Calgary: Jazz in the Breezeway and Alberta Ballet’s Bowie extravaganza
By Jennifer Fournier
Amplified, a mixed-bill drive-in performance by Calgary’s Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, which took place downtown January 14-23, was an effective rebuke to almost two years of COVID-related cancellations — and underscored DJD’s singular vision and nimble leadership.
Unable to perform in their own 230-seat theatre, the company seized on a pedestrian space called the Breezeway inside the DJD Dance Centre to perform their second drive-in show. The parking lot where the audience sat in cars is across the street from their building, with the Breezeway visible through a wall of windows.
As inspiration for their pieces, each choreographer chose a colour, which was projected onto the dancers who were dressed in white, thereby blanketing the entire space — a clever use of synesthesia to heighten the experience. The music was broadcast over the radio and Kimberley Cooper, DJD’s charismatic artistic director, introduced each choreographer, who said a few words about their piece — a bit like a drive-in podcast.
The evening was directed by Sabrina Comanescu, a company dancer who also created the confident opening and closing pieces. After almost two years of isolation, the slightly voyeuristic thrill of watching fabulous dancers groove to sublime music from the distant comfort of your car felt somehow apt. I especially enjoyed Smooth by Scott Augustine, which turned up the heat and in which Natasha Korney was a standout; the soulful swagger of Kaja Irwin’s Bass Expectations, set to Miles Davis’s Great Expectations; and Korney’s El Chale!, set to the late-50s hard bop classic Moanin’ by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — a witty and swinging chaser to Miles’s ambient early-70s vibe.
A small tree obscured my sightlines a bit, but no matter. I was struck by the feeling of communion despite sitting alone in my car on a cold January night — and reminded of the artist’s ability to find creative solutions to even the most unyielding problems. The audience was invited into this re-invention as we improvised clapping by honking car horns and flashing headlights.
On March 10, Alberta Ballet premiered PHI at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, artistic director Jean Grand-Maître’s final portrait ballet, set to music by David Bowie. Unlike his previous portraits of artists like k.d. lang and Elton John, this piece was not inspired by biography, but rather by the golden ratio, phi, and followed one man’s journey from a technological dystopia to a fantastic Garden of Eden with its own laws of nature.
The evening was as much a premiere as a celebration of Grand-Maître’s career as he steps down from the role of artistic director after 20 years. In remarks made to the audience before the performance, Grand-Maître thanked many friends, family, and members of the community by name for their support throughout his tenure. In the 2022-2023 season, he will be replaced by the American Christopher Anderson, a former dancer with Boston Ballet and Ballet West, who was chosen (without a formal search process) by Grand-Maître and the board of directors.
If Grand-Maître has proved anything throughout his career with Alberta Ballet, it is that he is above all the consummate showman. PHI is the most theatrical and technically ambitious production of his tenure. The production team numbered six, many of whom Grand-Maître has collaborated with before, including project manager and head of sound design Claude Lemelin, who has been with him for three decades and who Grand-Maître credited in the program notes for teaching him all he knows about theatre. Stage manager Yee-Hang Yam also deserves a special mention for calling opening night without any noticeable glitches.
This ballet has everything — virtual holograms that turn into actual dancers, police dogs, ladies with red hair in kimonos, showgirls in top hats, a concrete love den, and an animated snake that slithers terrifyingly toward the audience. And it has Bowie’s music — although perhaps more deep cuts than well-known favourites as some may have hoped. PHI is a highly entertaining night of theatre with the surrealist influences of Dalí and Magritte apparent in Guillaume Lord’s sets and Anne-Séguin Poirier’s costumes — and astonishing video projections by Adam Larsen and lighting design by Pierre Lavoie.
If the evening sometimes felt like Cirque du Soleil, it might be because so many of Grand-Maître’s collaborators come from that world. Also, Grand-Maître himself is perhaps more an entertainer for whom ballet is just one part of his vision rather than a choreographer dedicated to exploring the intrinsic expressive capabilities of dance.
Although steeped in the language of ballet from his years as a student at L’École supérieure de ballet du Québec, Grand-Maître has remained largely impervious to the accepted pieties of classical ballet, which gave his early works especially a strong sense of newness. In PHI, as in previous works, Grand-Maître explores sexuality in sometimes graphic ways, and grapples with issues that lie beyond traditional dance subjects — climate change, racism, virtual reality.
Grand-Maître is notable for eschewing the cool and ironic detachment of neo-classicism and postmodernism in favour of a wholehearted and genuine celebration of values like peace, community, nature, and sexual freedom. Many of these themes came together in PHI as a culmination of Grand-Maître’s expansive vision and a parting gift to Alberta Ballet’s wonderful dancers — notably Kelley McKinlay (who Grand-Maître called the “preeminent muse of my career” in program notes), Reilley McKinlay, and the exquisite Mariko Kondo, who have helped illuminate his path.
PHI is onstage in Edmonton from March 31-April 2.
