BELLOWS FALLS — Last year, filmmaker Jay Craven caught a performance of Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal (BJM) on tour in a small town in Canada and was “blown away” by what he saw.
“There is lots of energy onstage,” he says. “It is fun with great mass appeal. The stage is filled with a lot of color, light and sound. I think there will be something here for everyone to enjoy, no matter if he or she is the most seasoned aficionado or a newcomer to dance.”
Craven, a Marlboro College professor, resolved to bring BJM to Windham County as part of Kingdom County Productions' first season of performing arts in southern Vermont.
The internationally renowned repertory company will perform on Sunday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m. at the Bellows Falls Opera House.
The group, which describes itself as “part ballet, part modern, part street dance,” will perform three diverse pieces of modern dance: Zero In On, Night Box, and Harry.
Craven believes that BJM is unique among dance companies, noting that American Ballet considers the group “one of the two or three leading dance companies in Canada.”
“They have toured not only all over Canada, but also the United States and abroad in 64 different countries,” Craven says. “Even so, I believe that this is its only northern New England appearance this year, and the first time the company has performed in southern Vermont, as well as being the first time Bellows Falls Opera House has put on a show of dance of this magnitude.”
The company insisted on performing in the Bellows Falls Opera House because it is the only theater in southeastern Vermont with the resources for this kind of show.
“It took a lot of time to convince the company that this theater could handle the kind of performance this company puts on,” says Craven.
Working contemporary dance
“We are open to everything in our dance pieces, but I would say what we shy away from would be those dances that are dark, obscure, inaccessible, impossible to understand, or depressing,” BJM Artistic Director Louis Robitaille says. “The goal of everything we do is the joy of physicality, even if the work be serious.”
Robitaille describes BJM as “a working contemporary dance company.”
“Although we originally began 40 years ago as a jazz-inspired company, hence our name, we have evolved beyond that now,” he says.
“The music of jazz originally inspired the company to generate new forms of dance, and it still does; it is still a part of what we do,” Robitaille says. “But now we explore many styles of music, from folk and hip-hop, to aboriginal and ethnic.
He describes the blend of styles as “fusion dance.”
“Nonetheless, I want to emphasize that everything we do is underscored by classical ballet techniques,” he adds. “We may be eclectic in our approach, but we are firmly grounded in traditional techniques, respecting the heritage of our company.”
All dances performed by BJM are original to the company, with a few small exceptions. And unlike some dance companies that employ a main choreographer, such as Alvin Ailey for his own company or George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins for New York City Ballet, BJM calls on the talents of many diverse choreographers from around the world to create an array of dance pieces that leverage the talents of the company.
“The dances can vary to what we need. Sometimes it may be abstract, other times with a distinct story; it could be a duet or an ensemble piece, serious or funny,” Robitaille says.
“What we strive for is a balanced evening of theater,” he says. “But I want to point out no choreographer creates any work without the input of all the company, and in that sense everything is a collaborative work.”
Robitaille has witnessed an evolution in the company and its approach to dance over his 17 years as artistic director at BJM, which had already begun the process of branching out from jazz and incorporating additional musical forms.
He says he has tried to “anchor what we do with what's going on in dance right now, here and internationally.”
“I also have reached out to a new generation of choreographers who, although well-established, are the young tigers of the dance world,” he adds. “I think they brought a new vitality to what we do.”
'Many possibilities'
BJM has an active current repertoire of six pieces, about 1{1/2} evenings' worth of dance, which constantly changes as the company moves from city to city on tour.
“We will be performing three quite-different works in Bellows Falls,” Robitaille says. “The thread that runs through the evening is to show the many possibilities of dance and what our company has to offer - its potential, talent, and diversity of each of our performers.”
Zero On In, perhaps the most austere and abstract piece of the evening, involves only two performers. The size of the stage is reduced so the focus is only on the dancers. “In zero seconds, you have to get in and on with your energy and power” said choreographer Cayetano Soto.
In a 2009 review of another of Soto's performances, Rebecca Ritze of The Washington Post adds, “Like a Pedro Almodóvar film, Soto subverts beauty to convey something else.”
The second piece is the larger-scaled Night Box. According to BJM's promotional materials, “Wen Wei Wang was inspired by urban life, especially as it unfolds at night.”
“Evoking the city through sounds, rhythms, music, and an incessant blinking of lights, Night Box is a high-voltage work in which love, loss, sexuality, and joy are intertwined. In a state of perpetual movement, it combines contemporary ballet with street dance in alternating sequences for group, trio, duet and solo.”
The final work of the evening, Harry, is the one piece that has remained constant in the constantly changing repetition of BJM's current tour. For this new creation, made-to-measure for the BJM dancers, the Israeli-American choreographer Barak Marshall was inspired by the inner battles we all wage.
“This piece revolves around the character of Harry, who struggles to overcome forces both physical and existential,” the company writes. “Set to a score combining jazz, Israeli folksongs, and traditional music, this new opus is imbued with hope and humor, alternating group sequences, trios and duets in a fabulous extravaganza of dance.”