Ballet’s New Power Duo

Josefine Opsahl herself sits on stage in the Australian-Danish choreographer Tara Schaufuss’s ballet Passengers of Passing Moments, for which Opsahl has composed the music. In fact, she almost steals all the attention from the ten dancers, as it is fascinating to watch the 32-year-old cellist’s theatrical immersion and her very active use of her right leg to control the loop and effects box.

The nearly half-hour ballet score is inspired by Bach, but also conveys a highland-like sense of drama through sampled breathing, stabbing subdivisions, and pronounced reverberation. It begins with delicate, bright major-key tones, but quickly moves into the depths, finding throbbing bass and timpani-like resonance. Emotions rush through every bow stroke.

The theme of the ballet is time. In fleeting moments, the dancers are caught in Opsahl’s small, mechanical loops; later, a dark, melancholic space is established, in which a young woman sinks into a memory. Extended sounds and overtones signal a time put out of joint; a faint wind is heard, a ticking fades in, and suddenly she has dreamed her beloved into being.

The woman moves like a ghost among the other bodies as Opsahl intensifies her playing, shifting between triple and quadruple meter. At one point, it is as if she disappears entirely into the violent temperament of the music; her dramatic flair turns Bach into an Avenger-like hero, and this suits Schaufuss’s focus on the force of emotions remarkably well. It is saturated, direct, and seemingly made for a grippingly intense choreography. A powerful partnership on the grand stage.