Preview
VIGIL OF ANGELS
Alberta Ballet
Choreographed by Jean Grand-Maître
Runs February 2 to 12
Vertigo Playhouse ( Tower Centre)
Being a dancer with Alberta Ballet can mean playing ambassador to China one month and angelic watcher the next.
Just ask Kelley McKinley, one of the company members starring in the upcoming Vigil of Angels, who was part of the ballet’s recent Chinese tour.
Over the holiday season, the Calgary-based ensemble embarked on its second visit to China, performing three shows from its repertoire in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang, as well as soaking up the culture.
"It was nice going back a second time, since we were only there for a week last time," says McKinley, who is originally from Edmonton. "We did see some of the Beijing markets and teahouses, and it was amazing to see the National Ballet of China in rehearsals. Their company even came out to see our show afterwards."
Returning to Calgary, the ballet’s jet-lagged dancers had little time to re-adjust before jumping into rehearsals for artistic director Jean Grand-Maître’s Vigil, cramming in some late nights to get things soaring.
Inspired by the great Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire (if you’ve only seen the Hollywood version, City of Angels, you suck), Grand-Maître’s story ballet revolves around a band of angels so moved by the emotional music of a cellist (Tanya Dobler) that they dip into the tragic memories of her past love. As the poet in her past, McKinley plays the central fragment of her memory. He says the role involves almost as much acting as dancing.
"For Jean’s work in general, it’s the emotion and character growth that you need to find," McKinley says. "This ballet’s challenging in the sense of having time to find (those things), and (it’s) equally hard to suddenly strip away the expression and feeling when we need to. There are also some vocals in the music, and a re-enactment of the poet’s death when the cellist imagines it all over again. It’s been tough to convey the music’s voice, and portray the feeling that the music gives."
Grand-Maître’s ballet, which premièred at La Scala in Milan in 1995, is getting a more intimate treatment for its presentation at Alberta Ballet’s temporary home this season, the Vertigo Playhouse below the Calgary Tower. The work features about a dozen dancers performing to a soundtrack by Claude Lemelin that includes the music of such composers as John Tavener, Benjamin Britten and Tchaikovsky. Grand-Maître has brought in the original costumes and sets built by La Scala’s craftsmen and has been reworking the ballet’s many pas de deux while maintaining its original premise.
Vigil’s shadowy angels are the ballet’s main characters, and the dancers have combined their usual athletic lower-body movement with sweeping arm gestures signifying the wings that they sometimes also don in costume.
McKinley describes these angels as being a more contemporary version of the winged fairies seen in such ballets as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Nutcracker.
"In the angels, you can definitely see that heavenly state," he says. "There is also a creepy Angel of Death – really haunting." |
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