National Ballet of Canada Press
Enjoy the press images from the ballet Skyward by Alyssa Pires, which featured Conduit: II. Pulse. It ran for seven performances from March 9-13, 2022.
Review of the ballet:
The company were at their best. The first ballet on the program the joy-filled sky-reaching Skyward, a world premiere created for the company by choreographic associate Alysa Pires.
The costumes by Dana Osborne had the suggestion of feathers for both men and women highlighting the feeling of flight in much of the choreography
Pires has a particularly fluid physical language that is yet full of variation to fit the different physical qualities and personalities of the dancers it was set on. Particularly glorious was the third movement danced tonight by the always luminous Heather Ogden and and astonishingly powerful Brendan Saye. What has happened to Saye during the pandemic? I have never seen in his dancing such authority, charisma and power. Combined with the luminous richness of Ogden’s presence the two of them in this particular choreography irresistibly made me thing of the leading characters Matthew and Diana in Deborah Harkness’ best selling trilogy of novels, and the television series it inspired, A Discovery of Witches: a coming together of two strong contrasting personalities meeting and establishing an unbreakable bond of partnership.
Skyward as a whole is full of a sense of joy and release reflecting, as Pires told me when I met her in the lobby, the feeling they had all had in the studio working on the company‘s very first new work after the lockdowns.
- Jennifer Parr, The Whole Note