Pushing boundaries in pointe shoes In Fast Forward, the RWB showcases five brave new works in a black-box theatre By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Mar. 29, 2023

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This article was published 29/03/2023 (927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When you think of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, you probably think of beautiful, classical story ballets such as Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet. Maybe you think of ballerinas in pointe shoes dancing to Tchaikovsky, as performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, on the stage at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Fast Forward, this weekend’s mixed-repertoire program, is a chance to see a whole different side of the RWB — brave new works in a black-box theatre.

This weekend’s performances, which run Friday, March 31 and Saturday, April 1 at the RWB Founders’ Studio on Graham Avenue, feature five original works choreographed by RWB company members and guest choreographers.

“Something like Fast Forward, I always say it fills the dancer’s soul,” says Tara Birtwhistle, the RWB’s associate artistic director. “They get to work with different choreographers as dancers, and then there’s a variety of styles. It allows them to tap into things that maybe they don’t have an opportunity to do in the bigger ballets that we do on the Concert Hall stage. They get to experiment, they get to push the boundaries, and that’s really fulfilling for an artist.”

It’s also a chance for company dancers to experiment with choreography.

“We often are so busy that maybe a dancer doesn’t have an opportunity to try out choreographing or honing their art as a choreographer, so it also gives them the opportunity to spread their wings in that sense as well,” Birtwhistle says.

RWB School alumni Cameron Fraser-Monroe returns with a new work called STAVE. It’s something of a sneak preview of exciting things to come: Fraser-Monroe will be the RWB’s choreographer-in-residence for its 2023/24 season, a position made possible by an anonymous donor who, according to the organization, “is invested in seeing new creations from Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet.”

“I think it’s really important that choreographers have that kind of stability to create, and I’m really looking forward to having an artistic home over the next season,” Fraser-Monroe, who is currently Ballet Kelowna’s artist-in-residence, says over Zoom. Choreographers, he points out, are usually commission-based, which means they typically have a matter of weeks to work with a company. A residency will allow him to stretch out a bit.

STAVE takes place underground, where resources are scarce and the dancers must figure out how to work, live and ultimately survive together.

“For me, it was a way of exploring one of the largest differences that I see between Western and Indigenous world views, which is around belief in community versus belief in self,” says Fraser-Monroe, who is a member of the Tla’amin First Nation. “My teachings, and a lot of teachings from First Nations communities, emphasize the community, emphasize relying on each other and sharing. This is a way for me to take a look at what happens when that isn’t the way that things go.”

His intense, subterranean world is fleshed out with music by the Juno-nominated two-spirit composer Cris Derksen.

“I would describe the music as industrious,” Fraser-Monroe says. “It’s repetitive, it’s strong, it’s staking its claim. I really let that inspire the movement.”

RWB soloist Stephan Azulay’s Bleeker & 6th, a neoclassical work set to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, was inspired by his formative years in New York City, where he moved from Australia at 18 to dance for the Joffrey Concert Group.

“Those two years felt like 10,” he says. “My time there was very important in terms of my growth as an artist.”

Azulay has choreographed on his fellow company mates before, and has found his style. “Hopefully, I’ve created an environment that they enjoy working in and collaborating in,” he says. “I’m not the kind of person that will make the dancers choreograph for me, but if they do something different on their own accord, I’m all for it. Because then it’s theirs as much as it’s mine.”

Second soloist Zachary Rogers is a veteran of First Steps, the juried choreography competition for RWB School Professional Division students. He’s drawn to the intimacy of duets, and his romantic neoclassical-inspired piece, Three Romances, explores the different stages of a relationship.

Appropriately, Three Romances is set to three different pieces: Valse Triste by Jean Sibelius, Chopin’s Andante Spianato and For the Hungry Boy by film score composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood for Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread.

The dreamy Greenwood piece was of particular inspiration. “I’ve been listening to it for years, imagining what I would do with it,” Rogers says. “But to have the chance to finally do so is pretty great.

“Music inspires me,” he says. “Everything else comes after. There are some pieces of music where I hear it and movement just comes.”

Still, Rogers doesn’t consider himself a choreographer. “Dancing is my first love and will always be, but it’s fun to explore another side of yourself.”

Fast Forward marks the first time Corps de Ballet member Emilie Lewis has ever choreographed a piece. Her work, Silent Voices, was inspired by the silence in dance, “and how we can express so much emotion and tell so many stories and portray so many characters in silence, and the power in that,” she says. Silent Voices has a contemporary bent; “The women are in pointe shoes, but very low-to-the-ground feeling. So a little bit different than you would usually see.”

While her piece is called Silent Voices, Lewis had to find her voice at the front of the room to choreograph on her company mates.

“That was a little bit difficult for me just because I’m a second-year corps member — I was just very nervous,” she says. “But it’s been amazing. They are all so sweet and willing, and that just meant a lot.”

Silent Voices is set to a skittering electronic track called but chaos, by the Netherlands-based artist Nicholas Thayer.

“He’s kind of like a rock-star contemporary classical guy in the music industry,” Lewis says. “And I DMed him on Instagram. I was like, ‘I really love this piece of music,’ and I just asked him about the inspiration behind it. When I listened to it I saw movement and so, right away, that was what made me want to use the music. It’s definitely not for everyone. It’s quite crazy, but I love it. I get excited when I hear it.”

Fast Forward will also feature Bound by Meredith Rainey, a work commissioned through Pathways to Performance, an initiative by the New York-based Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet that allows ballet companies to engage, support and showcase Black choreographers in a tangible way.

Bound, set to music by contemporary classical composer Arvo Pärt, explores the dual meaning of the word: bound as in leap forward and bound as in restricted. In contrast to Lewis’ piece about the silence in dance, Rainey’s is challenging the dancers to get loud.

“I’m trying to push them more emotionally to not be afraid to use their voice literally and figuratively, because they actually have to use their voice, they have to speak,” Rainey says. “And so I’m actually making them speak louder. But in that, in trusting your voice and making yourself speak louder, you step into yourself more fully, because you’re not afraid to use your voice.”

The Philadelphia-based choreographer, educator and former Pennsylvania Ballet company dancer was in Winnipeg in January to work with RWB company dancers. ‘The dancers have just been so open to the work,’ he said then.

Now, he is back in the city for this week’s premiere. Working with the RWB has been a meaningful expression of his favourite thing about choreography, which is “the possibilities, that anything’s possible,” he says. “Let’s just try something. I absolutely love being in the room with people coming up with ideas — it is my hot sauce. I just love being in the room with that.

“I love making beautiful things, and I love making beautiful things with people.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com