DANCE REVIEW: National Ballet gets modern touch
6 Jun'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

TORONTO – There’s a lot to be said about adding something edgy and modern to something sophisticated and classical — and as anyone who has ever been involved in a discussion about the latest addition to the Royal Ontario Museum can tell you, not all of it is positive. Sure, some people love the Crystal with a passion, but some people hate it too, and just as passionately. And the subsequent debate has brought a lot of attention to the ROM as it rages.

So with any luck, there’s going to be the same wide range of opinions flying around when Toronto balletomanes discuss the new ballet from Finnish-born choreographer Jorma Elo, premiered by the National Ballet of Canada Friday at the Four Seasons. It’s called PUR TI MIRO (loosely translated as I Adore You) and it is set to the work of Claudio Monteverdi, from whose opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea the title is drawn, as well as to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.

There are, of course, more than two centuries separating the birth of the two composers but Elo and music director and conductor David Briskin join them in an all but seamless fusion that reflects similar fusions not only in the costumes, designed by Holly Hynes, but in the dancing as well.

It begins, more or less, as an evocation of the standard tutu ballet, but quickly evolves into a major showcase (as well as a major work-out) for an array of talented dancers — Sonia Rodriguez, Patrick Lavoie, Heather Ogden, Noah Long, Jenna Savella, Naoya Ebe, Stephanie Hutchison, McGee Maddox, Elena Lobsanova and Robert Stephen — all of them clearly challenged by the unconventional choreography and loving every minute of it.

Very obviously rooted in the classics, Elo’s work is nonetheless very much of today and even tomorrow, with contemporary dance moves appended at nearly every turn to a classical vocabulary. Danced at what sometimes feels an almost frantic pace, Elo’s work transforms the score from something that carries the dance to something that drives it, creating a vision that is memorable more for its unpredictability than its musicality.

Still, it serves to launch the often cooly elegant company into an evening of mixed programming that showcases in a memorable way the fact that it is not only a company that draws from ballet’s storied past but embraces the modern world with equal enthusiasm, featuring revivals of the NBOC’s productions of Jerome Robbins' OPUS 19/THE DREAMER and his WEST SIDE STORY SUITE, both of which seemingly became instant audience favourites when they debuted back in 2007.

Originally created to showcase the skill of Baryshnikov, and set to breathtaking music by Prokofiev, OPUS features a technically strong union of Rodriguez and Zdenek Konvalina, who once again demonstrates that while, as a technician, he may be the equal of the Russian master, as a showman who can command the stage he still has a long way to go.

Konvalina returns to the stage, cast as Tony to Lobsanova’s Maria in the ebullient and charming WEST SIDE STORY SUITE, a dance précis of the enduring genius Robbins unleashed on Broadway in the musical of the same name. Dancing to a melody of music by Stephen Sondheim — and sometimes singing along with it — the entire company proves to be completely at home in this brave new world. In fact, dancers like Guillaume Coté, Piotr Stanczyk, Jordana Daumec and the lovely, leggy Hutchison take the opportunity to demonstrate a thrilling fluency in dance that proves conclusively that when it comes to talent, it not only runs deep in this company, but runs wide as well.