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There are ballets you will remember based on extravagant costumes or familiar narratives, and there are ballets you will remember based on how they made you feel. Ballet Edmonton specializes in the latter, and its season opener was true to form, with expert use of bare-bones design and modernist movement in the triple feature Ouvrir.

The evening featured the world premiere of Night Breath by Ethan Colangelo, a 25-year-old graduate of Juilliard and current choreography associate at the National Ballet of Canada. He has been an up-and-comer to watch, receiving an award for choreographic promise at Juilliard and being commissioned by Ballet BC in 2021.

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For Night Breath, Colangelo worked with composer and dancer Ben Waters to create the soundscape for his striking piece, which brims with duality and contrast. Behind the music, Waters makes use of ticking clock sounds, industrial clanking and snake-like rattling. Clad in simple, gauzy white undergarments, lending a feeling of intimacy, both the dancers’ muscular strength and delicate movements were on full display under lighting that was by turns soft and stark. The choreography moved from smooth and sensual to almost insect-like. Dancers were held by each other, manipulated and turned upside down. At times, they even mounted and rode each other, slowly crawling across the stage. There was a cinematic quality to the piece, and the tone ranged from erotic to slightly apocalyptic. The young choreographer has created something truly layered and memorable that will leave audiences teasing apart the details in their minds.

Before reaching that climax, the evening opened with Thousand Memories, a remount of 2018’s Last Words by Wen Wei Wang, artistic director of Ballet Edmonton. Wang created the piece as a tribute to the late publisher and patron of the arts Orville Chubb, and Wang reinterpreted and renamed the work to acknowledge the way grief evolves with time. Dancers clad in flowing black pants were at times in isolation, at times propping each other up — a physical representation of the loneliness and the community one finds in grief. While much of the piece was appropriately lit in cool, icy tones, there was a warm, sweet interlude reminiscent of the way one can finally look back in peace rather than pain once enough time has passed after a loss. A men’s suit jacket, worn by one dancer and slowly folded and held by another, is a perfect symbol of how a loved one’s items are imbued with their essence long after they are gone.

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Following Thousand Memories was returning choreographer Gioconda Barbuto’s Sum of All Parts, a remount of her 2019 piece with Ballet Edmonton, and an energetic reprieve after the weighty opener. It featured the most colourful costumes of the evening, between the black of the opener and the grey-white of the closer. The rapid pace and collective choreography, along with the energized and youthful quality of the music, built up a vibrant wall of movement and sound. The piece is described by Barbuto as “a physical conversation,” and there is certainly an unspoken dialogue between the dancers. They moved as cogs in a dance machine, each movement setting off others. They broke apart, bustled around, and came back together. Something about the piece felt reminiscent of everyday life, as we navigate the world, connecting and dispersing, reliant on each other in ways we cannot fully comprehend. In Sum of All Parts, all of the pieces fit.

REVIEW

Ballet Edmonton’s Ourvrir featuring Last Words, Sum of All Parts and Night Breath

Where Triffo Theatre in Allard Hall, 11110 104 Ave.

When Friday, repeats Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets $45 for adults, $35 for students and seniors, $20 for children under 15

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