Ballet Notes & Serenade & Emergence November 24 – 28, 2010

Chroma The acclaimed British choreographer Wayne McGregor revels in the amalgamation of the unlikely. His multi-disciplinary works emerge from those experimental frontiers where the theoretical merges with the physical and dance pushes up against and interacts with film, the visual arts, architecture, technology and science. The results are never less than astonishing and Chroma, created for (UK) in 2006, is no exception.

Chroma was created in close collaboration with the architect John Pawson, who designed the set. Says Mr. McGregor of the partnership: “Often in my own choreographies I have actively conspired to disrupt the spaces in which the body performs. Each intervention, usually some kind of addition, is an attempt to see the context of the body in a new or alien way. On reading John Pawson’s Minimum I was captivated by this notion of subtraction, the ‘essential’ space, which seems to reduce elements to make visible the invisible. Intriguingly, although Pawson’s designs do give definition to space(s), they are somehow always boundary-less. This potential ‘freedom space’ would be an extraordinary environment for a new choreography, where the grammar and articulation of the body is made crystal clear, graphic and unmediated. It could be a space where the body becomes absolutely architectural. At the same time, in creating volume(s) of tone for the choreography to inhabit, the body can behave as a frequency of colour – in freedom from white: Chroma.”

The world premiere of Chroma earned rave reviews as well as the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Best Choreography, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production, the South Bank Show Award for Dance and two additional Laurence Olivier Award nominations in 2007.

Set to a score by British composer which includes Talbot’s unique orchestrations of three songs by the rock band , alongside four of his own original compositions. The work pits the angular, rough-edged music and the choreographer’s energetic, exacting style against a stark, minimalist architectural space, allowing the audience to see the nature of physical movement in an entirely new and invigorating light.

Edward Watson and Alina Cojocaru in Chroma. Photo by Johan Persson. Ballet Notes Chroma & Serenade & Emergence November 24 – 28, 2010

Serenade Among the many great works created by Russian-born choreographer , Serenade is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Created for students of The School of American Ballet, Serenade was first performed in 1934 at the estate of Felix Warburg. The first professional performance was at the Adelphi Theatre, New York City on March 1, 1935. In October 1948, Balanchine presented Serenade in the first season of his newly formed , where it remains a signature piece to this day.

A powerful, haunting work, the ballet opens on an abstract note with an ensemble of 17 women standing in diagonal lines, their right arms and palms raised. Their arms are then bent and brought toward their heads, as if the dancers are shielding themselves from a brilliant light. The feet are in a parallel position facing forward, then suddenly they are made to snap out in a balletic first position, as if in acceptance of a new mode of movement.

Serenade emphasizes in melodic visual terms Tchaikovsky’s ravishing Serenade in C Major for String Orchestra Op. 48. Balanchine always insisted that Serenade has no plot and noted “many people think there is a concealed story in the ballet. There is not. There are, simply, dancers in motion to a beautiful piece of music. The only story is the music’s story, a serenade, if you like, in the light of the moon.” Yet audiences often find themselves giving subjective interpretation to various ‘incidents’ within the work. The enigmatic subtext, with its hints of melancholy drama, only serves to enrich what is already a pure dance of magisterial beauty.

The National Ballet of Canada first performed Serenade in 1962.

Artists of the Ballet in Serenade. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann. Ballet Notes Chroma & Serenade & Emergence November 24 – 28, 2010

Emergence is known as one of the most innovative and exciting choreographers at work in Canada today. Artistic Director Karen Kain commissioned Pite to create an original work for the National Ballet’s 2008/09 season as part of Innovation, a programme of new work by Canadian choreographers. The result, Emergence, brought audiences to their feet after every performance and went on to win four Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Choreography, Outstanding Performance and Outstanding Sound Design/Composition by Owen Belton.

A riveting dark-hued work that casts a swarming, scurrying group of dancers, insect-like, in an eerily subterranean universe, Emergence dramatizes through its mesmerizing choreographic attack the ways in which the instinct for creating social forms seems hard-wired into life itself.

Pite’s inspiration for the work came from reading Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software by American popular science theorist Steven Johnson and considering parallels between the social organization of bees and the hierarchical nature of classical ballet companies.

Johnson’s statement that “simple agents following simple rules could generate amazingly complex structures” became a touchstone for the piece. Pite was interested in individual expression and in collective problem solving through movement, often favouring the visual and kinaesthetic appeal of the eccentric over the mundane and the grotesque over the beautiful. Pite rarely works with dancers en pointe and was attracted not only to the dancers’ ease of movement but also to the potential for a creature-like effect. Sometimes fragmented and gestural, with traces of the isolation and popping techniques of hip hop, Pite’s choreographic method was a catalyst for change in the dancer’s bodies.

Key to Pite’s vision for Emergence was her collaboration with composer Owen Belton. Also from the west coast, Belton uses both acoustic and electronic instruments, often in combination with computer processing techniques such as granular synthesis, to arrive at atmospheric palettes of sound and tone. Pite and Belton have incorporated drone-like sounds of bees along with sounds of marching to signify the power and ominous presence of the body politic.

Artists of the Ballet in Emergence. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.