Simone Orlando

“A keenly intelligent dancer and maker of dances…”

Deborah Meyers, The Vancouver Sun

“With Doppeling, Ballet B.C. veteran dancer and new “artist in residence” Simone Orlando got more subversive with the art form. Moving to the baroque sounds of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in D Minor, the performers all sported skin-tone leotards and matching bobbed wigs of different hues—even the men. Cleverly mixed into the contrapuntal play and classical pointe-shoe vocabulary were touches of voguing and club dancing. A gender-bending vision of doppelgänger ballerinas breaking loose, it was more fun than a drag queen’s dress-up trunk.”

Janet Smith, Georgia Straight

"Simone Orlando, who is currently Artist in Residence with Ballet BC, was next up with Doppeling. Bach’s Concerto in D Minor provided the score to what I read as a witty post-Freudian take on the Olympia story from Hoffman’s Tales

Peter Dickinson, Performance, Place and Politics

Review of Assembly – Toronto Dance Theatre – October 14, 2009

“TDT is a company that dances and Vancouver’s Simone Orlando understood that because she gave the company rigorous physicality interpolated by droll text. Her Assembly is an ironic title because she is exploring both tolerance and intolerance. She set male dancers of Chinese, Japanese, African and French Canadian heritage against one white woman, and her piece was a sly commentary on multiethnic societies...It was Orlando who found the key to unlock both movement and intelligence.”

Paula Citron, Dance Critic

Review of Corral - March 28, 2009

“But it was the final collaboration, between Beamish and Orlando, that really took my breath away. Featuring the entire company (minus the younger apprentice performers who were employed in some of the other movements), and choreographed around a square of white light whose borders the dancers would variously broach, this sequence brought us back to the themes of separation and attachment, and also served as a something of a self-reflexive comment on the whole collaborative process behind the creation of The Cell. We are each other’s mitochondria, the enzymes that fuel creative metabolism. But we still have small compartments within ourselves that are not as porous, places where we utterly and completely alone.”

Peter Dickinson, Performance, Place, and Politics

Review of Studies of Cash – September 17, 2007

Simone Orlando tops the evening with a powerful and compassionate new work that promises this Ballet BC dancer a fine future as a choreographer.

Studies of Cash is both tribute to Johnny Cash and finely drawn portrait of tormented introspection. The singer's Folsom Prison concert sets the framework for caged emotions, made flesh by the ace ensemble of Scott Augustine, Josh Beamish, Alexis Fletcher, Edmond Kilpatrick and Shannon Smith. James Proudfoot's spare squares of light confine them until they break free in precise, feathery jumps and tender lifts. There are numerous knockout routines including a lovely solo by Fletcher to The Beast in Me."

Louise Phillips, Vancouver Courier

Preview of Realm - November 22, 2007

“Simone Orlando is a double threat, Ballet BC's longest-standing dancer and its de facto prima ballerina, as well as a choreographer of increasing authority…”

Deborah Meyers, The Vancouver Sun

“It [Relache] was a truly delightful spectacle, a feast for all the senses.”

Peter Dickinson, Performance, Place and Politic

Review of I Remember You – October 2, 2005

 “... brimming with tears, you know you've been completely moved…[Simone Orlando is]…one of the brightest stars rising in the choreographic world.”

Glenna Turnbull, Capital News

“Orlando has always been such an elegant, intelligent dancer, a singular presence for the past 11 years in Ballet BC's predominantly youthful ranks… She's also a choreographer brimming with promise…”

Deborah Meyers, The Vancouver Sun

“Orlando’s choreography [Relache] did successfully amuse and, what’s more, provide a fully contextualised screening of René Clair’s classic silent film, Entr’acte"

Kaija Pepper, The Dance Current

To download an editorial review of Realm click here.

To download an editorial review of Relåche click here.

To download an editorial review of Studies of Cash click here.