Dance: Dazzling and demanding

The National Ballet of Canada
Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada
Crystal Pite / James Kudelka / Emma Portner
Sadler's Wells, London • 2-6.Oct.24 ★★★★

This programme features pieces by three of Canada's top choreographers, each with a distinct perspective. They are sharply designed and performed, although the impact they carry is a mixed bag, each deploying its own style of dazzling visuals and demanding movement...

Passion
choreography James Kudelka
with McGee Maddox, Heather Ogden, Larkin Miller, Genevieve Penn Nabity, Donald Thom, Chelsy Meiss, Isaac Wright, Monika Haczkiewicz, Nio Hirano, Clare Peterson, Ayano Haneishi, Connor Hamilton, Miyoko Koyasu
music Ludwig van Beethoven • piano soloist Zhenya Vitort
costumes Dennis Lavoie • lighting Michael Mazzola

Hugely ambitious, this features three separate dances sharing the same stage.The concept is impressive, and the choreography is often beautiful, although it sometimes feels like it's about to spiral badly out of control as dancers bump each other, stumble or lose synchronicity, as if the performers are struggling with the dimensions of a new stage or the pacing of the live orchestra. Even so, it's visually impressive. The central narrative focusses on a couple (Maddox and Ogden) performing an emotive modern ballet with witty touches, prowling around the edge of the dance floor before coming together with a kick of intensity. Meanwhile, a traditional couple (Miller and Nabity) dance in classical ballet style and costumes around them, often accompanied by two matching couples. And snaking between them the whole time is a line of five twirling ballerinas. The effect is vivid and often powerful, creating intriguing barriers while highlighting different forms of physical expression and connection. So even if it's a bit rough around the edges, and even if more progressive casting would make it even more impactful, this is a lovely piece.

Islands
choreography Emma Portner
with Heather Ogden, Genevieve Penn Nabity
music Brambles, Guillaume Ferran, David Spinelli, Forest Swords, Lily Koningsberg, Bing & Ruth
costumes Stephanie Hutchinson
lighting Paul Vidar Saevarang

In a rectangle of projected light, two dancers (Ogden and Nabity) are pressed together creating shapes and striking poses as one. Always in contact, their movements are vivid and sometimes amusing, offering fascinating visuals by skilfully maintaining a tight connection. Sometimes pushing or lifting each other into position, they begin to emerge from their locked-in perspective, untangling their limbs and removing their leggings to allow for even more expressive movement as the light on the stage grows, shrinks and changes shape. All of this is performed to a striking soundscape that mixes in snippets of music, and as it progresses the performance emerges as an intimate duet. This is a remarkably physical piece, often breathtaking in the way it presses the dancers together then pulls them apart with synchronicity. The movement is light and fluid, offering a celebration of freedom within a union.

Angels’ Atlas
choreography Crystal Pite
with Svetlana Lunkina, Ben Rudisin, Alexandra MacDonald, Spencer Hack, Hannah Galway, Siphesihle November, Genevieve Penn Nabity, Spencer Hack, Donald Thom
music Owen Belton, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Morten Lauridsen
costumes Nancy Bryant • lighting Tom Visser

As usual, Crystal Pite stuns the audience with visual spectacle that carries a powerful emotional gut-punch. The main event in the Frontiers programme, this piece is staggeringly expressive on multiple levels, challenging gifted dancers who rise to the challenge to put their bodies into a range of insistent positions. There are some 35 performers on the stage at times, moving together in waves of choreography with attention to the finest detail, flowing, surging and offering standout moments for individuals. This takes place in front of a screen featuring jaggedly refracted light that shimmers above the performers, combining with choral music to create an almost magisterial spectacle. As the light and music shift, the dancers do too, creating seemingly weightless movements that express a vibrant sense of yearning, as if they are battling for their lives. Unusually visual and visceral, this piece features heart-stopping breakout sequences that cleverly use both the intensity of the light and the large group dynamic for context. Pulsing rhythms also bring out enormous emotional resonance in a story that grows in its impact. In the end, it feels both devastating and hopeful. And the audience is almost as out of breath as the dancers.

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photos by Johan Persson, Karolina Kuras, Bruce Zinger • 2.Oct.24