{"id":32394,"date":"2019-04-19T03:56:30","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T10:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32394"},"modified":"2019-04-17T19:40:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T02:40:18","slug":"the-power-of-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/04\/19\/the-power-of-resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ballet BC dancers Scott Fowler and Parker Finley in rehearsal for the company\u2019s final program of the season, which features all Jewish community choreographers. (photo by Michael Slobodian)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ballet BC concludes its season May 9-11 with Program 3, featuring all Jewish community choreographers: Israel\u2019s Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, Vancouver\u2019s Serge Bennathan and Israel\u2019s Ohad Naharin.<\/p>\n

Program 3 begins with the North American premi\u00e8re of Eyal and Behar\u2019s Bedroom Folk<\/em> and concludes with the return of Naharin\u2019s Minus 16, a crowd-pleaser that Ballet BC presented in 2017. The middle piece, by Bennathan, is a world premi\u00e8re, commissioned by Ballet BC.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmily Molnar invited me to create a work for the company,\u201d Bennathan told the Independent<\/em> in a phone interview. \u201cThat\u2019s it. All the rest is for me to create what I want for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that leeway by Molnar, Ballet BC\u2019s artistic director, Bennathan said he wanted to create a work for all the dancers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so in love with the company that I felt it will be wonderful to have them all, mostly for the kind of work I do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I create work, whatever it is, for my company or another company, I always say I like to have the group of people that are strong individuals that make sense together,\u201d he explained. \u201cThat is exactly what the company is right now. If you take Ballet BC now \u2013 individually, they are quite fantastic, each of their personalities, they\u2019re fine, but they make so much sense together. That\u2019s the beauty of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennathan was born in France and came to Canada more than 30 years ago. Artistic director of Toronto\u2019s Dancemakers from 1990 to 2006, he then came to Vancouver, where he founded Les Productions Figlio.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy work, I would say, is quite physical, but my point of departure is to work from the energy. Not the energy being exuberant or something like that, but the energy that makes you move. So, you have to be present in the moment with your body and move from inside\u2026. You have to find it in yourself to move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennathan has created many full-length works, both for his own companies and others, and he has a long history with Ballet BC.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first-ever commission was the first time I came to Vancouver. Reid Anderson was the artistic director,\u201d he said. \u201cI had just arrived in Canada. I was a young immigrant and I was doing work here in Vancouver and they saw my work and they invited me to create. The first-ever piece was a duet. And then, throughout the years, the invitations kept coming, so I created.\u201d<\/p>\n

Set to an original score by Montreal-based composer Bertrand Ch\u00e9nier, Bennathan shared a little about next month\u2019s premi\u00e8re, as well as his creative process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s [about] how do you find the form of resilience. How do you sustain that [thing] that keeps your head above water? That\u2019s what it is,\u201d he said of the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I create the piece with dancers, I spend time [on my own] \u2013 I paint, I sew and I write and I explore these ideas that come to me through painting; not to paint movement \u2026 but to try to extract what it means in a poetic way. So, when I \u2018write,\u2019 in the studio with the dancers, what happens is, when I choreograph, I don\u2019t think about the piece. I let my body talk because I believe that the mounds and mounds and mounds that I read \u2013 like, for this one, I read a lot of poetry, I painted, I wrote poetry \u2013 when I\u2019m in the studio with them, I just let my body talk when I choreograph. And then they grab it. But this is only the beginning. After that, there is another period. I don\u2019t want them to do exactly what I did. The movement can transform itself \u2013 what needs to stay true is the essence of why we did this movement at the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bennathan, dance is more than an art form.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left my family quite early, I was 14 years old. Let\u2019s say, my life was taking a direction that, deep inside me, I knew it was not the direction I wanted to take. I want to say [that] to people because, sometimes we see a lot of youth and we say, \u2018Oh, you should get out of this, or you should do this \u2026\u2019 but the fact is, sometimes, mostly when you are young, you are taken into a spiral and you cannot get out. And, if you do not have the opportunity, or create yourself the opportunity, to lead you to someone that can tell you a word or a phrase that will change you or offer something you can open the door to, you are in a terrible situation, you cannot get out. I was able to have this in my life and \u2026 at 14, I said, \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to leave this, I\u2019m going to Paris, I\u2019m going to study dance, and that\u2019s what I want to become, a dancer. This saved me, literally. I needed to do this to get out of a situation I didn\u2019t want for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennathan described dancers as \u201ccourageous, at all levels; not courageous just to apply themselves physically \u2013 because it\u2019s there, they have the courage to abandon themselves into this art form \u2013 but, at the same time, to live as a dance artist. And, even more in our days, you have to be courageous, you have to have resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he can\u2019t just invite talented dancers from other parts of the country to come work with him here because Vancouver has become so expensive. \u201cYoung artists or young families cannot come live here anymore. That\u2019s the thing. And you have to be courageous to say, \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to come.\u2019… These days, you don\u2019t just say, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m going to live in Vancouver.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennathan believes in the power of dance, and art in general, to improve the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people say \u2018art can save the world,\u2019 but why can you say that? It\u2019s because we need the inspiration, we need poetry in our lives. Sometimes, poetry, these days, is dismissed. We so forget the importance of the inspiration of poetry in our day-to-day lives. There is a reason, not only in North America, but everywhere in the world right now \u2026 why cynicism is the most important thing\u2026. It\u2019s because we left all this \u2013 whether it\u2019s writing poetry, written poetry or dance or music \u2013 we stop these art forms at the door instead of inviting them into our lives.\u201d If we did invite them in, he said, \u201cwe would talk differently and we would start to see things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Program 3 is at Queen Elizabeth Theatre May 9-11, 8 p.m., and Ballet BC will celebrate 10 years with Emily Molnar as artistic director with a reception after the closing performance on May 11. For tickets to the performances, visit balletbc.com<\/a>. Tickets for the reception are available via eventbrite.ca<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ballet BC dancers Scott Fowler and Parker Finley in rehearsal for the company\u2019s final program of the season, which features all Jewish community choreographers. (photo by Michael Slobodian) Ballet BC concludes its season May 9-11 with Program 3, featuring all Jewish community choreographers: Israel\u2019s Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, Vancouver\u2019s Serge Bennathan and Israel\u2019s Ohad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[2282,3119,2284,8922,8302,7011,3402,2344],"class_list":["post-32394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-ballet-bc","tag-dance","tag-emily-molnar","tag-gai-behar","tag-lifestyle","tag-ohad-naharin","tag-serge-bennathan","tag-sharon-eyal"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}