Vancouver’s Ballet British Columbia made an unforgettable impression with their 2018 UK debut, achieving standing ovations and a trail of ecstatic reviews to match, but their return this year journeys into territory far darker, deeper, and more daring. At the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, the company brought together a performance altogether raw and resonant. With Johan Inger’s PASSING and Crystal Pite’s FRONTIER, Ballet BC delivers a hypnotic, sometimes harrowing meditation on the fragility of the human psyche and the frayed edges of our social fabric.

The evening opens in a stark, liminal space. Dancers, dressed in ethereal white, move with a sinuous grace, almost too fluid to be human. But this tranquillity is quickly compromised. Figures in black, anonymous, faceless, and unnervingly quiet, begin to appear, stalking the stage. These shadowy entities do not dance themselves so much as they impose and control. As they draw nearer, the white-clad dancers’ movements grow more frenetic, anxious, tactile. There’s grappling, resisting, limbs jerking into angles of self-defence. It feels as though these dancers are contending with invisible intrusions. The encroachment of doubt, fear, depression, negativity. Here, these emotions are not metaphors. They are real, physical forces that the dancers are forced to grapple with.

This first act becomes a portrait of internal darkness made external: a ballet of battling one’s self. The violence here is not simply decorative. The dancers do not merely perform struggle. They embody it, wrestling spectres that seem all too real. It is at once deeply unsettling and impossible to look away from.

The second act shifts tone, if not intensity. We are pulled into something quieter, yet certainly no less devastating: a family. What begins in a portrait of intimacy and warmth gradually erodes. Dancers, portrayed as members of this family, fall out of rhythm, are pushed to the margins, mocked and shunned. A mother figure turns cold, a sibling lashes out. The breaking apart feels inevitable. Love becomes conditional. The family is not a refuge here. This then warps into something almost grotesque. With feverish pacing and haunting expression, we enter a sequence that recalls the medieval dancing mania: a strange, maniacal episode where dancers laugh, cry, repeat their domestic gestures in loops of despair. One performs a tender duet with a broom. Another rocks an invisible baby to sleep while convulsing with silent sobs. The music is frenzied. The lights spin. It’s absurd. It’s terrifying. The sense is that they are being forced to continue, by a pressure we cannot see. A world gone mad, or perhaps a mind in collapse.

But it is the final movement that truly lingers. As snow begins to fall, dancers, now stripped to varying degrees, enter a hectic, almost desperate attempt to find a partner. Some are more covered than others. Less exposed. Less visible. They search each other’s eyes, try to match movements, but connections misfire. Some pairs click only to falter, others try and fail again and again. There is yearning, there is rejection. And yet, we can still clearly see hope. Subtle, yes, almost invisible, but ever-present. And then, the stage stills. Two dancers remain. Fully exposed. Clad only in their underwear. They stand, facing each other. No music. No movement. No laughter or tears. Just them. Vulnerability, here, is not a performance.

It is an extraordinary final image. The opposite of spectacle. Yet the most powerful moment of all. In a performance that has so far demanded relentless motion, here is a pause. A mutual recognition. A beginning.

With both PASSING and FRONTIER, Ballet BC proves that contemporary dance can be both intellectually robust and emotionally captivating, without sacrificing anything in the way of form or technique. In an age where much contemporary dance risks abstraction for its own sake, this company reminds us of the power of movement to articulate the things we often struggle to find the words for: fear, doubt, loss, and hope. If this tour is any indication, Ballet BC has not only arrived on UK stages; they’ve set a new standard.

Rating: 5/5

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