Live Review

Alberta Ballet: PHI featuring the music of David Bowie

Jubilee Auditorium 

March 11, 2022 

You would expect that a ballet based on David Bowie’s music would be flush with a soundtrack of his greatest hits. Right? Wrong. Of the 15 songs featured in AB Ballet’s PHI, only two or three could be considered big hits for most Bowie fans. The rest of the songs are far more obscure, off-the-radar gems that take the production in a totally different direction than predicted. 

The dystopian theme that PHI explores is “humanity dissolving into its Frankenstein technologies, both spiritually and physically.” And it’s the stranger, more dissonant side of Bowie, filled with anxiety and tension, struggling to carve out our true being in an unkind, uncertain universe that sets the tone. Who are we, where are we, why are we? — these are the questions that make up the existential nowhere zone that permeates Bowie’s estranged wonderland, perfectly suited for the journey that PHI takes its audience. But it’s not entirely a world full of gloom, not at all. 

In the opening scene of PHI, the stage is lit up with dancers ablaze in an array of screaming colours — weaving chorus lines with wigs and satin suits dazzling in hot pinks, electric blues, lime greens and florescent yellows that strut their sensuous stuff in a dreamland disco. It gets better, more ambitious. On a giant pedestal, a lead dancer touches down ascending from the heavens above — an angel wrapped in a gold cape, wings extended glowing brightly. As her devoutees circle below, she lifts off the pedestal, roams high above then sweeps down touching them with her grace. Fantastic stuff! Modern dance, launches a brave new world, quite literally. 

Photo by Paul McGrath

And then darkness falls. The landscape becomes Blade Runner where technology, our friend, our menace, inside the phone, behind the screen, the guiding virtual light takes control manipulating every step of the way as those once human, morph into bots. Some of the design work here is riveting. The central character of PHI, resisting the tech takeover, is trapped by the state police, security thugs, who trample, assault and torment him with fierce dogs on a grim street as the violent red glow from lights that line the animal leash and riot batons slash the night. Summer of Floyd George revisited.   

But hope prevails, as the set design unfolds into a beautiful, lush forest simmering with rainbow reflections where the dancers are swept away as they embrace their traditional form that pull us into the garden of love. And for those longing for Bowie to bust a move on the dancefloor, you won’t be disappointed as the grand finale comes spiraling down. PHI is spectacular in its visuals, in its freedom, in its colour and darkness, pushing contemporary ballet into regions beyond. 

PHI plays in Calgary March 10-19 + Edmonton March 31- April 2