ON STAGE: Ballet Victoria’s Heart Strings
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, 2 p.m. (March 19 and 20)
Tickets: $16-$82.50 from or 250-386-6121
The pandemic robbed the performing arts world and its audience of the ability to connect. The biological and physiological impact of that connection has been missing from our lives for the better part of two years.
Repairing that relationship was a motivating factor for Paul Destrooper, the artistic and executive director of Ballet Victoria, who choreographed Heart Strings with harmony in mind.
“We want to celebrate getting back together,” he said. “You can see, now that restrictions have come down, it’s a little crazy out there. We’ve had all this energy pinned up for so many months, so this program is very explosive. It has a lot of energy, but it also has a lot of depth, both technically and dramatically.”
Ballet Victoria dancers will be joined by members of the Victoria Symphony, including violinist Christi Meyers, for performances of Vivaldi’s signature work, The Four Seasons, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade, among other selections.
Heart strings will indeed be pulled at the conclusion of Sunday’s performance as the company is set to bid farewell to prima ballerina Andrea Bayne, who is giving a solo performance of The Dying Swan set to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Le Cygne. After 17 years with Ballet Victoria, Bayne is leaving to become the full-time artistic director of the Ballet Victoria Conservatory, which she co-founded with Destrooper.
“She has been here since 2007, when I did my first show with Ballet Victoria,” Destrooper said. “I have created many, many roles for her, and she has done beautifully in all of them.”
The emotions associated with her departure add to what was already expected to be an emotional event, Destrooper said.
“Live theatre, live music, and especially live dance, are not formats that translate well to a screen. There is an exchange that is primal between audience and performer. The response to physical movement and physical emotion, from one being to the other, is without spoken language.”
