If principal dancers have any sway over the character of their company, Ballet Victoria may be getting an injection of boyish energy and good-humoured showmanship from its new male lead.
"The performance part is really what you live for as a dancer," Prince George's Matthew Cluff said during a rehearsal break. "Rehearsals can get tedious, class every day is just about warming up your body and minor improvements and whatnot. So whatever I'm doing, it's the performance aspect I live for."
At 19, Cluff has a wide grin, wears West 49 T-shirts and speaks with admiration about the contestants on televised dance competition So You Think You Can Dance. He talks about how the moment he realized he wanted to dance seriously came around age 12, while he was sitting in a hairdresser's chair. And about how he started dancing in Prince George at two, when his brother joined a dance class to impress a girl and the teacher noticed him as a tot, bobbing along on the sidelines.
But his resume shows he's a hard worker. Coming from the prestigious San Francisco Ballet School, after training with the Pacific Northwest Ballet School, both Cluff and artistic director Paul Destrooper are candid about greater ambitions: Ballet Victoria will be a stepping stone to larger companies, rather than a final career stop for Cluff.
"Paul's aware this isn't where I'll end up for good, it's more like getting your foot in the door," said Cluff. "I think as a first company, it's really going to provide me with some great opportunities."
Cluff replaces Robb Beresford, who joined Alonzo King's LINES Ballet in San Francisco after five seasons with Ballet Victoria. While losing a principal dancer in the middle of a season would seem like a challenge, Destrooper said he knew Beresford was looking for a new contract and made a casual agreement to keep him on until he found one.
"Jobs don't fall from the sky, so ... I said as long as you don't have a solid contract with another company, let's figure it out," Destrooper said.
Cluff sent an audition video at the serendipitous time when Beresford announced his departure.
"It's funny, you take leaps of faith and it works out. I got Matthew this season and I'm thrilled about it. And Robb Beresford got a contract with a great company in San Francisco."
Destrooper described Cluff as having strong technique, strong lines and said he hired him as an appropriate partner for fellow principal dancer Andrea Bayne. He also describes Cluff's stage presence as dramatic and flashy.
"He's like a little Arabian horse," said Destrooper. "Robb was more like a thoroughbred."
Cluff makes his official debut as principal dancer tonight, when Ballet Victoria remounts The Secret Garden as part of a mixed program. The company first staged the story ballet, based on a script by The Belfry Theatre's Michael Shamata, in 2009.
The show opens with an excerpt from Marius Petipa's Le Corsaire, which Destrooper said he included in the program specifically for Cluff, who dances the role of Ali.
"He's perfect for the role. It's a ballet that I've wanted to do for the last couple of years, but you need a company that has enough talent and technique so you can do the piece justice," Destrooper said.
Pianist Sarah Hagen will play Claude Debussy's music for Noctilux, a duet choreographed by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's Bruce Monk.
Finally, the company will dance Joe Laughlin's White Waltz, an homage to Frederick Ashton's 1937 ballet Les Patineurs set to the Blue Danube. Ballet Victoria (including the last-minute addition of Cluff) premired the piece in February when Laughlin's company Joe Ink performed a retrospective program at the McPherson Playhouse.
Cluff is dedicated to building his ballet technique and is looking forward to his time in Victoria. But at 19, he's still not sure what the future holds. While he made the decision at 13 to pursue a career in dance in that hairdresser's chair, he said he likes the idea of diversifying.
"I didn't necessarily know if I wanted to go the ballet route [at 13]. I still don't know. The dance world, once you get into it and have an awareness of everything that's out there -- it's quite diverse and big. And ballet's just a small portion of that," he said.
That said, if there's one thing he learned from So You Think You Can Dance, it's that the best dancers have a strong technical base. And ballet is where it all begins.
"Whatever avenue you end up going in dance, you have to have strong technique," he said. "And ballet is the foundation for everything."
