The stage was bustling, with 16 Ballet BC company artists and four emerging artists dancing their hearts out to the warmth of live music played, from a downstage corner, by the Microcosmos Quartet. The occasion was Ballet BC’s May 7-9 end-of-season show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, a premiere of Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber’s For Glass. Philip Glass, of course, the American minimalist composer renowned for his masterly use of pulsing rhythms and hypnotic repetitions.
For Glass was in two parts, with an enormously exciting act one, enigmatically titled “Performance becomes practice,” driven by the often tender momentum of Glass’ 1991 String Quartet No. 5. A restaging of a 2022 commission from L.A. Dance Project, the short, 24-minute act has enough drama and dance to stand on its own.
Following intermission, the 42-minute act two, “Practice becomes performance,” was set to String Quartet No. 3 (known as Mishima, after the 1985 Paul Schrader film on Yukio Mishima for which it was composed). This act felt diffuse, overplaying hijinks between the men and with long sections danced without music—not in silence, but to the sounds of the dancers’ sharp intakes of breath and foot stamps. It certainly had its moments, but during the long music-less opening, I found myself waiting for the return of the Microcosmos Quartet. The Vancouver-based group’s violinists (Marc Destrubé and John Marcus), violist (Tawnya Popoff) and cellist (Rebecca Wenham) added immeasurable pleasure and presence to the evening.
Both acts took place on a white stage—white backdrop, white floor—with the dancers elegantly dressed in black (trousers, shirts and shoes for the men; spaghetti-strap dresses and, for most of the time, shoes for the women). There is the same vocabulary in both, with comradely trios and quartets for the men that were a delight, and with hungry, devouring solos for the sometimes barefoot women. When all 20 dancers move together in unison, they’re like a group of villagers at a local celebration, except each one is so clearly intensely trained and athletic, and the aesthetic they are called upon to embody is so varied and dynamic. Smith and Schraiber give us lots on which to feast our eyes.
The New York-based duo—partners in life and dance—have a shared background as dancers with Israel’s acclaimed Batsheva, where the American and the Israeli met. So both have experienced the full-bodied, expressive release and folk-inflected steps of Batsheva’s former artistic director and now house choreographer Ohad Naharin. But they create choreography that is very much their own, with Schraiber’s early depth of training in folk dancing showing in their rich use of fluid hips and shoulders, quick feet and strong graceful arms. Smith—as both a dancer and choreographer—knows how to invest the smallest gesture and biggest movement with emotional weight. Particularly in act one, everything comes together dramatically through mere suggestions of a whole array of relationships—friendly, romantic, competitive, tentative and sure.
For Glass is their second work for Ballet BC, following 2025’s beautifully sculpted Obsidian. There will be more: in his curtain speech, Ballet BC’s artistic director Medhi Walerski announced that Smith and Schraiber would return for a five-year term as resident choreographers. It’s a bit of a coup, given the couple are currently in high demand, recently premiering their second commission—Satyagraha, Glass’ opera about Mahatma Gandhi—for the Paris Opera. They will be a welcome part of Ballet BC’s 2026-2027 40th anniversary season.
To learn more about Ballet BC visit www.balletbc.com
