Fated and Fully Realized: A Triumphant Kismet opens the National Ballet’s Spring Season

Genevieve Penn Nabity and the artists of the National Ballet of Canada in Kismet. (Photo: Karolina Kuras.)

In the promotional video the National Ballet of Canada released ahead of Kismet, the world-premiere ballet by Jera Wolfe that opened a double bill at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre on May 29, the Métis-Canadian choreographer speaks of a central figure on a journey, unable to outrun a destiny. Take him at his word and you’ll search the stage in vain for plot. Better to let the literal narrative go.

Dostoevsky in the Water Town

The Dostoyevsky: Man is a Mystery exhibit at the Muxin Art Museum. (Photo: Jason Wang.)

To reach the Muxin Art Museum, one first passes through Wuzhen, a historic water town in Zhejiang Province that has been carefully polished for tourism. Stone paths are kept immaculately clean, boats drift slowly through the canals, and the entire district often feels suspended in a state of permanent display. At the edge of Yuanbao Lake, the museum rises as a cluster of spare concrete volumes designed by OLI Architecture. The shift from the cultivated brightness outside to the cool, inward atmosphere of the galleries is immediate.

Lost in the Labyrinths of the Mind: Backrooms

Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kane Parson's Backrooms. (Photo: A24 Pictures.)

Kane Parsons’s Backrooms is some very clever filmmaking. The elevator pitch could’ve been “Skinamarink, but cinematic.”