Bengt Jörgen, left, is a dance iconoclast of the first order, a ballet choreographer and artistic director who has forged his own path and not just survived but thrived. His company, Ballet Jörgen Canada, performs more than 120 dates each year and tours more widely and to more remote corners of Canada than any other dance group in the country. And thanks to its outreach efforts in schools, Ballet Jörgen also boasts a younger audience than most ballet troupes — about one third of the 50,000 people Jörgen reaches each year are under the age of 18.
Ballet Jörgen opens its 2011 season next weekend (January 28 and 29) at Betty Oliphant Theatre (404 Jarvis Street) with a program that marries classical ballet with bold, contemporary works. The “something for everyone” approach seems to go down well with audiences once they’re in the house but getting those bums in seats is always a challenge with mixed programs.
“Because we’re so dependent on earned revenue we can’t pour a lot of marketing dollars into a show that we know is not likely to yield a big financial return,” says Bengt. “From a cost/benefit perspective, these kinds of programs don’t make sense but making money is not our only reason to exist.”
Danielle Rosengren and Hampus Gauffin dance Bengt Jorgen's Swedish Songs; photo by Irina Popova
Jorgen has been pushing against the status quo since the beginning of his career. He came to Canada from his native Sweden in 1981 at the age of 18 for graduate studies at the National Ballet School before going on to dance with the National for three years.
“I wanted to be a choreographer and step outside the big ballet company environment because at that time it was a very limited worldview,” he remembers. “Everybody used the same five people and nobody dared to do new works because of the cost issues. In fairness to the ballet companies, they did nurture some good choreographers but I just didn’t feel like there were enough opportunities to try different things.
“In fact,” adds Jorgen, “at that point it was hard to mount anything outside the official ballet umbrella because there weren’t really any independent dancers; I had to borrow dancers from the National Ballet, I asked my friends. I realized that I couldn’t continue like that so I had to start a company in order to produce new work, to produce showcases for other choreographers, not only for my own work.”
Jorgen instinctively rejected the elitist attitude present in Toronto at the time: “I quickly discovered that different works worked for different audiences. For example, we did a piece with country and western music early on and that didn’t go over so well in downtown Toronto, but outside the city audiences really responded to it.”
“My gut instinct was that the negative reaction was pure snobbery,” adds Jorgen. “People couldn’t see past the music to appreciate the dancing and it was good work. When it comes to the ballet establishment we are the black sheep that continues to defy the conventions of what you should be doing and how it should be done.”
Danielle Rosengren and Hampus Gauffin dance Bengt Jorgen's Swedish Songs; photo by Irina Popova
Jorgen also expresses distaste for the physical homogeneity present in most ballet companies: “We do not look like any other ballet company in Canada,” he says proudly. “One of the distinguishing factors is that we don’t bother with height and size, we want to reflect what our community looks like. Okay, we don’t have any size 12 girls because at the end of the day you still have to be able to do the stuff, the men have to be able to lift them. But if you compare us to a traditional ballet company you’ll see a huge difference relatively speaking. Some companies only want sticks, emaciated girls; we have some thin dancers too, but it’s not a mandate.”
Next week’s program includes two of Jorgen’s own works, the popular Swedish Songs (pictured) and the world premier of a new work set to music by Ignaz Moscheles (a late-19th century composer) with costumes by respected Canadian theatre designer Ann Armit. Rounding out the evening are works by Robert Desrosiers, Malgorzata Nowacka and Halifax’s Ruth-Ellen Kroll Jackson.
“Our focus is entirely on Canadian choreographers and many of our productions have been sold internationally,” says Jorgen. “Our traditional ballets look like ballet and we’re committed to doing it at the highest possible standards. In terms of our artistry, we focus on intimacy, warmth, humour – it’s about not putting art on a pedestal.”
Ballet Jorgen is one of 28 companies taking part in Dance Weekend ‘11 beginning tonight at Fleck Dance Theatre; the company performs an excerpt of Nowacka’s Icarus on Saturday (January 22, 3:25 pm), which makes its full-fledged Toronto debut the following weekend in the company’s season opener.
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