To Mar 8. Thu-Sat 7:30pm; Sat-Sun 2pm. $20-$155. Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen W. 416-345-9595. www.national.ballet.ca.
While artistic director Karen Kain has given three of the country’s most promising choreographers free reign to create a short, original piece with her National Ballet of Canada, it seems only one of them truly understands the meaning of the program’s title, “Innovation.”
Like Disney’s attempt to reinvent classical music in Fantasia 2000, Innovation opens with a piece devoted to colour. Divided into eight sections, Peter Quanz’s IN COLOUR has brightly dressed soloists and couples popping out among the grey corps de ballet, which has synchronization issues during the first scenes. Still, special nods go to first soloist Bridgett Zehr and principal dancer Guilllaume Côté for their solemn Pink and Purple pas de deux.
The obvious standout — and meat of the dance sandwich — is Crystal Pite’s Emergence, in which packs of dancers represent a colony of bees seemingly engrossed in a mating ritual. Very rarely does everything in a performance — the set, music, costumes and choreography — complement each other so well. The haunting ambient noises and insect chirps, combined with a simple backdrop, create the illusion of a cold, ominous, never-ending tunnel, with dancers in black hoods emerging from the dark, twitching and twisting to the point where they become indescribable creatures. Inspired by hip-hop, the isolations are so intricate, every tendon and bone can be seen peeking through the sinewy figures.
This received a deserved standing ovation, setting high expectations for the finale. Sadly, Sabrina Matthews’ DEXTRIS is an anticlimax. Her sonic ode to Vivaldi, consisting of a choir and a revolving door of soloists performing the composer’s oratorio Dixit Dominus, doesn’t quite match her choreography, which has too many lifts.
This disjointedness might easily have been fixed simply by rearranging the order of Innovation’s performances. Start with the more conventional DEXTRIS and continue with IN COLOUR’s somewhat experimental theme before finishing with Pite’s masterpiece, which encapsulates where ballet needs to go in the future.