The Alberta Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada
At the Four Seasons Centre For The Performing Arts
June 13-22, 2008

   A rich mixture from two strong companies, this program received the most press attention for The Fiddle and the Drum, a 48-minute creation by Jean Grand-Maitre set to the music of Joni Mitchell. However, what it missed in media hype, the National Ballet of Canada certainly made up for in critical success. William Forsythe’s the second detail (1991) to the grainy, raw, edgy contemporary urban music of Thom Willems was a revelation of the company’s skill to go full tilt at what appeared to be wild riffs but which were, in fact, extremely skillful and gloriously virtuosic movement sequences. Visually, the grey on grey design was drab—with the background almost neutralizing the dancers. However, so strong was the company in the striking composition of solos, duets, trios, and larger groupings that what could have been mere clutter or undisciplined proliferations became stunningly polished sequences with one dazzling fragment after another. Pirouettes, extensions, battements, arabesques, entrechats, and brises voles set a dizzying pace, but the dynamism had a counterpoint in the mass of dancers seated on metal chairs and performing slow arm and upper torso movements. One of the other intriguing patterns involved collapsed bodies and burgeoning resuscitations. By the end, the pulsing, pounding score expanded instrumentally and melodically as a female soloist in white executed tribal leaps, kicks, runs, and plies. The abstraction was somehow never detrimental to the allure factor.

   Sir Frederick Ashton’s choreography in Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan, originally created for Lynn Seymour in 1976, was passed down to Jennifer Fournier who is retiring at the end of summer. A seven-minute piece, it is slight in weight, though it delivers brief impressions of Duncan in various kinds of mood, beginning with youthful playfulness, turning to contemplativeness, then to lyrical buoyancy, next to the heroic, and finally to an aesthetic translation. In performance, everything was kept simple—including the décor (tall columns, a piano for soloist Edward Connell, and a back wall that changed colour with each shift of mood)—and Ms. Fournier in a wonderfully accurate wig and coral pink dress in the manner of Duncan danced barefoot. It was, perhaps, too much to expect the ballerina to chart Duncan’s maturation in such brief segments, but the performance imparted a wonderful sense of spontaneity, with the famous scarf skip in one fragment and the scattering of roses in the final one.

   The homage of this piece was succeeded by a stunningly good homage to ballet itself in Danish choreographer Harald Lander’s classic Etudes (1948). Georg Schlogl’s set was basically a ballet studio that became a ballet stage as the piece progressed, the lighting picking up the legs of the female dancers (some in black tutus, others in white) as they went through their repertoire of classic exercises at the barre. One remarkable sequence had the dancers in black silhouette against a pale blue wall—the better to catch their lines. Another afforded an exciting spectacle of dancers performing in racing diagonals. At the performance I attended, the male principals were Richard Landry and Keiichi Hirano, the former distinguished for his rapid pirouettes and the latter for his elegant leaps and soft landings. The principal ballerina was the exquisite Stacey Shiori Minagawa whose pointe work had a delicate accuracy suited to her floating lyricism. Watching this piece was rather like watching an anthology of classic ballets in extreme miniature, and I am referring to polished selectivity and not to scale of achievement.

   The much-anticipated highlight of the program was, undoubtedly, The Alberta Ballet’s The Fiddle and the Drum, a collage that often thrilled and sometimes disappointed me. Joni Mitchell’s a capella singing, paintings, and recitations surrounded and supported the ensemble, and the thematic preoccupation with ongoing social issues—war and environmental neglect—gave the work a through-line. The stage was basically bare, except for a huge moon disc on which were projected Mitchell’s paintings and video. However, these in themselves were trite and rather flat, though repeated aerial images of our globe impressed themselves on one’s conscience as reminders of what should be seen as broad global issues. However, despite Mitchell’s recitation of Yeats’ “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and Kipling’s “If,” there was nothing deeply original about the treatment of themes, as Jean Grand-Maitre’s choreography often resolved itself into clichéd processionals, military marches (one with a goose-step, Fascist salute, and fluttering flags), and mass huddles that dispersed. There was also a candid appeal to sentimentality as a very young girl was seen walking across the stage, standing or dancing in a spotlight, or finally making the peace sign. Nevertheless, the overall effect was thrilling because of the 3-D water footage, the striking lighting of Pierre Lavoie that washed the stage in green or nocturnal blue and black, and because of the ensemble that performed vigorously, their bodies daubed with green and pink. Sometimes adorned with military helmets, the men executed grand leaps or crawled along the floor on their elbows and forearms. Hip-hop and club dance mixed with ballet, with traces of The Rites of Spring. There were also sequences of tender feeling with lyrical arabesques and movement that translated the music brilliantly. Nevertheless, although one of the questions raised by the piece (How can we heal the earth?) was certainly significant, I am not certain the dance itself provided an answer. But, then, it is the business of art to formulate the right question and to provoke discussion even if a resolution is not in the offing.

pic 1: Alberta Ballet Company in The Fiddle and the Drum (photo: Charles Hope)

pic 2: Piotr Stanczyk, Martin Lindinger, Rebekah Rimsay, and Noah Long in the second detail (photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

pic 3: Jennifer Fournier in Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan (photo: Cylla vonTiedemann)

pic 4: Artists of the Ballet in Etudes (photo: Barry Gray)

pic 5: Alberta Ballet Compay in The Fiddle and the Drum (photo: Charles Hope)


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