Dance review: Jazzy wandering and inspiring resilience at Ballet BC dancers' Take Form
Performers show their choreographic stuff in work that’s by turns fun, idiosyncratic, and moving
Eduardo Jiménez Cabrera, Joziah German, and Orlando Harbutt. Photo by Ben Peralta
Jacalyn Tatro. Photo by Ben Peralta
Take Form was at the Newmont Stage at BMO Theatre Centre on September 6 and 7
THE INTIMATE works on view at the dancers of Ballet BC’s Take Form were like a series of hors d’oeuvres before the official season gets under way.
It was a chance to see the choreographic side of the dancers who created the pieces on the program; an opportunity to see your favourite artists up close on a small stage; and an early look at some of the company’s fresh new talent before this year’s opening program from November 7 to 9.
Moments ranged from the loose and explosive to the jazzily intimate and reflective, but there was nothing more moving to witness than a piece by a dancer who’s on leave from Ballet BC. Jacob Williams was in a car accident that left him in a coma for three months in 2023, and his remarkable six-dancer Rebuilding traced his rehabilitation—each performer expressing, in sequence, the way sensation came back to his body parts. And so each vignette isolated the right arm, right leg, left arm, left leg, torso and head, the work occasionally fracturing with light and sound as bodies froze. Limbs reached and extended, finding new life. In the end, affectingly, all six came together as a single, moving organism—a human putting his body together again. It’s a dynamic, inspiring work, undercut with hardship but ultimately a powerful portrait of resilience.
Elsewhere, working with his dancers Eduardo Jiménez Cabrera and promising new emerging artist Joziah German, Orlando Harbutt choreographed a wonderfully loose and wonky exploration of what he called in the program notes the “fog of forgetfulness”. The three guys, in their baggy pants, sometimes lay on the floor, their legs tangling away from their torsos, at other times sitting and grooving on their knees, hair flailing. The movement forever switched abruptly, purposely losing its way and starting up again as something else entirely. Set to the wandering guitar of Steve Tibbetts, it was a perfect, unaffected ode to our ambivalent, attention-deficited times.
Later, German’s prologue for Another go around, set to Milt Jackson’s retro-tastic vibraphone (more deep-vault jazz!), was a deadpan treat—Harbutt at one point turning his bent-up foot into a phone he both dialled and muttered into. The soundtrack gave way to a more abstracted, Loscil-set exploration with standout talent Jacalyn Tatro and newcomer Imani Frazier.
Elsewhere, in Story excerpt, Tatro pulled off a stunning solo to Nina Simone’s painfully raw rendition of “Stars”, while Kaylin Sturtevant created some fantastically angular, mantis-like effects with bent and criss-crossed limbs in in the way of my existence. And in the idiosynchratic The Lost Button, Lai Pei Lun said more with her body lying on its stomach, curling her legs and arms up behind her, than many dancers do standing.
Michael Garcia also showed promise with trying to catch smoke with my bare hands—rounding the program off by tapping into the jazz vibe that recurred throughout. Set to the delicate, ambling piano of h hunt, the piece featured striking, innovative partnering between Lai, Kiana Jung, German, and Emanuel Dostine.
And did we mention Williams made an appearance onstage in trying to catch smoke with my bare hands' opening moments, before the main dancers emerged from a milling crowd? It was a beyond-inspiring setup for the 2024-25 season, and like much of this program, a gift to witness. 
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