A42 - North Shore News - Friday, October 18, 2013
DANCE
Molnar wears many hats at Ballet BC From page 13 German composer, Dirk Haubrich wrote the music for the piece and is someone that Molnar has worked with before. “He is a lovely man that I met when I was dancing in Frankfurt Ballet working with William Forsythe,” says Molnar. “Many years later, I stumbled on the fact that he had become an incredibly well known composer for dance in Europe. So I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey Dirk would you be interested in working with me on this next piece,’ so I was so excited when he said yes. I knew I wanted to do that and when I secured that I started there.” Molnar’s love of ballet started from a young age when she was living in Regina, Sask. “I was dancing around the house a lot, my grandmother said to my mom, ‘You really should put her in some dance classes.’ So I started creative movement when I was five, took my first ballet class when I was six and then I was leaving home when I was 10 to go to the National Ballet School,” she says. From there, Molnar’s career in ballet took flight. She was invited to join the National Ballet of Canada before she turned 17. “I got into the National Ballet of Canada because Bill (Forsythe) was doing a new piece and he saw me as an apprentice on the side and said I want her and so
I got into the company and that was my first piece I got to perform with him which was great,” says Molnar. “I was the only apprentice and most of the other dancers were all soloists and principal dancers so it was quite a coup that I got into the company and I got into this piece.” But her time at the National would last less than four years. “Three and a half years later he came back and he said, ‘Would you like to join me in Frankfurt,’ and I said, ‘Well of course.’ I mean it’s an invitation that was just, it changed my life and it has defined my perspective on dance enormously,” she says. “It was an extraordinary period of time, Frankfurt Ballet, working under Bill and he’s a great mind and he’s still very much creating some of the most important work in dance right now today.” Molnar joined Ballet BC in 1998 and went on to become the artistic director in 2009. She has choreographed four pieces for the company, including her latest, and says choreography has intrigued her since one of her first performances when she was 12. “It was a natural evolution for my learning curve. I was working with a man who was at that time the director of the Dutch National Ballet, Rudi van Dantzig, and he created a new work for us,” says Molnar. “At that moment, that ability to converse and
Working with the same set of dancers over several years has allowed Emily Molnar to take more chances with her choreography. PHOTO SUPPLIED MICHAEL SLOBODIAN create the work myself, it gave me such a sense of responsibility and ownership and individuality and I knew in that moment that the creative process and building work and working with choreographers, was my passion.” She says it became a natural step she wanted to try on her own after having worked with many different people and creating a
variety of works. “It’s something I love to do but I have to be honest, I also love being a part of other people’s processes as much, so that’s where I knew being a director was something that was my calling because it wasn’t just about my work it was really about the potential of dance and the creative process and I participate in that as a director and
as a choreographer,” says Molnar. Being the artistic director can also be one of the most challenging aspects of the choreography process. “That always has made it a little more challenging for me to go into the studio, to find research time on my own, when I’m also working on other people’s work, having a load administratively that’s quite dense,” she says. “I wear many, many hats here, I work quite a few hours a week. So to be able to carve out that time where it’s just about me and my piece as I would have before I became the artistic director, that doesn’t happen as easily and so that’s my challenge to find that balance.” But Molnar says having worked with the same group of dancers the past four years has become an intimate process. “I’ve been able to go through four processes and I’ve never had the joy of that kind of experience in any of my other choreographic opportunities. I mean I’ve had lovely dancers to work with but they haven’t been the same group four times in a row,” Molnar says. “This has allowed me to take more risk, to challenge my ideas, to trust them because I’m working with first of all an incredible group of artists who want to go there, but also because they trust me, I trust them, I’ve been able to go to different places I haven’t
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been able to research in some of my other pieces, so I feel very excited about that.” Choreographers working on 20 to 25 minute pieces are given about a threeweek rehearsal period, which is then followed by the company rehearsing for two more weeks and the choreographer back for another week. In all, Molnar says the whole process takes about six weeks. “I’d say on average, it’s a very conservative statement, that every minute of choreography takes on average about six hours,” she says. Whether it’s a choreographer that she wants to work with or something the audience would really love, Molnar always tries to have ideas brewing for upcoming shows. Ballet BC’s next venture partners ballet with a Canadian music icon. “We have Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, which is a wonderful piece by Alberta Ballet in collaboration with Sarah McLachlan,” Molnar says. “We are very excited that we are able to bring this to Vancouverites because Sarah is obviously such a proud artist in this province and in this country.” Fumbling Towards Ecstasy runs from Nov. 14-16. Ballet BC will also be doing holiday classic The Nutcracker, from Dec. 28-31 and Grace Symmetry starts off their new year from Feb. 20-22, 2014.