What: Ballet Victoria
Where: Royal Theatre
When: March 15 (tours to North Centennial Theatre in Vancouver on March 25 and Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay on March 31)
Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of five)
Introducing Ballet Victoria’s performance, artistic director Paul Destrooper observed that artists tend to be taken for granted in their hometowns.
There’s truth to that. Yet if there were doubters, on Wednesday night our city’s ballet company proved its mettle with a beautifully danced rendition of Luminous. Created by Canadian choreographer Peter Quanz, this 2010 work is a lovely rumination on romantic relationships.
Here, Ballet Victoria offered some of the best dancing I’ve seen from the company. The evening’s other selections — Destrooper’s jokey Le Banc (The Bench) and his lighthearted interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream — were less substantial, although each had its moments.
A 20-minute work, Luminous begins with dancers standing tilted forward, as if gravity has mysteriously shifted. It’s initially abstract, using a more-or-less conventional ballet vocabulary, but we soon realize there’s a story. There are four pas de deux; each couple portrays a relationship.
Contemporary dance elements soon seep in. At times, the dancers appear to be buffeted by some unseen force such as wind. Some movements are decidedly unconventional: serpentine, undulating. There’s a repeated pattern of disarray and uniformity that seems curiously detached and biological.
One of the most unforgettable moves — repeated — has dancer Andrea Bayne almost fall to the ground, standing straight, only to be caught by Destrooper at the last moment. In another powerful moment, Bayne takes leave of her partner, having been replaced by a new dancer. She and the newcomer each lift their arms in union, a powerful image suggestive of the melancholic resignation that comes with hard-won experience.
Luminous is set to a wonderfully evocative score, Affairs of the Heart, by Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich. Replete with throbbing violins, the music is unabashedly romantic while sidestepping sentimentality. Quanz’s approach is similar; this is a layered, complex piece. Ballet Victoria more than did it justice with a performance that was well-rehearsed and accomplished.
Le Banc (The Bench), which opened the night, is intended as the lightest of aperitifs. Perhaps it’s too light. Set to Bach’s cello suites — well played onstage by musician Leslie Atherton — it’s a series of vignettes, mostly duets, set around a park bench.
As a choreographer, one of Destrooper’s hallmarks is his sense of humour. Thus, Le Banc begins with a man, dressed in white, who tries in vain to get comfortable on the bench. He falls off, then a passing bird unloads onto his eye. Later, a bench-sitter reads a book upside down.
Certainly this is crowd-pleasing stuff — we saw some of the same jocularity in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For my taste, such jokiness is obvious and pandering. Broad humour is a powerful tincture capable of overshadowing whatever subtleties a work may contain. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set to Mendelssohn’s music, is played against a colour-saturated backdrop of Greek columns and a night sky reminiscent of a Max Parrish painting.
Dressed in a green Robin Hood-ish outfit, Bayne was a standout as Puck. A long-limbed, technically accomplished dancer with good extension and line, she brought out the character’s spritishness through jerky movements and cheeky facial expressions.