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Ballet BC (British Colombia)

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 4 Published: 24 May 2025 Edinburgh Festival Theatre Show Dates: 23 May 2025-24 May 2025

A memorable, hugely exciting double bill, Passing and Frontier, performed by Ballet BC – the leading Canadian dance company – feels as if it’s at the forefront of contemporary dance today. Two wonderfully creative choreographers, Crystal Pite (Frontier, a third iteration of her 2008 original) and Johan Inger (Passing), have created pieces that could not be more different, presenting a contrast of style and mood, light and dark. The link between the two choreographers is their experience with Nederlands Dans Theater – and it shows.

on the forefront of what’s happening in contemporary dance

One can see why Crystal Pite is one of the most sought-after choreographers in Europe today. In Frontier, she aims to explore doubt, made visible through shadows. It is an overwhelming experience, with embodied shadows: a vast crowd of dancers, hooded and dressed in black, crawl up from the audience, roll across the stage and later lift, stalk and importune with grasping hands, surrounding and enveloping spotlit dancers in white. The seething mass of shadows are at the same time embodied yet abstract, suggesting nightmare dreams surfacing from the unconscious – abstract enough for the audience to interpret with their own fears and desires. The darkened stage is swept at times with even darker shadows – an inspired design by Tom Visser. As Pite claims, the ‘neurotic’ – by which she seems to mean psychological – can also be linked with cosmic dark matter, of which, of course, we know nothing. Eerie music from Owen Belton and two uplifting choral pieces by Eric Whitacre bookend the piece.

The skill and extraordinary fluidity of the dancers is shown off in Frontier with their extreme moves – reaching out, bending backwards and Martha Graham-esque deep pliés. In the second piece, Inger’s Passing, about birth, life and death in a community context involving the full cast, there’s an even wider variety of dance styles, including folk and tap. The individuality of the performers is highlighted, no doubt the result of improvisation in the choreography’s creation. It starts with great humour and lightness, full of surprises – dancers laugh, cry out loud, and there is a hilarious episode where a woman gives birth to adult dancers. Particularly affecting was the solo live singing of a Swedish folksong, reminiscent to Scottish ears of Gaelic melody.

Although Passing successfully contrasts with Pite’s piece, its middle section feels random and loses its way. The final segment, with snow falling and a more sombre mood, could be potentially moving, but at present it feels overly long.

Amir Nisi

Stephanie Green

Stephanie Green has reviewed Theatre and Dance in Edinburgh since 2011 but previously travelled widely, mainly in Eastern Europe and Russia, writing about puppetry. She also studied shadow puppetry and sacred dance in Bali. In the 1970s, she trained as a puppeteer at the Little Angel, London and later worked at the alternative In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. After training at the Place, the London School of Contemporary Dance, in her 20s she then gave up dancing until starting again in her 60s just for fun. She has recently danced in a community group with Barrowland Ballet (at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2013), Oceanallover and at the South Bank, London as part of the Festival of the Silver Age. She is also a novelist, playwright and poet. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/

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The Blurb:

Canada’s leading contemporary dance company make their highly anticipated return, taking on Crystal Pite and Johan Inger.

Vancouver-based Ballet BC (British Columbia) wowed audiences and critics on their debut visit to the UK in 2018 with their “superb, gorgeous energy” (The i), with standing ovations at every venue inspired by the “joyous technical expertise of this excellent company” (The Guardian). 

In PASSING, legendary Swedish choreographer and longtime Ballet BC collaborator Johan Inger traverses a vast landscape of human emotion, taking audiences on an epic, theatrical, often touching ride. Inspired by climate catastrophe, PASSING explores relationships, from the intimate to the societal. Set to an original score by Amos Ben-Tal with selections from Erik Enocksson and Louis T. Hardin (aka Moondog), the sonic journey is as beautifully complex and captivating as the movement language throughout.  

Originally created for Nederlands Dans Theater in 2008 and reimagined for Ballet BC, Frontier, by four-time Olivier award-winning Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite will take the stage in spring 2025. Featuring 24 dancers, the visionary, enigmatic Frontier examines the unknown - the characterization of dark matter, the personification of shadows. “As a creator, I find a pleasing parallel between what we don’t know about the universe, and what we don’t know about consciousness” says Pite. “Creation for me is about venturing into unknown territory and being in a generative relationship with doubt.”  

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