At Ballet BC’s INFINITY, Medhi Walerski pays tribute to two works that impacted his career
As a young dancer at Nederlands Dans Theater, the artistic director was in on the creation of both Jiří Kylián’s 27’52” and Crystal Pite’s Frontier
Medhi Walerski. Photo by Millissa Martin
Ballet BC presents INFINITY at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre from February 26 to 28
BALLET BC artistic director Medhi Walerski finds himself at a great juncture at the beginning of 2026—looking at the legacy of the past, celebrating the successes of the present, and looking toward a new future.
The double bill for INFINITY, soon hitting the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, has Ballet BC diving into two impressive works that had a major impact on his formative years. Jiří Kylián’s 27’52” flashes back to Walerski’s years at Nederlands Dans Theater, where he was a standout dancer who participated in the 2002 creation of the piece. The other half of the bill boasts a reworked version of Frontier by Vancouver choreographic sensation Crystal Pite, which Walerski helped premiere at NDT in 2008.
When he talks to Stir, Walerski has just returned from an “amazing” tour of Europe with Ballet BC, to packed theatres and standing Os.
“Every night we switched casts, and the calibre of the performance was excellent,” he says, on a break from rehearsals. “It was also pretty incredible to witness the response from the audience, the amount of standing ovations—and sometimes there were six or seven curtain calls. People were waiting in line outside of the theatre, trying to get a ticket because we were sold out. So to witness the impact that the company has internationally was quite special. And seeing the dancers flourish and grow with each performance was pretty remarkable.”
The buzz at home has been no less electric, with the last Ballet BC show in November packing out the Queen E. Having started with the company during a pandemic, he’s reached his goal of having the troupe as appreciated at home as it is abroad.
“I was doing yoga the other day and people talked to me about how they love Ballet BC,” he says. “I feel right now that the company is so recognized and appreciated and celebrated. And that’s really something that I wanted: just to know that Ballet BC is a strong and beautiful company that they could be proud of.”
All that made for a bittersweet recent announcement that Walerski will leave his post in 2027, after seven years and the completion of the company’s next season, which will be its 40th.
“I felt that it was the right moment for a new chapter, both for the company and for myself, because I think leadership requires renewal, and I believe also that organizations benefit from fresh perspectives over time,” he says. “I’m somebody that is very keenly connected to numbers, and just with the idea of cycles, and seven is really meaningful. It’s offering the end of a cycle. But also, the decision is deeply personal. My role at Ballet BC requires a great deal of travel and long stretches away from Europe, which is where my partner and my dog live. It’s far away. And I think maintaining that distance has been one of the hardest parts of this chapter over the past year.”
Walerski’s departure is still a long way off, but in the meantime, the upcoming change has him considering themes of legacy and influence. Ballet BC has had a long, rich connection to Nederlands Dans Theater. Emily Molnar, Walerski’s predecessor at Ballet BC, is now heading up the celebrated Dutch company. Vancouver’s Pite, a former Ballet BC dancer herself, has long served as an associate choreographer there. As for the INFINITY program’s legendary Kylián, he was artistic director of NDT for 24 years, from 1975 to 1999, and was a huge force in putting the company on the map. His work hasn’t been seen at Ballet BC since a small excerpt from Toss of a Dice in 2011, and the audience hit Petite Mort in 2006. Walerski says that, in retrospect, he can see that he was heavily influenced by Kylián’s deep respect for the dancers in the studio creating 27’52”—and many more the young artist would perform during his time at NDT.
27’52” is named for its precise duration, and as such, it’s an exquisite exploration of time and mortality, speed, change, and love. It features six dancers who form three duets, set to Dirk Haubrich’s rhythmic, metallic score that integrates text in multiple languages. It is abstract and stark, full of sharp, short movement, yet Walerski says it has a deep humanity.
Medhi Walerski
“I think what struck me most is his attention to wanting to sculpt time and silence as carefully as choreographing the movement,” explains Walerski, who’s had a hands-on role in bringing the piece to life at Ballet BC. “There's a lot of attention to subtlety and allowing space for vulnerability, and for things to happen in the present moment. So he understood that even if the dancers bring a lot of strength—and there’s a lot of very technical movement that’s quite difficult to achieve—there is also a beautiful fragility.”
Lighting is integral to the work, with shadow play that in a way echoes the mysterious shadow figures in Pite’s Frontier. In a rare move, three different casts will perform the work on different dates at the Queen E.
“I really wanted each dancer to experience his work,” Walerski says. “At the beginning of the season, it was really hard for us to imagine excluding some of the dancers, because they could all bring something very fresh and new.”
Walerski links the exploration of life’s uncertainty in Kylián’s piece with Pite’s Frontier. In fact, Pite has said her kabuki-esque shadow figures, who at times manipulate other, unmasked dancers, represent the unknown. Set to a mix of Eric Whitacre’s soaring choral compositions and Owen Belton’s soundscape of whispers, exhalations, and skittering consonants, it was a hit when it debuted here in 2024.
Consider this double bill, with its two icons of contemporary dance, to be a bit of an appetizer for Walerski’s final season of programming, set for announcement later this spring. He hints that he intends to “celebrate meaningful collaborations that have happened over the past few years”, as well as works that the troupe will bring back to “strengthen and explore further”. So, yes, Walerski will be inspired by the past, the present, and the future of Ballet BC. “It’s going to be a pretty ambitious season,” he says, “and I’m very, very excited.” 
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