoustic ruminations undercut with Indigenous beats. Meanwhile, a monumental wall of LED lights pulsed like another, higher force at the right side of the stage. Bonnie Beecher’s lighting accentuating the figures pulling, collapsing, and lifting against the white space. Kudos to this exciting choreographer for fully pulling off her ambitious vision.
From its opening moments, Spanish choreographer Fernando Hernando Magadan’s world premiere CAELUM transported audience members to a strange new universe. A big black-hole-like circular setpiece slanted down ominously from above centre stage, eerily backlit by a triangle of light. The circle seemed to draw the dancers toward it. One woman was lifted toward the hovering void, sitting backwards on a man’s back and creating the effect of a beautiful, four-armed alien. With Ben Waters’ rising electroacoustic score, the opening scene had a decided 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe—if that film had been lit with gorgeous chiaroscuro lighting (care of Beecher again).
From there, the dancers hurtled into perpetual motion, pairs giving way to trios giving way to solos, all in an endless, inventive blur of whirling arms and wrapping bodies. Hernando Magadan is intricately detailed in the way he carves out space and sculpts partnering, dancers flying on the momentum of whipsawing limbs.
Again, the effect was of an elaborate, moving artwork—one of dazzling forms against the geometric light and eerie overhead circle. The performers’ muscular thighs caught the light through the large slits in Burrows’s rippling dark-satin pants; the score sometimes sounded like some epic heartbeat providing the pulse for this living, multi-human organism.
It was an elegant yet edgy work–a highly abstract exploration of what lies beyond our universe. The crowd loved it.
Johan Inger’s PASSING was a stark contrast to the first two serious works; and yet, on its second return to the Ballet BC stage, this sprawling, audacious piece somehow felt even more melancholy beneath its whimsical, goofy surface. Life, death, love, sex, babies, uncontrollable crying, hysterical laughter: they were all there in the famed Swedish choreographer’s messy meditation on the meaning of life.
So, too was his usual mashup of styles, from sophisticated contemporary technique to folk traditions, hip-hop, and even tap dance. Dancers clicked their heels in the air, dove into handstands, and randomly rampaged across the stage in tap shoes; one troupe member even had an extended singing sequence. The Ballet BC artists, decked out in jewel tones, showed enough versatility to nail that mix, as well as the characterizations of the flawed citizens populating this chaotic community onstage.
Throughout, the dancers scattered what looked like ash around the stage as they moved—a constant reminder of where we’ll all end up. The piece built to a dreamlike rain of ash that evoked an erupting volcano, a burning planet, and end times. And yet the humans danced on, undeterred. 
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