IN THE STUDIO: Jorden Morris and the RWB for Moulin Rouge - The Ballet

Interview by Megan Andrews
Photos by Bruce Monk








Amanda Green and Jorden Morris rehearsing for Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet





After retiring as a principal dancer with Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB), Jorden Morris began to explore choreography. His first ballet, The Three Musketeers, premiered in 1999. He has created numerous works since, including the transformation of the popular children’s television show The Toy Castle into an interactive live dance performance, and the Celtic-themed ballet Deverell. In 2006, the RWB presented the world premiere of Morris’s full-length ballet Peter Pan. The critically acclaimed work is the company’s biggest box office success to date, and toured Canada last year. Morris is also the associate director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.


As part of its seventieth anniversary season, Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet premieres Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Jorden Morris from October 21st through 24th at Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg. A Canadian tour follows from November 2009 through April 2010.

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You’ve said that you consider music the soul of a ballet. Where do you begin in terms of making this fundamental choice?

After I have found a story and characters (this is for full length works), then I start the process of finding music that speaks to me for those scenes and characters. I spend anywhere from twelve to eighteen months finding music for my ballets. I try to find a composer, or group of composers that have great harmony and cohesiveness with their music. For Peter Pan I used primarily British composers that were writing music at the same time that J.M Barrie was writing the book. I like to think that perhaps Mr. Barrie heard some of that music while writing and therefore for me it creates a connection between the music and the story. For Moulin Rouge - The Ballet I explored the French composers from the time the Moulin Rouge was opening, Toulouse Lautrec was painting and the Eiffel Tower was being constructed. For the Tango and Gypsy scenes I found Quartetto Gelato and Astor Piazzola made a great fit with the mix.























Costume sketch by Shannon Lovelace for Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

As you’ve indicated, developing a score for a full-length work isn’t a simple matter of finding a single piece of the required length. How do you decide which selections you’ll use and how they fit together?

Initially I make a list of music for a scene that I think will work – then I listen to those selections over and over again until one of them sort of jumps out and says, “I’m the right music for this scene.” This process can take hours, days or weeks. Sometimes it speaks to me very clearly, and sometimes it’s a piece I’ve listened to twenty-five times before I hear something in the score I hadn’t heard before, and it just clicks. Occasionally, there is a piece that I like for a particular scene, but it doesn’t work well as a transition to the following scene. This is where the lengthy process of “weaving” the score takes place. I try to find a way for all the selections I’ve chosen to work together. I may change the order of the scenes slightly to accommodate the music, or I may re-think the characters’ action in a scene if the music is right and suggests I take a slight turn with the story. This is one of the most exciting times of the creation process, but also one of the most frustrating and exhausting times.





















Angela Galt sewing a costume for Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

Once you have the music in place, how do you begin to develop the dance?

People often ask me if I choreograph the steps first and then find the music, or if I find the music and then choreograph the movement? For me the music is the most important thing after the initial idea. However, I start to envision choreography from day one of story and through music selection. I make notes for future reference and then pull those choreographic ideas into play at this point in the process. During the story/music process, I have an idea of what the dance will be like in each scene. For example: this will be her entrance solo, this a pas de deux, this a group corps section etc. So when I get in the studio with the dancers, I know what “type” of scene it is and what the dancing will be like to a point. I will work on my own to identify certain movements or series of steps for each character, as well as the “flavour” of big scene dances (lots of jumps and turns, or pattern work with canons) or pas de deux (lyrical, romantic, hostile etc.).





















Set construction for Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

In terms of developing the movement material overall, and for specific characters, how would you describe your use of the established classical ballet vocabulary?

The classical vocabulary is such a great medium to work in, so I try to stay within that language. But I also develop derivative movements or a slightly different dialect for certain characters or sections. At times I will use more contemporary movements, and it’s always good to think outside the box.






















Thiago Dos Santos, Jorden Morris, Gael Lambiotte and Tristan Dobrowney in Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

Classical ballet has sometimes been seen as an art that features the female dancer, and that the male dancer is simply there to present and support the ballerina. What is your perspective on the balance between male and female dancers in a work?

I think that perception is a bit dated personally – as a choreographer, I look at what stories would make great ballets. (Cyrano would be great for a male dancer, Joan of Arc for a woman). I think historically there were more female-focussed works, but I hope in the future of this art form, we will create works that promote the balance.





















Jorden Morris, Gael Lambiotte and Tristan Dobrowney in Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

For Peter Pan and Moulin Rouge – The Ballet, you drew on an existing story or text as a primary source for the dance. Is this a common starting point for you? How is your process different when working with more abstract concepts, as compared to character and narrative?

For Moulin Rouge – The Ballet, I wrote an entirely new script. All I took from existing sources were historical facts and names; then I wrote a script and developed it with my dramaturge. It’s an exciting process, but creating new characters can be a challenge as well. When working on an abstract piece, I let the music dictate the source of movement and what I want it to say.
























Costume sketch by Shannon Lovelace for Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Morris for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

In the past, you adapted a children’s television show into a dance performance. Have you ever adapted dance for television or film? Do you have a dream project that you’d like to develop?

I have done several projects that take dance to television and film; it’s always an interesting process to combine these media. As long as I have the opportunity to create, this is my dream project. I would like to keep creating new ballets, and I would love to film Moulin Rouge – The Ballet. I think it would be a very successful ballet on film.


*A bilingual photo essay on Morris’ creative process for Moulin Rouge – The Ballet appears in the October 2009 issue of The Dance Current.

As part of its seventieth anniversary season, Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet premieres Moulin Rouge – The Ballet by Jorden Morris from October 21st through 24th at Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg. A Canadian tour follows from November 2009 through April 2010.

Learn more >>
www.rwb.org

In Process with Peter Quanz: Part 3

Interview with Peter Quanz, Anton Lubchenko and Elena Tchernichova
by Selma Odom

Anton Lubchencko, courtesy of Quanz | Peter Quanz / Photo by V. Tony Hauser | Guillaume Côté and Bridgett Zehr | Artists of the ballet | Guillaume Côté and Bridgett Zehr | Heather Ogden, Zdenek Konvalina, Jillian Vanstone and Guillaume Côté with artists of the ballet in Quanz’s In Colour for The National Ballet of Canada / Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

Choreographer Peter Quanz and composer Anton Lubchenko reflected on the production of In Colour after its last performance by The National Ballet of Canada in March. Their mentor Elena Tchernichova summarized the conversation in English and Russian. Following her career as Kirov dancer and international ballet mistress-coach, she has offered her outside eye to Quanz in the development of his work since 2007. As she explained toward the end of the interview, “Now it’s more interesting to see new creations and new talents.”

Thanks to Irene Seay for interpreting the Russian on the recorded interview.

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What were your experiences this past week?

Anton:

I mainly attended rehearsals and the performances. In my time here I only had one day off which I spent with Peter’s family at Niagara Falls. Niagara made a tremendous impression on me – this is what I saw in Canada in the way of “theatre”. I watched Peter’s work with the dancers and the work of the conductors with the orchestra. The observation was a great experience because it is always important to see how a work of theatre art comes together, not just the role that music plays, but how all the elements are born.


Peter:
There’s a point when you have to give up, you have to let other people take over and run the ballet. That’s the job of the ballet masters, and it’s interesting to see how much ownership Lindsay Fischer took of the ballet – Rex [Harrington] also supported the soloists—and to see how once we got on the stage how the dancers stopped coming to me with questions and they went instead to the ballet masters. I think that’s a very good process because it allows me to step out and separate myself from what’s onstage. I know all the problems, all the variations on each moment of the ballet, but it doesn’t matter because that doesn’t exist. What exists is what’s onstage at that moment. By the time the dancers get to the stage it’s time for me to step out.

What did you think of the audience response?

Anton:
I don’t really want to sing my own praises, but it seemed to me that it was very warmly received. My understanding is that some people in the audience saw it on several occasions. And the warmth with which it was received seemed to grow from one performance to the next over the run of the show.


Peter:
On the opening night I was watching the audience, and going into the pas de deux and throughout most of the ballet they were so quiet and silent. There are different qualities of silence. There’s the silence where they’re getting bored and nodding off to sleep and they start coughing, or there’s the silence where you feel that everybody’s holding their breath and sitting slightly forward in their seats. On the opening night that’s what I saw, that’s what I felt. There was a great energy coming from the audience that was feeding the dancers on stage, and to me that was the biggest compliment.

Anton:
[Later in the week] some of the soloists danced so beautifully that the audience applauded in the middle of the piece. This did not interfere with the music at all. It just conveyed an additional excitement to it.

Peter:
People have responded very well – including Anton – to the end of the Yellow variation, where the women are doing mechanical movement in a group of nine and the men come in and do their muscle boy poses. I set that up in a moment of being tired and having a quirky sense of humour and being a bit flippant, and it’s come out as something that people love. When you are relaxed or tired or pushed a little bit past where you feel comfortable, you sometimes let your guard down and allow something that is personal and human to come into the ballet, into the creation. It’s the same thing for the beginning of Chartreuse. For that rehearsal, it was at the end of the day, I was exhausted, I’d had some difficult calls, I didn’t know what to do and I walked in with absolutely no idea. And they just inspired something that for me is one of the highlights of the ballet – for a minute and a half long section that really defines itself. There are other sections that I laboured over with the corps de ballet moving from one position to another that I’m not happy with. Just before the finale when all the different soloists in their varied colours come in, the corps moves from the centre over into a diagonal on the side. It always looks sloppy – I have to change the pattern of it. There are things like that that just never clarified themselves and that on a second staging I would adjust.

In the corps movement I saw surprises that were fascinating. One is the supported arabesques where all the women are upside down and another is when the women are lifted and carried feet first. I found both arrangements take classical ideas into a different dimension. The women with the feet first are like armaments and victims – it’s an image I’ve never seen before. Where did that come from?



Peter:
Well, this music sounds like a machine gun in some ways. In my mind, in my story, I wanted it to be like a battle. And so as they’re coming in, it’s two armies facing each other, and they’re merging, they’re coming together, and it’s a double image. On one hand, the women when they’re lifted are like bloody bodies. They’re being carried out, and the other way they’re turned into the gun and I’m using that image in both ways. And then they get pulled to the back and turned into this army of mindless followers that are just randomly shaking their heads and following whatever the ballerina says. And so I am telling a story there because I needed to find a reason for the dramatic build in his music.

With the arabesque I feel that people understand a vertical image better than a horizontal image. In a major city like Toronto or New York or Hong Kong, we have all these skyscrapers where it’s a vertical repetition for ninety-some floors, and we find that appealing, it’s visually attractive. But if you take that skyscraper and turn it on its side that horizontal repetition would become boring. Because I’m interested at that point to have a very strong powerful image – we’ve just finished this huge fugue and then suddenly all the music is together – I wanted a very strong vertical energy so I put them in penchée to lift the energy up.

In the pas de deux I especially admired the ending when she hangs by her knee.

Peter:
When I first heard the variation for the pink ballerina, I thought Anton has written a soliloquy for Ophelia, and Ophelia drowns. And whether it’s a real drowning, if it’s like Virginia Woolf or it’s just this ballerina drowning in her own emotions, she goes up and she’s swirling in a whirlpool, reaching up for air and at the very end giving up and sinking down.

I was also intrigued by the choice of instruments for the pas de deux.

Anton:
At the beginning of the adagio, the theme is started by the French horn and then it’s picked up by the violins and then all the strings. It’s obvious that if this is a love pas de deux, in the tradition of classical romantic music for ballet, the lyricism is captured by the strings. After the [ballerina’s] variation with little bells, the love theme is carried by just one clarinet echoed by a hymn of mourning by the piano. Peter interpreted this as the echoes of first love. The main musical idea I was expressing was through this theme that I transposed as a hymn of love at the end of the ballet.



What is the future of In Colour?

Peter:
After the first three years I can stage it for any company in the world. The National Ballet will be able to continue performing the ballet as long as they wish, and Anton is now able to program this music with any orchestra separate from the ballet. It’s a big risk to make a new work. It’s a lot easier to buy an existing ballet that you know is going to be a success. But then you don’t develop unique repertoire.

I feel that I’ve made a tremendous step forward with this work, that it’s been an exciting project and that it’s my best work so far. I feel that it’s emotional, that I achieved a lot of the goals that I set out to do and then surprised myself in other ways. I think Anton has produced a very interesting score and I’ve been thrilled to be part of that. I’m thrilled with the design that Michael Gianfrancesco has produced, and to have taken a risk on a designer who has not worked for ballet before was a major deal. I had a lot of satisfaction from working with Christopher Dennis. So I’ve enjoyed my team.

Anton and I certainly are interested to collaborate further in the future. It’s important that we established this relationship. We have a good understanding of each other now, and this is the time to start considering bigger projects and especially narrative work. I think that’s an area of repertoire that needs to be developed, that we need to tell new stories in dance.

Will you be involved in the next work?

Elena:
Well, who knows what the future gives to us, but of course I’m not giving up on these two boys.

Peter:
Lucky us!

Selma Odom [guest writer] teaches dance history at York University. Her research focusses on teachers and transmission in dance and music. She has published hundreds of articles and reviews since the 1960s and co-edited the anthology Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories (2004).


*A profile of Peter Quanz by Selma Odom appears in the March 2009 print issue of The Dance Current.

Learn more >>
www.peterquanz.com
www.national.ballet.ca

UNDERCURRENTS: Sharon Pollock

April 2009
Interview with Sharon Pollock
by Megan Andrews

















Photo of Sharon Pollock courtesy of Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada

Sharon Pollock is an internationally renowned Canadian playwright, dramaturge, director and writer. She has collaborated as dramaturge with artistic director and choreographer Igor Dobrovolskiy in the creation of Don Juan and other ballets for Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada (ABTC).

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There are many different ideas about the work of a dramaturge in dance. When you worked with Igor Dobrovolskiy on Don Juan specifically, what were your principal contributions to the project?

My contribution to Igor’s creation process is first of all to respond to the early thoughts and visual images generated by his interest in a particular subject, in this case the figure of a charming sexual predator, Don Juan being the iconic figure of such an individual. I researched and explored what other artists have made of this figure although our interest was not in reproduction or adaptation. In a series of meetings, we brainstormed and blue skied the story and characters. I supported the evolution of Igor’s ideas and vision of the piece by questioning and making suggestions. I always find the process exciting and inspiring. I then wrote an early scenario of the narrative, which could be shared with designers. I functioned as “an outside eye” as Igor choreographed. During that period, I’m looking to see if the narrative, characters and relationship among the characters are accessible to an audience. Changes occur in rehearsal that result in changes to the scenario. I responded to design concepts and/or technical effects. I adapted the scenario, incorporating changes, and wrote a “libretto” for the program. I am not a rehearsal director or associate director. I suppose I am a creative consultant when my areas of expertise are compatible with the needs of the production. Personally I am uncomfortable with labels.

The story of Don Juan has a long and varied history, arguably starting in the 1600s, and has been retold in numerous ways. ABTC’s version uses a neoclassical ballet vocabulary and music by George Gershwin from 1924. In developing the narrative and the setting for the ballet, how were the different period, cultural and stylistic references addressed?

I saw our Don Juan as an original, existing in its own world. Its period, cultural and stylistic references were of that imagined world, with that world having some resonance with the audience’s world.

After your initial work with Mr. Dobrovolskiy, do you return to the project at a later stage to work with the dancers and other collaborators? If so, what input do you have at this time?

Igor continues to refine the repertoire and I respond to the changes in personal – one could say informal – dialogue. Igor’s interested in what I have to say and I am interested in seeing the continuing growth of an original work and the reasons behind changes. Often those changes represent a practical concern, an artistic impulse, a great idea that one could not address at the premiere because of the constraints of time.

You’ve also worked with ABTC on Phantom of the Opera and more recently King Lear. Coming from a language-based practice as you do, what is the greatest challenge you’ve experienced in telling stories through a non-verbal mode such as ballet?

Because plays are documented in literary form, as in words on a page, it’s easy to forget that plays live and are realized in performance. It is that performance element that engages me in the theatre. I believe the non-verbal penetrates an audience’s emotions more acutely than the verbal. The challenge for me is not so much how to tell a story through a non-verbal mode, for example ballet, but how to integrate and employ the non-verbal in “a language-based practice” so as to heighten the audience’s engagement.

Does your work in dance feed back into your own writing and directing in any way?

I believe yes. That is one of the joys in working with Igor. I’m inspired by his dedication to his art as well as by his imaginative leaps and intuition. I’m encouraged to explore ways of marrying the “dance” (as in the physical staging) and the “music” (all aural effects) when directing. As a playwright I’m looking to create work in which the non-verbal is integral to the revelation of the play’s plot, character, relationships and meaning.

Writing in 2003, you commented on what you saw as a stasis in Canadian theatre that you linked to a financial and/or artistic deficit in the field. Has this changed? Do you feel familiar enough with Canadian dance to make a comment on what you see?

In our larger theatres, I believe we have created rehearsal, production, and administrative structures that do not support creation. They reproduce rather than create. Small companies are seduced by funding bodies into modeling the structures of larger companies, their conformance to that model being seen as a mark of stability and legitimacy, even by the artists themselves. There are still young artists and indie companies and projects that keep hope alive for me. Since I think the means of creation affect the ends, I’m not familiar enough with structures within Canadian dance companies to comment on their end product, the work. The intense focus on the work and support for creation in every aspect of ABTC’s operation is one of the things that draws me to the company

I have the impression that your concept of theatre may be as broad and inclusive as “live performance”. Do you think it is useful to make distinctions between disciplines of live performance, or are we, even now, working in a more “post-disciplinary” context?

My concept of theatre is as “live performance”. The distinction between disciplines may be useful for marketing or for other purposes, but attaching a label: dance, theatre, opera, etc., can be a block to following the creator(s) artistic impulse and vision for the work. I don’t concern myself with terms. Let others, critics or academics, decide where we are – post-disciplinary, multidisciplinary or whatever. First be true to the muse. Or chorus of muses.

*An excerpted version of this interview appears in the April 2009 print issue of The Dance Current.

Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada presents Don Juan throughout April at various locations in Québec. See www.destinationdancedanse.ca for details.

Learn more >>
www.atlanticballet.ca
www.sharonpollock.com

In Process with Peter Quanz: Part 2

Interview with Peter Quanz
by Selma Odom

Photo of Peter Quanz by Sian Richards; Choreographic notes courtesy of Quanz

Peter Quanz has just embarked on orchestra and tech rehearsals with The National Ballet of Canada for In Colour, which opens March 4th.


Remembering their work last summer in Russia, Quanz reflects on his collaboration with composer Anton Lubchenko and mentor Elena Tchernichova to find the concept and meaning of the new ballet:

When we fought over how to divide this work, whatever structure it was going to be, we realized that if we were going to have different segments we wanted to have one linking theme. We talked about a variety of different things and finally settled on colour because it was something that he could use in terms of an aural sense but I could also use in a visual sense, that could show off many different dancers in different ways and that could give different moods.

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He decided the musical structure – I had nothing to do with that – but we talked about what kind of journey there would be through the ballet. If you’re going to start off with colour, do you randomly jump into the colour wheel, or where do you start?

We decided to start with white, with white light being the combination of all colours, and have that be refracted into all the different colours, and at the end of the ballet end up with an apotheosis where using white light again we will put the dancers in silhouette, turning them black, so we have a journey through the whole piece. That is the type of structural conversation we had.

We talked about how many colours there are, what their relationships are, how to end the piece. If we were going to end the piece in black, how do we avoid it being depressing? How do we finish with a black ending onstage but with a celebratory feeling? We were all united in thinking that it needed to end on a very high note.

In the main pas de deux of the ballet I have a ballerina who dies at the end, and in the apotheosis she comes back as if she’s entering from another world – to help teach people, to bring them with her, to collect them and bring all the colours together. And so even though they’re turning black and dying and disappearing, there’s a transcendence that is really beautiful. That type of discussion, that philosophy helped unite us.

Anton is very religious. Certainly when I was there I went to church almost every day to light candles for various people here or my problems in Russia. I also come from a religious background. I come from a Mennonite background where dancing is not encouraged. I grew up with people telling me that they were praying for my soul that I wouldn’t go to hell for dancing. But for them it was a matter of education. When they realized there was a difference between dancing as an art form and dancing in a strip club, then it made a difference. For the premiere, half my church is going to be coming. It will be the first time they’ll ever be in the opera house, the first time they’ll ever see ballet.

I’m giving them something that has some qualities that will tie in to my religious background and Anton’s religious background that will also help them feel that it’s something that makes sense for them, without it being overly Christian, hammering down. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about trying to find a way for us to learn to improve our humanity, for us to work together, for us to see our differences, and realize that, yes, they’re there and they will always be there, but we can get along.

The structure of this piece has helped me develop a clear message that is personal for me. It may not read for anybody else, but it gives me a backbone to hold on to, and that’s all grown out of the people involved, the situation that we’re in, the way that we collaborate and the difference in cultures that we’re in.

The scenes that you’ve talked about so far – the pas de deux, the apotheosis – are keys to the ballet. Are there colours for other scenes?

To begin the ballet, I want to reflect light off their hands into their faces, so that they don’t stand in the spotlight, but they put their hands into it – ten dancers on stage – and that lights up their faces for the first time in the piece, and that’s the cue for the music to start. They dance by turning their bodies in different ways, keeping their hands in the light. They pivot around that light and reflect it in different ways, transforming the light into a physical, tangible object as opposed to an object that just influences the environment that we’re in.


So light is a partner.

Yes. We can’t have colour without environment, without light. Our understanding of any one object is always based on what is surrounding it. I’m trying to create situations where the lighting in the ballet is like a mirror to us as dancers and as an audience to understand the movement on stage and the images that are projected.

After this white section, the dancers are going to split and I have the red section. All the corps de ballet dancers are in grey. I have seven corps men at that point with the red lady. The first time we’re going to see any colour in the ballet is them hurling her in the air out of this tight circle of men. They just throw her up and there’s this shock of red flying in the air and then she gets swallowed up in the group again.

We progress on to yellow, and it’s a jester-like movement that makes fun of everybody around, and then we have a beautiful pas de deux with a purple man and pink lady, in which she dies at the end after a major crisis in their relationship. After that I have three ladies in chartreuse that I see as three fates. After she’s died, they laugh as hyenas on stage and they go on to dance with the boy in blue, who’s another jester figure trying to tempt fate and dance with them.

Then we have the green lady who commands this vast army of grey people that absently follow her commands, following along without looking as to what’s happening. Suddenly everything rises from the depths and we have all the colours on stage again. It’s like the fairies in Sleeping Beauty in the prologue. Then we go into the apotheosis, where the girl who died comes back, in a white dress instead of a pink one.

Let’s talk about the movement and how you’re developing it with these dancers. You’re working with how many in total?

There are twenty-seven dancers in the ballet, which is pretty big. My largest cast has been thirty-two, but twenty-seven for this stage, the Four Seasons Centre, and for the National Ballet, is a pretty large cast. Basically the whole company will be involved by the time you get double and triple casting. So I have nine soloists and principals, nine corps de ballet women and nine corps de ballet men.

I believe that numbers are very important in the shape of the ballet, that numbers have meaning, that they have values and that they will create different frequencies on stage based on the number of people you have there. I’m excited about having those three sections of nine. I think that’s a really thrilling number.


Do you work on your own body?

Some choreographers work on their own bodies and choreograph what feels good for them. I was not a great dancer – I was an okay dancer, but not a great one. I’ve never developed my own sense of personal movement to the point where I’ll only do things that look good on me. I’m good at tailoring things to other people. Even though I may be planning something out by myself, it’s with them in mind. It’s not me making it on myself and then transferring. It’s me making it for them and then making sure it fits. With principals, I will also work on my own beforehand, but a lot of that is to work out images, the musical structure or some basic ideas. Then I’ll go in the studio and I’ll flesh it out and adjust it for them.

How do you interact with the corps?

When you are running rehearsals with the corps de ballet, you notice very quickly which dancers lead the corps. These are sometimes dancers that are very gifted who for some reason or other have not been promoted to soloist but have been in the company awhile, and they take great pride in being in the corps. You rely on those people to shape things. For example, if I have a question – can you make it from this point to that point with this step? Do you have time? You know very quickly who to ask. That’s part of getting to know a company, figuring out how to play with the corps. It’s a very sensitive instrument, and you have to figure out its individual dynamics right away.

Unfortunately ballet, when it’s a large cast and a big hierarchy is not democratic, and if you listen to everybody’s voices all the time you don’t move forward. So you have to be very clear in who you’re going to listen to. With the corps it’s more of a psychology than a complete collaboration as you’d have with the soloists. I love working with the corps de ballet. I look forward to their rehearsals almost more than anything else, and I take great pleasure in seeing them take pride in their work.

Sometimes my corps work can overbalance what I’ve done for the principals. Because I enjoy it so much I sometimes get into that more than I do working with the principals. I don’t know why, I just relate well to them. And so in this piece, in addition to the emotional quality, it’s a challenge for me to show off those nine soloists in very individual, clear ways and keep addressing that balance between corps and principals.

When you’re working on movement alone, how do you hold on to what you are doing? Do you write notes? Do you videotape?

I don’t videotape. I have a notebook, and when I’m preparing a piece I go through and I break the music down into a variety of sections so that every time there’s a change in music, every time there’s a new instrument coming in, I have that mapped out. I figure out who’s on stage, but then I write out all the patterns involved. Any traffic issues I’ll have worked out on paper. I move pennies around on the floor. That way I can have a clear idea of where they are on the stage. The steps are easy to remember.

When I’m preparing anything that’s a big structural formation or progression, I look at the spacing first. I work out where they’re going on stage, how much time they have to move, and after I’ve done that I work out the steps. The steps are the last thing to go into a ballet, for me. If you don’t have the architecture, you can’t put in the detail.


Tell me about the design and lighting.

I have two designers working on this piece. One of them is Christopher Dennis, resident lighting designer of the National Ballet of Canada, and this is the first time I’m working with him. He has a great reputation for his lighting. I’m very excited about working with him and trying to find new technologies and ways that we can achieve what we’re looking for – to take a very simple set and make it look different in as many ways as possible.

The set and costume designer is Michael Gianfrancesco, who went to high school with me. We were put back in touch by a friend. Now he works in theatre and opera. When I approached him to do this work, I gave him the theme of colours. We talked about environment and I told him about the journey, and we decided to make a very simple space. We’re hanging white legs in front of the black box but just slightly back so there’s white with a black border all the way around.

For the apotheosis, I wanted the ballerina to come back from another world. There needed to be a progression, a transformation, and so the requirements of what we wanted to happen for that, how we wanted the stage to move and be adjusted scenically, dictated how we were to shape the back of the stage, so we kind of built it backwards from that point.

He found this incredible fabric from a German scenic company that’s a poly-combo-something, thirteen letters long. It is material that has a whole bunch of semicircles cut into it so when it’s stretched it creates holes the light can pass through. It allows me to put people behind it and kind of see them. We’re using panels of that at the back of the stage, which also gives me the possibility of entrances mid-stage and gives a way to parachute a dancer on stage without much warning. It gives me a lot of flexibility at the same time allowing space for this transformation for the apotheosis.

I’m relying on Christopher Dennis to pull versatility from the set. The lighting is going to make the setting more functional than it would be if you had a three-dimensional object there. And since I’m trying to show that light is the environment that we’re in and that influences our understanding of the object, I think it’s a very good parallel to the whole underlying feeling of this piece.

What will the dancers wear?

In the beginning in the white section they’re wearing very simple tight costumes but they change out of those very quickly after the first minute and forty-two seconds and go into their coloured costumes. All the women are in one costume, or one shape of costume, bodice and skirt, and the men are in another shape, pants and shirt, but they’re in contrasting colours. So the corps are all in grey, and each of the soloists will be in their individual colour. For the corps I needed something that could act as a transition, as a unifying comment, a way of moving between things.

You told me an important source has been the book Chroma by Derek Jarman. I looked it up at the library. It’s a fascinating meditation on the diversity of colour in nature, art, literature, history. He quotes Kandinsky and many other artists. How did you find it?

My sister, Katie, who did her undergrad at York in the film program, graduated at the top of the class with a specialty in sound. Derek Jarman made a film called Blue when he had gone blind – he played with the idea of a film about sound. She gave me this book, she had me read it. She’s now at Laurier doing her PhD in film.

What is most challenging or scary about choreographing In Colour?

Some of this music is absolutely terrifying. The score was written in the middle of the war between Russia and Georgia last summer, and I was there and seeing how the media portrayed the war. In Russia it was very clear who was the aggressor, and in the States it was very clear who was the aggressor, and they weren’t the same. I saw the same file photos being used in both countries, both places, but being portrayed as being the opposing sides. To be in the middle of that and to see how information was changed was really quite interesting.

One thing I realized last night as I was reading a little bit on Kandinsky and his understanding of green – that green is a passive, calm, motionless colour, very serene – I thought, that’s interesting, because I’ve decided to put green in the most warlike section of the ballet. It made me realize that our understanding of the perception of colour changes over time.

I think with camouflage, with how people dress – I associate war with green, with jealousy, but as I was talking with my sister about this I realized that almost every single one of these colours is associated with conflict or fight in some front. Red used to be about war, its blood, but at the same time now it’s the fight against AIDS. Pink is the fight against breast cancer. Green is jealousy, it’s aggressive. Yellow is a provocation. My realization was that the parts of this ballet are seeing colour through conflict.

That gave me a way to understand the tension and power in this music. It’s highly volatile music. It’s very big, written by a young composer who has huge ideas and huge energy. And you sense that. You feel that youth, but at the same time an incredible maturity in him and the two are at odds with each other. This realization helped me to figure out partly how to step into that. I’m terrified of some of these sections. That’s good, because when I’m not scared of a piece of music, I don’t create interesting movement.~

Selma Odom [guest writer] teaches dance history at York University. Her research focusses on teachers and transmission in dance and music. She has published hundreds of articles and reviews since the 1960s and co-edited the anthology Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories (2004).


*A profile of Peter Quanz by Selma Odom appears in the March 2009 print issue of The Dance Current.

Learn more >>
www.peterquanz.com
www.national.ballet.ca

In Process with Peter Quanz: Part 1

Interview with Peter Quanz
by Selma Odom

Photos of Peter Quanz and National Ballet dancers Elena Lobsanova and Noah Long by Sian Richards

Peter Quanz is currently in rehearsal for his new ballet In Colour, with a score by composer Anton Lubchenko.

The studios of The National Ballet of Canada are a beehive of activity with the full company rehearsing works by Peter Quanz, Sabrina Matthews and Crystal Pite for the Innovation program, March 4th through 8th in Toronto. Quanz’s involvement began in discussions with Artistic Director Karen Kain after his premiere for the company’s Choreographic Workshop in September 2006. He explains:

I was told that it would be an evening with three new ballets by Canadian choreographers, the first of this kind ever in The National Ballet’s history, the first time they ever commissioned three new works, the first time by three new Canadian choreographers, and I think a major step in Canadian dance history in terms of the ballet companies.

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The premise of this whole project is that we’ve each been given the same budget, and we can choose how to use that budget according to what we’d like to do for our own ballets.

While I was in Russia working with the Kirov Ballet I was introduced to a young Russian composer. His name is Anton Lubchenko. When I met him he was twenty-two, and he was sent to my studio by the Secretary of the theatre, Marta Petrovna. She’s decorated by Putin – so quite a powerful secretary. She sent me this composer partly at her thought and partly at the inspiration of former dancer-ballet mistress Elena Tchernichova, who has been a mentor and coach of mine.

They both felt a young composer should be paired up with a young choreographer – that the choreographer would develop by having access to new music and the composer would develop by being challenged with having to work with dance rhythms and a more theatrical sense of music than would be done in the concert hall.

I think this has been a very fruitful collaboration for the two of us. This is the second project that we’re working on but the first one to hit completion. We’ve been developing a full-length ballet, an original two-act work that is still in process. Timelines in Russia are strange things, so that’s why it hasn’t been up yet, but we’re working on it, and when I realized that project was going to take more time to develop, I thought, now that I have money from The National Ballet and I can commission the music, it makes sense to continue this collaboration with Anton, in order to give him experience working with me, give him his North American debut and also bring something of my experience in Russia to a Canadian audience.

So you began your collaboration in St. Petersburg in 2007?

We started before my premiere in July 2007 – that’s when I was doing Aria Suspended to Stravinsky’s Symphony in C – but I was back in Russia for much of October and November of that year and then I was back in February of 2008 and again in the summer for another two and a half months. I spent eight months total in Russia in the last year and a half.

Part of the reason it has taken so much time is that Anton doesn’t speak English, or he’s learning for this project but he doesn’t speak much, and I’ve had to learn Russian from my first day there, and so our communication is sometimes slow. But in doing so, it’s really forced us to listen to each other, to spend time doing silly things, or walking around the city or just getting to know each other as people, which has greatly influenced the choreography. I can see in the music the parts that he would enjoy playing on the piano. I can visualize how he would hold his body as he’s playing, and that in turn is going to shape some of my movement.

What is his way of composing – does he improvise? How does he share his music with you?

Well, he does several things. I mean there’s what he considers the serious music and what he considers his music for fun. Together with Elena, we would sit in her apartment, with the kettle always on the boil and eating cookies and just having a wonderful time. Eventually she bought a piano and had it hauled up to her fourth-floor apartment so that he could play for us. So now there’s this baby grand, well mid-sized grand piano, and it’s just for him. And we would spend all night every night.

He would play different types of music – sometimes Tchaikovsky, sometimes Stravinsky, sometimes Schubert. He’d give us concerts every night, and then he would launch into these twenty-minute jazz like sessions where he’d kind of bash through all kinds of different well known popular classical pieces and rearrange them slightly and make musical jokes. That’s the type of improvisation he does. These sessions would last all night and Elena would be fretting that the poor neighbours couldn’t sleep, and we’d get the odd shouts from the courtyard, but it’s music, it’s beautiful.

It sounds like a bonus for the neighbours! They probably didn’t mind all that much – well, maybe on a hot night with the windows open.

But in terms of his actual composition, he says he doesn’t sit down to write music. He hears it in his head and then sits down and writes it out. I remember very clearly when we were talking about the first theme for this ballet, which was the theme that we’re using for the very first section, the white section. It’s kind of an ostinato that is on the strings and it has other lines going through. He played one thing for us first, and it wasn’t quite what I was looking for, so I asked him to make a few changes.

He sat there maybe three minutes staring off into space, and then he got up to the piano and played the first theme exactly as he has written it. He went on to tell us what theme would come afterwards, how it would develop. In those three minutes he didn’t only come up with a new theme, he could see the entire structure of the ballet. And he could race through it, forwards, backwards, any given speed – it was like a three-dimensional object that he could walk through. The thought process and the way that it just flowed out of him was the most divine expression I’ve ever seen.

He has musical reasons for arriving at his structure, I suppose, but what about composing for the theatre?

The National Ballet is understandably very concerned about the amount of rehearsal time that we have for these ballets. Three new ballets is a lot. To have three demanding choreographers running around, all using the same people, and trying to use the same resources is a challenge. And so even though Karen Kain wanted me to make a large classical ballet, she wanted me to do it on a minimum amount of rehearsal time, which is a huge challenge.

I thought if I am going to deliver that type of ballet, which I like to do and I’m good at and I enjoy, I should probably make a ballet that I can break into sections, where I can rehearse smaller groups of people. In my mind it was a theme and variations type work. When I mentioned that to Anton, he said, “Oh, no, theme and variation is horrible. You cannot do theme and variation in the year 2008. It does not work, no way. I write symphony.”

It’s one of those things where you can’t argue. It’s in two movements, but it’s called symphony in nine variations. When I went to break down what I was doing I realized that I didn’t always follow his breakdown of variations. Some of that differed, but that’s okay, I’m musical, too, and I can work within his structure. There have been some huge screaming matches, and also there have been slammed doors, Russian drama, but there’s also a real dedication to each other.

It was the three of us living together for more than a month several different times. He had his residence from the Conservatory, but it was far away and it was in the summer when the bridges over the Neva are raised at night so he couldn’t get home. It was three of us in an apartment all the time. It leads to some very high emotions, but one of the things that I’ve been working on is being more emotional in my choreography. I’m very clear on structure, but I need to show that I can also be more human, and perhaps this allowed me to open up that way a bit more. His music has provided me a wonderful vehicle and challenge.

In this process there have been points where I’ve had an idea where this project is going movement-wise before hearing the music, and when I heard the music, they fit. I don’t know why or how that could be, but it was like we were given the same information. I don’t want to turn that into too much of a mystical comment, but I believe there’s some kind of force behind it.~

Selma Odom [guest writer] teaches dance history at York University. Her research focusses on teachers and transmission in dance and music. She has published hundreds of articles and reviews since the 1960s and co-edited the anthology Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories (2004).


*A profile of Peter Quanz by Selma Odom appears in the March 2009 print issue of The Dance Current.

Learn more >>
www.peterquanz.com
www.national.ballet.ca

For an introduction to Anton Lubchenko, his music and the city of St. Petersburg circa 2006, see April Man by filmmaker Dmitriy Lavrinenko:
www.dimalavr.com/en/ChelovekAprelya.html