For the past three decades, Arts Umbrella has been a leaping-off point for BC’s young professional dancers – a place for aspiring dancers to learn and grow into future careers. Lately, though, the not-for-profit, contemporary ballet school has been reaching dizzying new heights, attracting the world’s leading choreographers to come and work with the students, while producing recruits ready for the hottest global dance companies.
Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal and Batsheva Dance Company have all come calling for graduates in the past few years. Meanwhile, on the performance roster this year so far is work by Ballet BC resident choreographer Cayetano Soto, ex-Batsheva dancer Sharon Eyal, Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton, the legendary Marie Chouinard, up-and-coming Israeli choreographer Tom Weinberger, and an extraordinary Ballet BC collaboration that will see 12 dancers from Arts Umbrella’s graduate program in a new Medhi Walerski piece in March.
“That is the backbone of the program,” says longstanding artistic director Artemis ‘Arty’ Gordon of the high-profile guests.
“I think from the day that we started, our mandate was always about education and research. To really identify and dig deep for what makes a dance artist valuable and relevant today. Who are the choreographers? What are they doing? How does ballet technique need to be developed in order to really elevate the art form, as opposed to mimic what happened hundreds of years ago?”
And, if the idea is to rethink tradition, Arts Umbrella surely outdoes itself each Christmas.
Taking the iconic suite of The Nutcracker, each year the students crack it wide open, reworking some of the ballet’s most iconic scenes with the help of Canada’s young-gun choreographers.
They call it Mixed Nuts: Tradition with a Twist.
“Mixed Nuts is not the contemporary work that we do, but it is definitely ‘us’,” says Gordon with a laugh.
“We’ve taken The Nutcracker and tried to make it relevant to what we’re doing here, using local choreographers and taking the traditional idea and asking, ‘How would you contemporize it?’”
This year, Mixed Nuts features choreography by Kidd Pivot dancer Cindy Salgado, ex-NDT dancer Lesley Telford, Arts Umbrella instructors Lynn Sheppard and Lina Fitzner, and Rachael Prince, Gilbert Small and Livona Ellis of Ballet BC.
“I use a lot of the Ballet BC dancers, to try out choreography,” explains Gordon. “That’s part of what we do – develop choreographers for Ballet BC.”
In fact, some of Arts Umbrella’s recent success can be directly tied to their relationship with Ballet BC, and the resurgence of the repertory company under artistic director Emily Molnar as a force in the North American dance scene.
Acting in a quasi farm team capacity, Arts Umbrella sends rising talents up, and Ballet BC sends choreographers down to develop their voices as artists.
What that means for Mixed Nuts is, before the opening party scene can settle into its traditional waltz, the dancers break out into a disco-ready hustle instead. The famous fight between the soldiers and mice, full of dashing and danger and big jumps? It’s now set to hip hop music with swords and serious street-style moves. And they say you can always judge a Nutcracker by its “Snow” scene, but critics have probably never seen it done en pointe, full tutu, as a hockey brawl.
Traditionalists shouldn’t dismay, however. Amidst all the holiday hoopla, Gordon assures that they never touch the final grand pas – leaving the most anticipated moment of the Tchaikovsky-scored masterpiece fully classical and in its original form.
• Mixed Nuts: Tradition with a Twist is at the Vancouver Playhouse Dec. 18-19. Tickets start at $15; ArtsUmbrella.com.
