Notebook: The timely premiere of Ballet Unleashed and Switchback
By Michael Crabb
By the end of July 2021, if all goes according to plan, a sequence of six thematically linked but discrete dance solos will have been digitally captured in locations as far apart as Amsterdam and San Francisco. Edited together, these solos will constitute a new dance film called Switchback, scheduled for online release in September.
Several of the young dancers, all graduates of prestigious international ballet academies, have never met in person and Cathy Marston, the Bern, Switzerland-based choreographer has met them all only online. Nor has Marston yet had an opportunity to meet in person her Los Angeles-based co-director and producer, Lauren Finerman, despite this being their second collaboration.
Welcome to the wonderful world of artistic creation during a global pandemic.
Switchback is the inaugural creation of an ambitious new initiative called Ballet Unleashed. Taking its cue from the project-based employment familiar to many contemporary dancers and other performing artists, Ballet Unleashed aims to open up new avenues of advancement for those entering the profession by instigating and supporting an ongoing number of short-term projects through which young dancers create original work with emerging or established choreographers.
The idea behind Ballet Unleashed is not new. It first emerged at least a decade ago in the fertile imagination of Mavis Staines, artistic director and CEO of Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto. Conscious of how challenging it can be for young graduates to secure company positions and aware that project-based work is not at all uncommon in Europe, Staines saw the potential for opening up a new pathway into the profession. As she recalls, Staines periodically proposed her idea to international colleagues but, with so much else on their busy agendas, it gained little traction. Then came the coronavirus and everything changed.
“By May last year,” says Staines, “we’d all realized that the pandemic was going to disrupt our lives for the long haul. Simply despairing is a dead-end road. It became about protecting emerging dancers’ futures. The pandemic forced us into a different way of thinking, into opening up a whole new channel.”
Canadian Jason Beechey, an NBS alumnus, now rector of Germany’s Palucca University of Dance Dresden, and Ernst Meisner, artistic director of Dutch National Ballet Academy in Amsterdam, responded enthusiastically and became partners with Staines in launching Ballet Unleashed. Eight other institutions — the Ailey School, the Australian Ballet School, the Ballet School of the Opéra National de Paris, the Boston Ballet School, the New Zealand School of Dance, Britain’s Royal Ballet School, the Royal Danish Ballet School and the San Francisco Ballet School — agreed to support the project.
The pandemic not only provided the impetus to transform Ballet Unleashed from dream to reality: it also made possible the engagement of a well-established choreographer to head up the first project. As Staines and her colleagues mulled over whom to invite, Beechey suggested the British-born Marston. “I know Cathy well,” explains Beechey, “so I gave her call. She’s fluent in digital media and liked the idea of a virtual creation. The shoe fit.”
The postponement or cancellation of a number of projects meant that Marston’s schedule was uncharacteristically flexible. There were openings. “This past year and more has triggered so many unexpected events,” says Marston, “and it’s shown that amazing things can also be made to happen.” (More good news comes from a recent announcement that Marston starts a two-year contract as director of Ballett Zürich in 2023.)
Apart from the limitations occasioned by the pandemic and by a tight budget, Marston was given free rein. In thinking about the crucially formative age bracket of the dancers she would be working with, Marston, who is a noted adept in narrative dance, conceived of the film as a coming-of-age story that echoes the familiar challenges young dancers must confront.
In Marston’s words, Switchback is the journey of a young adult who leaves their home to pursue a dream. “The film follows their story as they set out on a quest to leave what is comfortable and embark on the unknown. Their story is echoed through the stories of other characters on the same journey, taking risks, getting lost and facing challenges to reach their goal.”
Marston worked closely on the scenario with Finerman whom she met — virtually — when they collaborated last winter on Mrs. Robinson, a short film excerpted from Marston’s longer but postponed work of the same name for San Francisco Ballet.
“Although we still have not met [in person] it’s as if we’ve come together and become one mind; it was very natural,” says Finerman. “After so many Zoom calls we’ve become very familiar with each other’s living rooms.”
Zoom has been the primary nexus among Marston and the dancers during the choreographic process. While in some instances Marston demonstrates the movement, she also coaxes it from the dancers by encouraging them to define their particular character physically. A rehearsal director in each school has acted as a combination of coach and répétiteur. Those not immediately involved in a rehearsal can still observe and, if time zones make that difficult, they can look at a recording.
“There’s been a lot of describing rather than showing,” says Tristan Toy, one of Switchback’s two male cast members, both from Boston. “It’s definitely been a new way to learn choreography, which I know will help me in the long term. It’s wonderful to feel part of a collective, collaborative project.”
“It’s like a ray of hope in the midst of the pandemic,” says NBS post-secondary program student Inara Wheeler.
During filming, technological advances will allow Finerman to watch a streamed feed from the camera itself. “It’s not perfect colour but the definition is excellent,” says Finerman, who has brought in Toronto cinematographer Jason Han to work with crews in each locale to give the film visual consistency.
A key to the longevity of Ballet Unleashed will be to secure ongoing funding. Its lack of a rigid framework and ability to adapt to changing circumstances will most likely prove its greatest strength, and a second project is already in development for next year.
Staines is not alone in hoping that, in the not too distant future, Ballet Unleashed performances can be for live as well as virtual audiences. “Ballet Unleashed,” says Staines, “has the potential to be a pioneering change-maker not only for dance artists but also in ballet’s accessibility and relevance to global audiences.”
