Ballet BC announces 2023-24 season, including an epic 50-person piece and four world premieres

Works by.Stephen Shropshire, Shahar Binyamini, Micaela Taylor, and Out Innerspace are on the roster, as well as a few new Surrey performances

Artists of Ballet BC. Photo by Marcus Eriksson

A DANCEWORK for 50 performers and a new commission by Stephen Shropshire are on the roster for Ballet BC’s next season, as the company announces it will launch seven new works next season.

Ballet BC will mount four world premieres from choreographers Shropshire, Micaela Taylor, Ballet BC artistic director Medhi Walerski, and Vancouver’s own Out Innerspace Dance Theatre. In addition, it will take a few of its shows to Surrey,

The 2023-24 season opens November 2 to 4 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre with HERE, a program featuring the new creation from Miami-born, Netherlands-based Shropshire, plus Tel Aviv choreographer and Batsheva Dance Company alumnus Shahar Binyamini’s epic BOLERO X—a piece for a cast of 50 dancers, in which Ballet BC expands its corps with Arts Umbrella Dance. The program also marks the return of William Forsythe’s technically dazzling Enemy in the Figure.

In March, the program called NOW will feature the world premiere from rising Los Angeles star Micaela Taylor and Out Innerspace, the local company led by Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond. The evening will also include Crystal Pite’s The Statement, back by popular demand. In addition to performances at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in downtown Vancouver, NOW will also be shared with audiences in Surrey for two nights only at the Bell Performing Arts Centre—marking the company’s first expansion of its mainstage programming into the Greater Vancouver region.

The season concludes in May with FOR EVER, an evening of works from Walerski that will include SWAY and Chamber (a tribute to The Rite of Spring)—both new to the company’s repertoire—and a world premiere to close the season. Walerski is celebrating his fourth season at the helm of the troupe.

Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet will return December 7 to 10 to a new venue at the Centre for Performing Arts in Vancouver.

Take Form, a program created, led, and produced by Ballet BC’s dancers themselves, will also return in April 2024 on the more intimate BMO Centre Newmont Stage.

The company is now ensconced in its new self-contained building on Granville Island, where it has ambitious plans to expand its adult classes and workshops, as well as in-school outreach and engagement programs throughout the Lower Mainland. Ballet BC Annex, a collaboration with Arts Umbrella that tours regionally to schools across the province, will also return this fall, premiering a new creation by U.K. choreographer Joseph Toonga.

In addition, the company will appear on tour around the world, performing in cities such as Luxembourg, Toronto, and New York City.

Subscriptions to Queen Elizabeth Theatre performances are on sale now; find more information here.

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Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

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