Speaking of culture…

Back in the 1990s, in my days as a toxics campaigner, I spent a fair bit of time in Powell River, one of three towns on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. The blighted town. The one with a pulp mill that might have provided union jobs, but was also making kids sick. And the town stink. (Story for another day.)

I went back a year ago. I have acquired in-laws of a sort – Dirk’s sister Maria and brother-in-law Ken – who live there. The first trip we made to Powell River was the day I stopped smoking. I knew if it was going to take I was going to need at least a couple of days somewhere where I had no association with smoking. (Okay, looking back, I smoked plenty, but that was 30 years ago. The mill was closed. If it could stop smoking, so could I.) The second trip was to go whale watching last summer – a choppy evening with no close encounters with humpbacks, but very entertaining and informative.

And then there was last week. Maria’s birthday and guess who was coming to town? The Royal Winnipeg Ballet! Powell River was to be the first stop on a tour around British Columbia. Why Powell River? Who knew, but we went.

The whole thing (ballet in Powell River) was already surreal before we arrived at the venue –the town’s recreation centre, which contains a theatre as well as a hockey rink (Go, Kings!) and a swimming pool. The smell of chlorine was overpowering when you walked in the door. Fortunately not much made its way into the theatre.

First up Carmina Burana – a cantata with which I am familiar, although I did not know it had been turned into a ballet. (Turns out this is much more what composer Carl Orff had in mind.)

The main event was the west coast premiere of T’əl: The Wild Man of the Woods. And that is why the tour was kicking off in Powell River.

This ballet was created by Royal Winnipeg Ballet choreographer Cameron Fraser-Monroe, a member of the Tla’amin of the Sunshine Coast. So, having the first BC performance in his territory must have had quite a lot of significance. For one thing, it meant that Tla’amin elder Elsie Paul, the ballet’s narrator could be in attendance.

Cameron on turning the myth into a ballet…

For pure athleticism, tough to beat Carmina Burana, but there was absolute magic in the story told in T’əl.

It seems I do like a bit of a plot to my ballets. Shocking, I know.

World class ballet in Powell River. You just never know.