Dance and ballet have been a recent focus in Toronto’s classical music scene, including the upcoming “Creation” by choreographer and dancer Angela Blumberg.
Dance and ballet have been a recent focus in Toronto’s classical music scene, from the National Ballet of Canada’s productions of George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, and Rubies (with music by Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky, respectively) and Alexander Ekman’s Cacti, to Toronto composer Christos Hatzis’s ballet Going Home Star, which evocatively retells the horror and suffering in Canada’s First Nations residential school systems. One may argue that Torontonians love their ballet works almost as much as they love their opera.
And what is there to dislike? Ballets often receive the same lavish production qualities and the top-notch musical performances as opera, and instead of the endless pleasures of the human voice we are treated to the Olympian capabilities of the human body: an art form as captivating as it is naked in its delivery. With dance, there are no abstractions to hide behind, since the body is all there is. Similar to singing, dancing is a vulnerable art form since every detailed nuance in a performance is a deeply internal reaction in the performer’s own body. I believe this vulnerability also forms part of our obsession with these mediums.
If ballets are the “operas” of the dance world, then German-Canadian choreographer and dancer Angela Blumberg’s choreographies are fine chamber works. While ballets use vibrant sets to lock in a narrative and tell a story, Blumberg’s dance pieces inhabit a realm of poised abstraction, using minimal props and sets. This creates up some extra work for the viewer who must construct the narrative from the bare energies of the choreography. Blumberg’s most recent works form an event subtitled Creation, which will premiere March 18th, 8 p.m. and March 20th 3 p.m. at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre.
Blumberg built her choreographies for this event around two works by Toronto composer Domenic Jarlkaganova and another work by the Polish-Canadian composer, Norbert Palej. Palej’s work – a cantilena subtitled Veni Creator Spiritus – was originally a piece of chamber music for viola and piano. “I composed this piece years ago – I believe in 2008 or so,” Palej said. “Angela recently found the recording on my website, liked it, and decided to choreograph it.”
Palej was inspired to write the work after reading Pope John Paul II’s work, Letter to the Artists, which is a passionate text encouraging artists to share their gifts with the world. “The subtitle – Veni Creator Spiritus – refers to the mystical concept of creativity revealed in the letter, and captured metaphorically in this piece. It is probably the most bright, harmonious and life-affirming piece I have ever written.”
How Blumberg chooses to filter this message through choreography will be demonstrated at the event, though Palej is happy with the results. “I thought her work was wonderful all along so my input [on the choreography] was minimal.”
“The Cantilena was not designed to be a dance piece, but I don’t think any music resists dance and all can be choreographed in one way or another,” Palej said.
Domenic Jarlkaganova, on the other hand, worked on a new piece with Blumberg. The creative collaboration was natural for Jarlkaganova, who has been dancing most of her life.
“I’ve participated in dance from a very young age, first ballet and gymnastics, then to mixtures of contemporary and hip hop,” Jarlkaganova says, “Movement was my first musical experience, and no doubt will continue to influence the way I both experience and create music. I’ve participated in setting music to dance, choreographing to pre-composed material, and setting my own choreography to music, all in recent years.”
Jarlkaganova’s work, which is different from Palej’s, attempts to grasp at more primordial concepts, at the forces that change and move the universe. “These pieces often reflect simple yearnings we have as human beings, to be loved, to feel like we belong, need for freedom, curiosity, etcetera,” says Jarlkaganova.
“The first piece Creation, originally written for the 2016 New Music Festival [at the University of Toronto], is a study in power dynamics between two very different beings. The creation lies in both the growth of the first creature as it interacts with its environment and the incremental increase of tension added into their dynamic up until its inevitable collapse.”
Jarlkaganova’s brand new second work, Evolution, moves through several parts that highlight the motive of transformation. This tension in the process of change is what unites the work together.
“Angela was interested in the idea of ‘change’: the infinite events that lead to change and the moment when change has been completed when something has transformed into something else. The theme of evolution provided a platform for her to explore this idea.”
Palej’s message of openness to share creativity, combined with the visual, exhibitory nature of dance opens a broader question in my mind about the nature of art, and about sharing and communication. Is art ultimately created to reach out to others? Or is its purpose more personal and therapeutic?
“The music communicates my experience at the time, formalized and filtered of course, and hopes to provide a spiritual experience for others,” Palej says. “Does it reach out? Yes, because all art reaches out. But its purpose is to simply be and wait.”
Angela Blumberg’s three new choreographies to music by composers Norbert Palej and Domenic Jarlkaganova will play on March 18th, 8 p.m. and March 20th, 3 p.m., at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre.
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