Ballet BC’s latest sees company at an artistic crossroads

Ballet BC occupies a special place in the country’s dance landscape – you might think of it as Canada’s most European quasi-ballet company. Its 18 dancers combine a strong foundation in classical technique with the ability to launch themselves into demanding and dissident aesthetics. Influences come via a few brainy physical thinkers in the dance world: William Forsythe’s kinetic interrogations at Ballett Frankfurt and Israeli Ohad Naharin’s insistence that motivation come from within.

What has consistently impressed me about Ballet BC is the sense that individual artistry is the entry point to any choreographic endeavour. The dancers make the work feel personal; it’s a slippery phenomenon to put your finger on, but intensely satisfying to perceive. A decade into Molnar's tenure, the company is at a kind of artistic crossroads, Martha Schabas writes.And it’s an important year for the company – Emily Molnar’s 10th anniversary as artistic director. What she’s accomplished over the past decade was exceedingly clear in Toronto last month at the Bluma Appel Theatre, where Ballet BC finished a Canada-wide tour. When Molnar took the reins in 2009, she inherited an organization on the brink of bankruptcy.

But I wonder if, a decade into her tenure, the company is at a kind of artistic crossroads. I inferred as much watching one of their triple bills, with pieces by frequent Ballet BC choreographers Medhi Walerski, Crystal Pite and Molnar herself. All of the company’s reliable strengths were on display – excellent, detailed dancing and palpable engagement with the material. But, with the exception of Pite’s tender and sorrowful 2012the evening felt conceptually undercooked.

Petite Cérémonie. The 2011 piece is set to a range of classical music and showtunes, featuring 15 dancers dressed in black evening attire.Yet there’s a showy, performative feeling to the work that isn’t entirely satisfying. When the ensemble congregates to perform a sloping walk in unison and then snaps to attention, fists at their collar, the effect is perplexing. The sequence suggests context we haven’t been privy to; the style doesn’t fit.

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