Grace Symmetry - Rachel Meyer & Darren Devaney
Thursday, February 20, 2014
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| Darren Devaney |
Quite a few years ago then editor of
Vancouver Magazine, Malcolm Parry, threw and expensive wide angle lens at me
and told me, “You are making the motions. Go back and take some good
photographs.”
I have never forgotten his passionate fit
of rage. Since that time I have tried to put as much passion as I can with what
I do.
And I must report herewith that after
seeing tonight’s first performance of Grace Symmetry, a Ballet BC collaboration
with the Turning Point Ensemble, that there was enough hot passion to perhaps
ease us into an early spring. That heat was comforting and thrilling.
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| Lauri Stallings & Owen Underhill |
But we live in a city with a penchant for
forgetting its past. Our memory is fractured.
I remember a day in 1997, during rehearsals for Ballet BC's Boy Wonder when I first met
composer Owen Underhill. He was a warm, self-effacing
man with a gently smile and rarely seemed to speak beyond a whisper. At the
time I was absolutely smitten by a ballet BC dancer called Lauri Stallings. She
seemed to be a dancer from another planet with an exquisite style that was so
different that when she danced I could recognize her from the ankles down.
I asked her if she would pose with
Underhill for a photograph. I asked her to be his muse.
The resulting photograph (I didn’t bother
to check that my picture was much too close and I should have given it more
room) is the one you see here.
But it is one of the most satisfying
photographs I have ever taken and I have been a fan of those two passionate
beings and what they represented. One was the passion of Ballet BC
the other of modern music of which now as the Artistic Director of the Turning
Point Ensemble I can more often dip into when I feel the cold setting in.
It might seem strange that this blogger and
amateur (no expert but in the 19th century sense of being enamored
by it) follower of new music and dance would even mention a dancer long gone
from Ballet BC
(who is happily heading a dance company in Atlanta).
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| Kevin O'Day & Owen Underhill |
I may be at an advantage over any real
dance critics here. Most usually base their essays on watching a performance
and or interviewing people with the long distance feeling of a phone. If
anything our diminishing media does not inform us because so many of their
writers remain within the confines of their offices. They don’t inform us because
they miss a lot of the peripherals which can be most interesting and can
enhance the pleasure of a performance.
Consider that tonight a little bird sitting
very near me told me that dancer Gilbert Small (you cannot miss him as he is
Ballet BC’s sole black dancer) sprained his ankle on Monday. The little bird
was afraid that Small might have gone to a hospital. But Small’s role was big
in all three works and he danced as I and the little bird bit our fingernails
figuratively. We expected something terrible to happen. It never did!
The second piece of the evening Prelude by
choreographer/dancer Medhi Walerski from the Netherlands Dance Theatre had to
be changed from what I saw in the initial rehearsal on Monday of the other
week. The change had to do with the white back wall of the Arts Umbrella’s
rehearsal hall. A crucial part involved the seeing of black string across the
stage while dancer Darren Devaney weaved and ducked with the lines. The Queen
Elizabeth’s dark back wall made it difficult for an audience to see this.
It was Walerski who explained this to
me when I spotted him in the audience. I asked him what had led him to select
Devaney for the piece. Walerksi put his right hand over his heart and told me, “He
touched me here.”
The last piece, Here on End with
choreography by Kevin O’Day (who told me he was from Detroit
via Germany)
had extraordinary lighting by James Proudfoot. When I first saw Here on End at
the Arts Umbrella rehearsal studio on 7th
Avenue, I watched Proudfoot with his iPad as he recorded
Here on End. The lighting was high fluorescent. I asked him if he knew what he
was going to do. He told me that he did not know.
Here on End begins with a dramatic overhead
spotlight that lowers itself onto one dancer. Then during the whole performance
several banks of these spotlights are raised and lowered (sometimes
dramatically low). The look I found nicely reminiscent with the swirls of
lights of flying saucers in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And to think
that it all began with an iPad!
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| Ben Kinsman, horn, Tom Shorthouse, trumpet, Jeremy Berkman, trombone |
All three works explored different
configurations of the Turning Point Ensemble.
The first one, In Motion by choreographer Wen
Wei Wang and with music composed by Underhill had lots of moments of special
silence where you could hear the swish the pointe shoes. The ensemble (a
smaller one) was behind the dancers, on stage and not on the pit. The music
like its composer was quiet and gentle not at all scary like some who shun new
music might tell you. If anything the music seemed to go very well with Wen Wei
Wang’s gentle and elegant touch. Proof of this was the solo performance of Brenda
Fedoruk on flute and violinist Mary Sokol Brown who separately went on stage
while a dancers (in the first it was Alexis Fletcher) weaved around them.
The second piece, Prelude choreographed by
Medhi Walerski and with music composed by a Russian resident of New York, Lera Auerbach
was unique in that it had only two performers, not seen on stage. They were
violinist Peter Krysa and pianist Jane Hayes.
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| Dancing trombone mutes |
While Hayes did tell me apologetically,
after the performance, that her piano was electronically enhanced I can
attest that she could have done without any enhancement. This piece also had nice long moments
of no music that compensated for a few, very loud, use of the piano for what it is, an instrument of percussion. This was unlike the third piece, Choreographer Kevin O’ Day and
music by John King, Here on End.
Here on End had dancers constantly dancing to
music that did not give ground. What came to mind was a school of sharks unable
to stop movement. It was a perpetual motion machine and Turning Point Ensemble
filled the pit with as many musicians as it could muster. After the performance,
in the lounge on the third floor I spotted composer John King chatting with
lots of laughter and excitement with Co-Artistic Director Jeremy Berkman who
had a big grin on his face. I can tell you why. Berkman is the Turning Point
Ensemble’s trombonist and Here on End had a nice long, very loud and very
beautiful trombone part!
To me it seemed that Ballet BC in the past
was short on men. Or it seemed then that I noticed the women but ignored the
men whom I saw as "picker uppers" and fillers. There were quite a few exceptions
of which I will not mention here but I must now note that I notice the men,
lots. You would never have suspected unless you read your program that former
Arts Umbrella Dance Company’s Scott Fowler was not a full fledged dancer of the
company but is listed as an apprentice dancer with that other colleague from Arts Umbrella, Ryan Genoe
who I am sure will very soon also have a longer time on stage.
I believe that many if not most of Ballet BC’s
dancers would stand out if the choreographer gives them the part. As a dance
ensemble you also have to fit in. It's that mix that makes some stars and some not. But I can safely say that none in Ballet BC just make the motion. They make motion with passion.
It is difficult for anybody watching dance
to not have favourites. When you list your favourites you might be seen as
insulting those who did not stand out simply because you might have been
looking elsewhere. So you are careful and try to be diplomatic. I won’t have to
because is would seem that my faves have the nod of all three choreographers.
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| Jane Hayes, piano |
Two of those dancers (my absolute faves) are
Rachel Meyer and Darren Devaney. More on these two below.
I missed Dario Dinuzzi, an excellent male
dancer has suffered an injury that kept him out most of last year and this
year. Alexander Burton shined in Wen Wei Wang’s In Motion (in a duet with Rachel Meyer). Thiboult Eiferman,
(the Parisian Newyorican) was smooth and especially when he danced with his
friend Devaney. Peter Smida got suddenly sick today and had to be relieved. He is
a very strong and masculine dancer. I missed him but happily Gilbert Small,
Connor Gnam and Daniel Marshalsay made me almost forget Smida’s sudden departure.
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| Rachel Meyer & Darren Devaney |
But back to the real stars, the divas, the super
dancers of the evening. They are Rachel Meyer and Darren Devaney. The
former you notice before she even moves. It could be her striking face and her
seriousness or her body which has no fat and is all sinewy muscle. The latter,
Devaney you would not notice at first. He is quiet, smallish. But then he moves,
then you cannot look at anybody else with the exception of his partner in
Prelude, Rachel Meyer.
I am no expert on these matters but when
Meyer dances everybody else fades away, though given a chance Alexis Fletcher
can give her a run for her money.
Luckily for us all, Ballet BC
dancers are not baseball players so Meyer and Devaney will not be demanding
more money and a new contract for next year. On the other hand I would not
blame them if they did.
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| David Owen, Oboe |
At the lounge I went up to Devaney and
asked him about his signature alternating movement of his chest and stomach (in
and then out) as he breathed heavily at one point. “What do you call it? His answer was short, “Posturing movement.” And
with that, like Medhi Walerski, I knew he had touched my heart.
And from the heart I would like to go back
to the head. And that’s Emily Molnar, Artistic Director of Ballet BC who has
the class and the credibility to get choreographers of the caliber of those
avant-garde dance companies from Europe while
nurturing our very own local ones like Wen Wei Wang.
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| Rachel Meyer |
