Like Rafael Bonachela, Emily Molnar celebrates her 10th anniversary as artistic director of a dance company, in this case of Vancouver-based Ballet British Columbia. Yet in contrast, and despite Molnar being Canadian, there was an absence of authenticity to this trio of works, all by female choreographers, which seemed purged of the identity of the company’s homeland, paying homage instead to the culture of Canada’s bombast neighbour, the United States.

The first and most interesting work was Bedroom Folk, an ambitious piece created by the Israeli Sharon Eyal for Nederlands Dance Theater in 2012. A dark ‘Draculesque’ subversion of classical dance, performed with disjointed, cretinous discomfort to Ori Lichtik’s soundtrack, it was a challenging and attractively strange affair that probably should have come at the end of the programme. 

The second, To this day slid between spontaneity and melodramatics. Emily Molnar fronted the music of blues beast Jimi Hendrix, with movement that paid homage to US choreographer William Forsyth. Yet as the New York Times put it in a recent review of the piece: “Forsythe’s choreography is easy to imitate, but impossible to replicate.” Jimi Hendrix’s guitar solos, blasted out through speakers on the front of the stage, were too powerful, or too-iconic, to render movement to them anything but innocuous. 

Finally, Solo Echo, by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, was based on a poem called Lines of Winter by yet another American, Mark Strand. A rather incongruous choice for a hot sticky night in summer, the piece is set to a snowfall and two Brahms sonatas, tracing a journey from adolescence to maturity, which it never quite reaches. Performed with admirably energetic yet emotionless enthusiasm, there was a commercial quality to the piece that troubled the music.