Program 1 - Ballet BC

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photo©Michael Slobodian B.R.I.S.A. Choreographer / Johan Inger Dancers / Emily Chessa, Scott Fowler & Peter Smida

Ballet BC is a contemporary ballet company. For me it's a perfect mix of the intense discipline of classical ballet and the creativity and celebration of the human form of contemporary dance.
I chose to sit in the very back of the top balcony for this performance. I usually sit near the front in the orchestra and I was curious to see how the height and distance would affect my experience. The seats in the upper balcony are only $15 thanks to Simons sponsoring a community balcony. There were lots of teenagers and hopefully some ballet virgins up there in the balcony with us. I love how diverse the audience for Ballet BC is, it's a testament to the strength of their work.

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Eight Years of Silence - Cayetano Soto (World Premiere)
A piece about how time stretches. Soto mentioned at the Pre-Show Chat that this work was inspired by a near-death experience and the silence of fear that he experienced at that time. For me, I certainly felt the isolation, the struggle and doubt of this piece. Dancers constantly curling around one another, pulling each other back. Soloists deftly expressing an inner struggle, impulses moving through the body only to wrap back upon themselves. The stage was stark, and the dance was punctuated with blackouts, the blinking of eyes perhaps when the world slows right down and a lifetime is felt in a heartbeat.

B.R.I.S.A. - Johan Inger (North American Premiere) 
I LOVED Walking Mad by Johan Inger, so I was pretty certain I'd love B.R.I.S.A. too. This was definitely my favourite piece of the evening. More on the narrative side, this work explored how one event or individual can create ripples in a community. Beginning on a more sombre note, we witness a "depressed community" the dancers shuffle around the stage, hunched over, contained, small. We see the spawning of an individual, the way pairs fall into sync with each other only to break apart and return to the monotony. Then the wind comes. A physical, visual, tangible wind that introduces a element of play and chaos, of joyful abandon. But humans are drawn to inertia, to patterns, so the last moment turns the question to us in the audience. How can we bring our own wind of change to our lives and communities?

Don't miss out! Program 1 runs Nov 2, 3, 4, 2017 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, BC.
Get tickets at ​https://balletbc.com/

~ reviewed by Danielle Benzon