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Heaven and Earth

Shadows, dark matter and the enigmas of consciousness—the ideas behind Crystal Pite’s “Frontier” are timely and timeless at once. A contemporary lens on the ballet, created on Nederlands Dans Theater in 2008 and newly reworked for Vancouver-based Ballet BC, magnifies a motif of borders, both physical and political, two defining contours of twenty-first century terrain. At the same time, there’s an ephemerality to it all, an ineffable ‘is and always was-ness’ that knows no bounds, tangible, temporal or otherwise. Together these angles make a thought-provoking piece, with deeply felt dancing that grounds and humanises the cosmic abstractions at play.

Performance

Ballet BC: “Frontier” by Crystal Pite /“Passing” by Johan Inger

Place

Sadler’s Wells, London, UK, May 20, 2025

Words

Sara Veale

Ballet BC and Arts Umbrella Dance in “Frontier” by Crystal Pite. Photograph by Luis Luque

We begin outside the margins, with black-hooded figures climbing from the orchestra pit onto the apron, rolling upstage in silence. These ‘shadows’ recur throughout the ballet, first as partners to soloists dressed in white and later forming groups of their own that shunt the white-clad dancers along, an invisible force shaping and propelling them. 

The troupe moves with intention and poise, retaining total control as they slice, skate and dive between configurations. The movement vocabulary is silky, and so is the phrasing—I’ve long admired Pite’s eye for composition, the way she dissembles and reforms long lines of dancers to create stunning constellations. Here the shadowy ensemble scoops itself into intimidating semi-circles and heaves into powerful ripples, picking up on the unsettling tones of Owen Belton’s soundscape, which bookends hisses and whispers with soaring choral arrangements. 

Combined with Tom Visser’s lighting design—which allows the dancers to disappear and reappear like spectres, absorbed into the dark—it’s an immersive, fleshed-out aesthetic. At times, the mood is celestial, with hymnal voices and gleaming solar rays doing their darndest to peep through the black. At others, it’s a horror show of green strobes revealing hunched backs and flapping arms. Divine either way.

Ballet BC in “Passing” by Johan Inger. Photograph by Luis Luque

Ballet BC in “Passing” by Johan Inger. Photograph by Luis Luque

We’re on terra firma for Johan Inger’s “Passing,” which starts with the strewing of soil on stage and takes inspiration from the climate emergency, although I have to say this latter fact passed me by. The vibe is twee and witty, with lots of whistling and guitar-plucking and grape-vining as a backdrop to reflections on different kinds of bonds: romantic, familial, neighbourly. 

There’s a whiff of Pina Bausch to Inger’s theatrical flourishes, oddity mixed with tenderness—for example, bursts of crying that are so unexpected they provoke laugher, then so protracted they become unnerving. The shrieks of an orgasm lapse into those of childbirth; a wistful acapella solo is interrupted by a man furiously galloping into the scene on all fours. The comedy tends to linger several, sometimes many, beats past its welcome—and not by accident, I sense—but the warmth underpinning it provides a decent counterbalance.

The dance language is likewise quirky and earnest, mischievous but committed. Its staccato quality shows off the troupe’s deftness via fast-stopping turns, lurching face-down planks. Again, what it lacks in structural precision it makes up for in warmth. The final scene strips the dancers of their clothes and sends them into each other’s arms for a slow, affectionate saunter. Glitter sprinkles from the rafters like falling stars, and it’s back to the glimmering cosmos we go. 

Sara Veale

Sara Veale is a London-based writer and editor. She's written about dance for the Observer, the Spectator, DanceTabs, Auditorium Magazine, Exeunt and more. Her first book,Untamed: The Radical Women of Modern Dance, was published in 2024.

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