National Ballet of Canada in Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada bill

The National Ballet of Canada are in London with an all Canadian bill of modern works featuring choreography by Crystal Pite, James Kudelka and Emma Portner…

National Ballet of Canada in Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas. © @FoteiniPhoto

National Ballet of Canada
Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada — Pite/Kudelka/Portner
Angels’ Atlas, Passion, islands
★★★★✰
London, Sadler’s Wells
2 October 2024
national.ballet.ca
www.sadlerswells.com

A first visit to the UK for the National Ballet of Canada (NBC) under their relatively new director, Hope Muir, and it’s a bold and welcome statement of Canadian modernism and commitment to ballet’s future rather than its past. Amen to that, and I wish other visitors also brought more of their contribution to the future. And it’s a neat triple bill as well that couples thoughtful classical ballet with edgy modern movement and work by the most in-demand choreographer in the world - Crystal Pite.

The show opens with Passion, a take on modern classicism from veteran choreographer (and ex-NBC artistic director) James Kudelka. It’s an interesting piece in folding together free-flowing contemporary movement, and its realistic relationship partnering, with classical ballet’s romanticism and love of order and clever symmetry. And so we have Heather Ogden and McGee Maddox, in 20th-century garb, on stage with three classical couples (one leading) and a thread of five ever-meandering ballerinas all in terrific romantic tutus. Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano in D leads the action - gorgeously full of its own passion and contrasts.

It’s really strange seeing the contemporary and classical worlds co-existing simultaneously rather than some fusion of movement that many would go for. It has terrific music, terrific design and terrific dancers, but overall it rather feels like an experiment that has not totally fulfilled its promise. The main action is contemporary, and yet it recedes (despite follow-spots providing some focus) as the weight of numbers on the classical side cloud, and often attractively competes, for attention. The sum is not greater than the parts in this case. When the Beethoven goes down to just piano, we at last see the contemporary duo alone on stage, and it’s pleasantly restrained movement rather than the passionate response the title implies. This all sounds too damming for what is often a pretty piece of work that challenges your preconceptions of what modern ballet can be, and long may Kudelka think outside the box.

At the opposite end of her career is Emma Portner, who created islands four years ago in her mid-twenties. Unashamedly contemporary and working across stage and screen, this is a restless duet for two women, for the most part joined together, initially by a belt. This proximity constraint leads to often absorbing movement where limbs are isolated and frequently manipulated by the other dancer - at its most bewitching when you see one dancer’s arms working in perfect sync with the other dancer’s legs, all under the microscope of an intense pool of light. The box of light becomes larger, the dancers’ paired trousers come off, and we seem to be seeing the development of the relationship from a highly constrained one to a looser arrangement where the pair actively choose to be joined. Softer lighting and more organic and long, long, stretched movement emerges to a catchy Lily Konigsberg track - it’s all become rather sultry. So far, so thrilling on original movement, but in the final section the two dancers separate and with the separation, the spell seems broken and the movement response less captivating. But those first two sections really are clever, with stunning dancing from Heather Ogden and Genevieve Penn Nabity, and I want to see more of Portner’s work.

Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas closed out the night, and my goodness, it’s stupefyingly good. While I’m not religious, it’s a work that connects with you at an elemental level, one that makes you ponder what we are about and speaks of man’s smallness in the greater scheme of life, the universe and everything. I felt like a 12th-century serf must have felt on entering a huge cathedral where everything is a wonder of light and scale. It’s a work that makes you feel humble and yet so inspired by the cleverness that created it.

Lighting projections on the back of the stage are vital to Angels’ Atlas and its success. Conceived by Jay Gower Taylor (Pite’s partner), they look like NASA views of far-off galaxies, but here they slowly change and morph. It’s a sky beneath which the company toils as best they can - minions in the scheme of things. It shows our struggles, sometimes individually, but it’s the group work that so pleases. Pite has re-energised and given fresh impetuous to what the corps de ballet in a big company can do in the contemporary world. It’s the sculptural use of a group, the stretching for more, the mutal support, and the organic way that groups emerge and fragment which so enthrals and captures our base collective instincts. I think it’s the best piece of Crystal Pite I’ve ever seen. And I so want more.

The Canadian shows run through to the 6 October and if you can get you should undoubtedly see them.