Conceptual, intellectual, philosophical, elemental, frustrating… I could go on, as do Canada’s Ballet BC—for 110 minutes with interval—in their testing double bill. One expects no less from Crystal Pite and Johan Inger.
Pite’s Frontier, created in 2008 and revised for Ballet BC in 2024, tests our eyesight. Black on black, familiar in art works—I’m thinking Rothko, Malevich and Kline—but this is umbra and penumbra. Pite says she is contemplating dark matter, our deepest consciousness and doubt, frontiers all.
Figures in black, hooded, faces obscured, move through the auditorium and slither on to the stage. The stage is darkly lit—some dim lights appear now and then. Who are these ‘yeti’? Twenty-four dancers (twenty Ballet BC, four Rambert School students), shadows from a world beyond our reach, perhaps.
A female figure in white (and another) appears but is taken away by invisible puppeteers. Voices—what are they saying? I think King Kong taking Fay Wray in the original 1933 film. But that’s ridiculous. Plenty of time to let one’s mind wander in this mysterious void.
Are they a faceless, monkish sect? Spirituality inevitably enters the fray (the music is “Lux Aurumque” and “Sleep” by Eric Whitacre with other choral works by Polyphony). Or are they figments of our night terrors? Shadows on the wall, black sheeting (set design Jay Gower Taylor; lighting Tom Visser), vital light (the life force?) on the girl’s face...
The dark force grows, gathers, and then slithers away the way it came. Typical Pite, who likes working with a mass of bodies, here reflecting on physical mass and dark matter. And maybe an ecclesiastical mass?
Inger (own set design) matches that in spirituality with his 2023 arc of life PASSING—birth, growth and death, the passing through life. Thankfully, there is joy, wit and love. Inger, who has worked, inter alia, with NDT (as has Pite) and Cullberg Ballet, is inspired by Jiri Kylián, he says.
Twenty dancers in individualistic colourful costumes (Linda Chow design) pair off, give birth (eighteen through a woman’s legs), come together dance in jolly barn dance, folk circles, scatter the floor with dark ashes, sweep them up, love, skip, tap dance, show off, collapse in each other’s arms, to a regular beat, some jazz, some country, some great guitar, to farmyard and timber creaking noises. It’s a community.
On and on they go, making the most of life, and I think Pina Bausch crossed with Michael Keegan-Dolan. There’s a dance of woe, loud weeping, loud laughing… the vagaries of life. And some introspection…
City noises intrude—now we are in a crowd of criss-crossing busy people—going who knows where. Suddenly, a couple meet in the centre of that crowd—Adam and Eve… in nude costume.
The stage fills with more bodies in nude costumes—Matisse’s “Dance” comes to mind, as well as Dante’s Divine Comedy (I have a copy with Botticelli’s naked drawings) crossed with William Blake—but maybe I’m overthinking it.
Snow—or maybe more ash—falls—ashes to ashes. I’d like to think it is blossom, blossoming life. The birth of life and its death, circular, never ending. The twenty dancers are full of vigour.
An interesting programme, with two pieces that complement each other, it demands close attention. It will be touring Edinburgh, Newcastle, Wycombe, Plymouth, Wolverhampton and Norwich till 11 June.