Artists of the Ballet in Petite Mort. Photo by Smita Jacob.
(program)
The National Ballet of Canada presented a mixed program of: Etudes, Piano Concerto, and Petite Mort on Wednesday November 27th, 2019 at The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
Cast (Etudes):
Heather Ogden
Harrison James
Naoya Ebe
Choreography by Harald Lander
Cast (Piano Concerto):
Svetlana Lunkina
Koto Ishihara
Harrison James
Naoya Ebe
Cast (Petite Mort):
Elena Lobsanova, Joe Chapman and others
Etudes, Piano Concerto, and Petite Mort runs from November 27 to December 1
Coming of Age: The National Ballet of Canada Merges Budding Potential with Peak Talent in an Educational Autumn Mixed Programm
on the evening of November 27, 2019, The National Ballet of Canada’s first mixed programme of the 2019/2020 season demonstrated facets of how both people and societies come of age. weighing the delicate balance between the difficulty and the joy of stepping forward into maturity, its three consecutive features each presented very different but equally potent images of growing pains on the united bodies of Principal Dancers, First Soloists, Second Soloists, and corps members, who joined together tactfully and tackled the theme with heart. the cast contorted in demanding harmonies verging at times on the erotic and at times on the acrobatic, but ultimately reverting to the comfortably classical, under the familiar blanket of a billowing orchestral score.
in the piece Concerto #1, choreographed by alexei ratmansky to dmitri shostakovich’s moody Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, Opus 35, we are exposed to the creative intellect’s (allegedly, the composer’s own) moral struggle of progression and regression under political duress. in Petite Mort, choreographed by jiří kylián to mozart’s wistful Piano Concerto in A Major, Adagio, & Piano Concerto in C Major, we become privy to versions of the vulnerable human anatomy shaping their fleshy selves into risqué suspensions of intimacy. in Etudes, choreographed by harald lander to piano exercises by carl czerny, we discover the façade of the ballet dancer’s career ruthlessly dissected into constituents of its industry——from the labour of its first ABCs to the strain of its most virtuosic character roles such as La Sylphide.
all in all, this triple bill proved to be an evening of no mercy for the company’s dancers, from the greenest to the most seasoned, whose execution was laid bare and who showed up bravely to take a slew of seemingly endless technical risks one after another. at times tense but primarily breathtaking, their performance affirmed: diamonds are made under pressure.
jolting the audience into action with the dance equivalent of a relay sprint, the athletic Concerto #1 energized the room with a series of brisk pas-de-deux, pas-de-trois, and pas-de-quatre (sometimes unfolding alongside each other in multiples). the dissonant musical swerves complimented the exciting choreographic mix of rigid and loose limb positions, which made the dancers meet in confrontational yet calculated ways——hoisting themselves onto their partners’ shoulders, letting themselves freefall into each others’ arms, and playing with their own centres of gravity to catapult or glide each other across the stage.
intermittent bridges and handstands brought something of the childlike out of the dancers, who achieved these usually offstage postures with grownup, still-balletic dexterity. against the subtly ironic backdrop (by george tsypin) of toylike Soviet constructivist shapes depicting ideological symbols positioned much as would be the floor of a toddler’s playroom turned upright, the cast appeared architectural——like pieces of a puzzle, or the thoughts of a wandering mind, come to life.
Harrison James and Svetlana Lunkina in Piano Concerto #1. Photo by Karolina Kuras.
all performers in Concerto #1 wore gymnastics-inspired leotards designed by keso dekker, a few pure crimson, but most two-sided in a manner evocative of harlequins: one side gunpowder grey, one side dried-blood red. any movement they made——and their movement was relentless all throughout——created the illusion that there were two people in one. en masse, it was often difficult to follow individual dancers through their respective sequences from start to end, which created a compelling visual confusion and kept all eyes peeled.
each dancer seemed to correspond to a musical note in the score——always unpredictable, always elusive, slippery but somehow exactly where they needed to be to assist their partners. in pairs, trios, and all together, they enacted risky lifts (one pair literally almost slipped, but boldly held their poses nonetheless!) as well as geometric angles harkening to the USSR-era avant-garde of experimental theatremaker vsevolod meyerhold. these dangerous games were echoed in the ambiance (with lighting by jennifer tipton) composed of a murky underwater-blue backwash at first, until the suffocated grey-teal gave way to a giant, crisp, chaotic triangle scribbled in black on the back wall. like a cry for help, this absurd hieroglyph loomed over the choreography, tinting its atmosphere with the ominous sense of an impending fall.
Concerto #1 was flirtatious in a foreboding manner, its pops of Bolshevik red zinging the eyes with a sanguine energy. it ended optimistically, however, with a trumpet solo performed vibrantly by soloist richard sandals, after which all sense of the pervasive strife in shostakovich’s musical duality seemed to be erased——playfulness triumphed over the serious, and pleasure over pain. the play and pleasure celebrated by this ending blossomed in the next piece, Petite Mort: at a length of 17 minutes, it is the shortest feature of the three by far——and yet, it felt like the longest simply because of the genuine thrill and suspense it delivered.
Jenna Savella and Skylar Campbellin Petite Mort. Photo by Karolina Kuras.
in Petite Mort, spectators were whisked into an unapologetic world of Baroque sensuality: a stark contrast to the underhanded satire of Soviet formalism of moments prior. here is a textbook lesson on the art principle of chiaroscuro: the visual play of light and darkness. the set completely stripped, the whole production monochromatic. as this segment of the evening began, pairs of dancers clad in butter-hued mildly-corseted undergarments (designed by joke visser) spilled into the stage in various states of undress under ambiguous pretexts: were they going to hurt or love each other? it was a fine line. the overture to the piece featuring ballerinos——with guillaume côté inconspicuously but flawlessly in the centre back row——manoeuvring fencing spires with their feet in unison, did little to settle the spirit (especially because it wasdistractingly unsynchronized in the front), keeping tensions elevated.
throughout the piece, the lighting——or lack thereof——drowned the dancers in shadow, into which they stepped and from which they stepped out to emphasize the curvatures and undulations of their musculature. the several climactic pas-de-deux for which Petite Mort is notorious were the highlights as expected: highly physical, they had soloists behave morbidly——part futuristic aliens, part like ancient sculptures. with tight isolations of their hands and feet, they showcased uncanny views of shameless flexed toes, open hips, and fluttering hands. several times, a silky beige curtain was brought out suddenly to envelop the whole stage for a few moments of pause. concealing dancers in its embrace like liquid skin, it quickly vanished back into oblivion. the spectacle created with these flesh-toned textures unfolded seamlessly and without pomp. the overall effect truly hit the spot.
Etudes culminated the evening with a lengthy exposé chronicling the classical dancer’s professional journey, with a behind-the-scenes tour from the first class to the apex of stage-life. with a tongue-in-cheek undertone, the piece began and ended with only the legs of lined-up ballerinas illuminated for targeted emphasis on technical precision. multiple tableaus had performers both male and female following one another in sequences of training elements gradually increasing in complexity, finally ushering in the brilliantly-executed solos by heather ogden as a confident, shimmering sylph.
Artists of the Ballet in Etudes. Photo by Karolina Kuras.
the parade that is Etudes was both fascinating and frustrating: fascinating for its precious (albeit highly stylized) glimpse of what it takes to achieve proficiency as a dancer, and frustrating because in the unforgiving white light now hitting the stage in lieu of the previous pieces’ sultry dimmed tones, any error——however minor——committed by the corps dancers, including those in the back rows, became a glaring irregularity. a toe arch a tad unpointed over here or an arm a bit lowered over there turned out to be very visible amid the meticulous uniformity this piece demanded.
during several sequences, the lined-up dancers were slightly off-time, seemingly preoccupied with technique——with staying upright while multitasking to maintain musicality. the choreography seemed to strive to hit repeated sweet-spots where movement and music click just right——moments which leave viewers euphoric——though these were a bit too infrequent. some runaway limbs were impossible to overlook, and whereas in Petite Mort these proved savoury even if offhand, in Etudes they diverted attention away from the overall flow and from the display of virtuosity which was its end goal. one moment redeemed it all: the collective fouettés near the end of the piece, completed flawlessly, had spectators in gasps.
this was an evening of great lifts and exciting partnering. its duets struck an awe-inspiring chemistry. with ambitious but less defining corps scenes (already chiseled so finely in Giselle earlier this month), the programme championed primarily the emotional and athletic bravery of its soloists——but also a promise of all that its lively, idiosyncratic younger cohort has yet the potential to achieve.
Anna Paliy is a doctoral student in the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation work explores various cultural intersections in Russian ballet costume reception between the years 1890-1930, with a focus on the storytelling potential of theatrical textile design. Her writing has been published in the journals Kino and Semicolon (University of Western Ontario) and Transverse (University of Toronto), and most recently in the magazines The Dance Current and The WholeNote. Formerly a competitive rhythmic gymnast in Ukraine, France, and Canada, Anna now enjoys practicing circus acrobatics and painting in her spare time.
Visit Anna’s Website
Instagram: @rococompost