National Ballet of Canada in Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada

Sadler’s Wells, London
October 2, 2024

Making their first visit to Sadler’s Wells since 2013, The National Ballet of Canada returned to London with a triple bill of works by Canadian choreographers that ran from out and out classical to contemporary. The company looked on fine form, especially in the more modern creations.

The stand out work by far is the concluding Angel’s Atlas, a full company piece by Crystal Pite. It’s one of those works that doesn’t just speak to the viewer, it doesn’t just reach out and touch, it digs deep inside to find the soul.

The ballet unfolds against an ever-changing wall of light created by Tom Visser and Jay Gower Taylor. It evokes so many images. Icicles in some sort of ice cave perhaps. Looking up through ice from underwater, the light from above finding its way through cracks and fissures, possibly. Silvery cobwebs maybe. Mostly though, a whole cosmos of shooting stars and their trails. Whatever, it suggests a vastness, and is quite stunning.

The ballet opens to original electronica by Owen Belton. There are clicks, voices and bells. I think a heartbeat too. But Angels’ Atlas really takes off when two liturgical pieces are heard: Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and Morten Lauridsen’s stunningly beautiful and sublime setting of O Magnum Mysterium.

And in a way, Pite’s work is a great mystery. The subject of a feature-length documentary, Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas, it’s also mystical and deeply profound. It’s a ballet of contradictions. It’s full of life but also speaks about its fragility. It is darkly lit. Death, it seems is never too far away, most obviously pictured when the thirty-plus ensemble fall to the ground, collapsing one by one like a row of dominoes. But then there’s hope as they rise again.

Elsewhere there’s a lot of Pite’s trademark use of large groups, who ebb and flow across the stage in great waves. Individually, bodies bend, contort and curve. There are moments when individuals come together, brief all-to-human duets that are mostly full of struggle. Most intensely engaging is that for Hannah Galway and Siphesihle November (younger brother of choreographer Mthuthuzeli), but all have a conversational dynamic, mostly danced low to the floor. Perhaps the best image, which comes towards the end, is November walking across the back, silhouetted, the projections creating a halo effect.

Prior to that, islands is a duet for two women, originally created for Norwegian National Ballet by Emma Portner, best known in Britain for choreographing Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, based on the album by Meat Loaf and that premiered in London’s West End in 2017, when she was just 23.

A dance about navigating relationships and set to an collage of largely electronic music, it opens with its two dancers sharing a four-legged pair of trousers (costumes by Martin Dauchez). The floor-based choreography is clever, the dancers’ positioning making it appear as if one woman’s legs or arms are attached to the other’s torso. Even just a few rows back, it did take a while to work out they were in the same pair of pants, however.

If anything, islands is better once the trousers are ditched and Portner explores other ways the women can stay in contact and partner each other. While sometimes very dynamic, there are surprise tender moments too, notably when once one nestles her head in the other’s lap.

The two dancers, Heather Ogden and Genevieve Penn-Nabity, were excellent, perfectly in tune with each other throughout.

The programme opens with James Kudelka’s Passion. Danced to the first movement of Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano in D, it juxtaposes, compares and contrasts, two lead couples who weave in and out of a corps of five women and two other classical couples. In dance and dress, one main pairing is classical Romantic, one more contemporary, although the latter’s dance is still classically-rooted.

It takes a while to warm up. Despite the title, and accepting that passion comes in many guises, there’s not a great deal on show. The modern couple largely keep the lid firmly on things, the Romantic couple don’t show anything much at all.

The eye is constantly drawn to the modern and by far the more interesting pairing of Heather Ogden and McGee Maddox. Both have that wonderful quality of presence. At times they seem to stalk each other around the stage but, even when separated by some distance, a frequent occurrence, they seemed to be inextricably linked. Long, lingering looks speak volumes. When they come together, there’s a frission, a tension, although it never boils over.

While one can see what Kudelka is trying to convey, the ballet’s biggest problem is that simply that there’s too often too much going on but the dance actually either saying little or hiding what is really interesting. One pair or the other, or maybe both at different times, but not both together and especially not with the corps. As pleasant as they are, I found the classical duo of Genevieve Penn-Nabity and Larkin Miller a constant distraction. Ditto the other two classical couples, although the quintet of five women is sometimes an effective framing device.

The National Ballet of Canada are at Sadler’s Wells, London to October 6, 2024.