Into The Light

I went to a Sunday matinee at the Four Seasons Centre for Chroma put on by the National Ballet. I usually pick an evening performance but I noticed that I often end up seeing the same roster such as Bridget Zehr and Zdenek Kovalina. I wanted to see Heather Ogden and Jiri Jelinek and other dancers in the principal roles.

Chroma is a contemporary ballet created by Wayne McGregor for the London Royal Ballet in 2006. This is the first time another company has commissioned it. Chroma combines 3 songs (Aluminum, The Hardest Button to Button, and Blue Orchid) by the White Stripes, orchestrated as instrumental pieces, with 3 additional songs from Joby Talbot. The stage looks like a white box where dancers come and go. It's a very pristine, sterile environment except when the light darkens to a deep blue. The movement is very spastic, quite different from the typical classical ballet. The dancers combined in groups of 2 or 3, with lots of grabs and lifts. There are some extraordinary poses such as a female who is in a vertical split (e.g., legs at 6 o'clock) who somehow manages to go beyond that into a pose that is closer to 10 past 6. An exciting piece driven by the percussiveness of the rock songs.

The next piece doesn't fit into the program. Serenade is a plot-less ballet by George Balachine set to Tchaikovsky's Op. 48 (Serenade in C Major for String Orchestra). In 1935 it might have seemed avant-garde and modern, and it might still fill that role on a different bill. But given the 2 modern pieces on display, it was rather bloodless and antiseptic. The most striking image was the opening, as the curtain lifted to reveal 17 women standing in diagonal lines, their right arm raised toward the light. The women, and occasionally a few men, danced in some set pieces, almost like a lesson or etude. The other interesting image was near the end, when the principal dancers untied their hair. What a change a little thing can do. I was astonished to realize that I never noticed female ballet dancers tie up their hair in tight buns. With their hair down, all their usual movements, spins, lifts, jumps somehow became different and strange.

The last piece, Emergence, is a recent offering by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite. The stage looks like a beehive or a termite mound with the entire corps de ballet and the principal dancers coming on stage through a round opening. To electronic music and bleeps, with a droning undertone present at times, they twitch and move like giant insects. All are in black, with the men bare-chested and adorned with markings on their shoulders like tribal tattoos. Though there was some solos and smaller ensembles, it was mostly a mass of men or women dancers. They move in unison, degenerate into individual tics, and then back in sync again. The stage was miked so that you can hear them counting off their steps. It was a hivemind, humanity as an undifferentiated collective. And yet despite the mental disquiet with dancers as worker-drones, there is also something thrilling about a large group of people chanting and moving in utter precision and unison (see also: marching bands, cheerleaders, goose-stepping soldiers.) The dark homogeneous underbelly of Emergence complemented the bright airy virtuosity of Chroma.