DANCE : <i> Dancing Tetley’s Ballets--Voices of Experience </i>

To date, National Ballet of Canada has danced four ballets by choreographer Glen Tetley (at right): “Voluntaries” and “Sphinx” (created for other ensembles), “Alice” and “La Ronde” (made in Toronto).

Below, statements by six experienced Tetley dancers in the company reveal some of the special hazards and rewards of performing his work.

Frank Augustyn: “The focus of ballet is to appear to be lighter than air and modern dance is the opposite: It’s very weighty and down into the ground. Glen uses a combination of both those forms, which makes the movement very interesting to accomplish.

“We’re trained to feel as though we’re above the ground and, in Glen’s work, we often need to have that feeling--women when they’re being lifted, for instance, and men when they need to jump. But we also have to apply that deep earthy feeling, to be very down into the floor on certain walks. That change takes a while to get accustomed to.

“It’s difficult to get the right feeling even after doing the right move. Always the body speaks loudest. I don’t think Glen has much use for facial expressions, for acting. He needs emotion but I don’t think he needs to have the face express it.

“In ‘La Ronde,’ we all have a character, but he didn’t want anything that would suggest ‘I-You-Love,’ as in ballet mime. He likes to work in the abstract, and all his ideas are condensed into a short period of time, which makes it very exciting to watch.”

Peter Ottmann: “It’s a very gratifying experience to be drawn into the creative process. A lot of choreographers come in the studio knowing exactly what they want and they tell you. It’s like grocery shopping: They need two of this and three of that and you have to put it all in a bag and deliver it.

“Others fall into the other trap and depend too much on the dancers. They’ll say, ‘Help me here, show me something!’ It’s such a fine balance and with Glen it’s always there.

“I was in the studio when he first created ‘Alice.’ I didn’t know yet that I was cast in the ballet, I just sat and watched.

“He was working with Kimberly Glasco, who was dancing Child Alice. He was in the middle of the room, and with a single look to Kim, she knew to join him. And he just started moving and creating--this was without music. He became Alice and every once in a while he would look behind him to make sure that she was keeping up.

“At certain points he would just stop and turn to her and somehow she knew to repeat various things they had done. He would see them and look at her again and continue. The concentration was almost magical.”

Gregory Osborne: “With Glen you have to ask a lot of questions sometimes. He gives you some information, but there’s so much more to learn. If you take extra time and ask ‘Why I am doing this?’ or ‘Where did you get that movement?,’ suddenly he’ll just start talking and you’ll be writing a book about the information that he has on the ballet from the minute it starts to the minute it ends.

“His ballets were part of my growth, my beginnings as a dancer and I think it’s very good for the dancers in this company to have them to stretch themselves. I think they will push the company level up much higher, which it needs.

“The ballets Glen created for the company embody a totally different look compared to ‘Sphinx,’ ‘Voluntaries’ and other works where the body is so naked, the lines and movement so pure. In ‘Alice’ and ‘La Ronde,’ there’s more of a story--definitely something to hang on to besides an emotional quality. With the costumes and sets, they even look like classical ballets in a sense.

“But the movement is still very Tetley and within the story lines, Glen gets very sophisticated. He takes them deep into the mental anguish, say, of Lewis Carroll or how Alice really felt as a young girl or an old woman: Did she really understand or did she ever understand?”

Gizella Witkowsky: “Even if you do his movements full out--full stretch, full bend, full everything--it’s never enough. His choreography demands more. You always have to reach for that extra couple of inches. You have to breathe bigger. Every which way you can move, it’s to the limit.

“He likes the image of your body just covering space--up, down, sideways and around, the entire stage. The more you do, the better. It’s a real physical workout and every time you perform, every time you rehearse, you find new ways of doing it and improvements. It’s like an experiment because you’re always learning new things about yourself and about the work you’re doing. You’re always growing.

“It’s a wonderful feeling because it’s very free, organic, kinetic. It’s like moving through thick air instead of just going through the motions. You’re not just stepping up to a balance, you’re stepping up to fly off the stage. It’s an illusion and it’s worth trying to go for because that’s when it’s magical to watch his choreography.”

Sabina Allemann: “Glen never turns on the music and counts ‘1-2-3-4--you have to be here on this note.’ He lets you find your own rhythm and musicality, and then occasionally he’ll say, ‘I think you need to go a bit faster here.’ He searches out what’s good for you, what works for every individual.

“He’s very concerned with the back, in how you move your spine, and in contraction. That’s very different from classical ballet. He’s always talking about spiraling, so your whole body works in a curve. It’s very fluid movement and the thing that’s really hard about it is balance: trying to find your balance when you’re taking a movement further than you naturally do.

“The first work I did of his was ‘Sphinx,’ such a demanding ballet, so difficult that it’s really kind of scary. That first solo that you do: It’s dark on stage and it’s technically so hard and you have to bend back and you can’t see. Stamina-wise, you feel very sick by then and your feet are cramping so you’re afraid you can’t get on pointe .

“It’s tough but it’s worth it. It’s so fulfilling to push yourself that hard, to use your body so totally. You always feel very satisfied at the end of a performance because you’ve pushed all your boundaries a little further.

Karen Kain: “Glen’s had a tremendous impact on the company. Any time that a major choreographer like that has such faith in the dancers that he will create ballets on them, it gives them a tremendous sense of confidence. Suddenly we have something that’s ours, that we excel at--and that every other company in the world hasn’t danced.

“He also brings out qualities in the dancers that people have never seen before. I definitely think that ‘Alice’ gave me an opportunity to show a different side of myself.

“It’s funny, but people insist on pegging you a certain way. In Canada they think of me as the Classical Ballerina; if I don’t have a tiara and tutu on, they’re a little confused. But I don’t think classical ballets were ever my strongest point: They’ve always been a struggle, where Glen’s ballets have felt like a second skin. Glen loves purity and form, but it comes from deep inside of you. When I finish one of his ballets, I always feel more like a real dancer--I don’t know how else to describe it.”