The Winter's Tale: A Riveting Reinterpretation

Piotr Stanczyk and Hannah Fischer in Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter's Tale. (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

In choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s riveting reinterpretation of The Winter’s Tale, a new full-length ballet which the National Ballet of Canada presented this past week at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, the dancer portraying King Leontes, the troubled and troubling monarch at the heart of Shakespeare’s brilliantly convoluted story, collapses the palm of his hand and ripples the fingers in imitation of a spider. It’s not a move typically associated with ballet but on this occasion it serves as a fluent example of the art form’s ability to communicate powerful emotions and universal themes without the use of words.

The expressionistic gesture renders in physical terms the metaphor of the spider conjured by Leontes in the play when describing an onslaught of jealousy. Suspecting that his good wife, Hermione, is having an affair with his best friend, Polixenes, King of Bohemia, the suddenly sick-at-heart King of Sicilia says he feels as though he has drunk a cup “with a spider steep’d” and this has cracked “his gorge, his sides,/With violent hefts.”

Leontes’ deluded belief that an infidelity has indeed occurred is the pivot on which the rest of the play turns, veering sharply from a scene of domestic bliss to one of tragedy. Shakespeare’s late career problem play will later shift back to comedy mode once the King, in a sense, kills the spider gnawing at his sanity. The antidote will be love and forgiveness whose powers of redemption Leontes rediscovers in due time. These are large ideas, fundamentally Christian in nature, and the wonder of The Winter’s Tale is that they endure even when translated into the mute art of dance.

Simple Joys: Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Lauren Cuthbertson and Federico Bonelli in the Royal Opera House's 2017 production of  Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Photo: Andrej Uspenski/ROH)

One could spend years looking at all the dramatic adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense masterpiece Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. His tale of a girl who’s either too big or too small, who tries to follow the rules even as they keep changing without reason or purpose, seems pretty much like childhood as I remember it (any kid who’s stood under an amusement park attraction’s height-limit sign only to be told they’re too short to ride knows exactly how Alice feels), so it’s no wonder this 150-year-old tale has remained a favorite of children and adults, and why it’s been retold in so many different renderings. Many also include elements of Carroll’s equally well-known sequel Through the Looking Glass, even though the only characters the two books have in common are Alice and her cat Dinah. Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land have separate denizens and different rules and guiding principles, as much as nonsense can be said to have such things. A deck of cards rules Wonderland while the game of chess and the mirror-inspired idea of oppositeness permeate Looking-Glass Land, but adaptors across the globe have felt free to mix and match elements from both. Some of these variations are abject failures; I would include the 1951 Disney cartoon, with its flat, unimaginative look and dull protagonist – Disney’s inadequacy at portraying young girls and women is one trend that’s lasted – and the 1933 Paramount Studios version, which features everyone who ever set foot on the lot and surprisingly ugly sets and costumes. Others are weird successes of a kind: the Czech animator Jan Švankmajer’s creepy and fascinating Alice from 1988; Tim Burton’s overblown 2010 Alice in Wonderland, which nevertheless has a distinctive look and very good performances from Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Crispin Glover. A surprisingly funny 1949 British movie with Carol Marsh as Alice and stop-motion puppets designed by Lou Bunin was suppressed for years in the U.S. by Disney, unsurprisingly. There have also been a number of television dramatizations, including a 1983 Great Performances broadcast that features a lovely performance by Richard Burton as the White Knight and a horrendous one by his daughter Kate as a bitter and sarcastic Alice, and a rather inert 1955 production with Elsa Lanchester and Eva Le Gallienne as the Red and White Queens. But I’ve never seen an adaptation that fully captures and expands upon the realms Carroll created. Until now. 

Tumbling for Alice: National Ballet's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Photo by Manuel de los Galanes)

Letter to Lewis Carroll:

Took a tumble down the rabbit hole on Saturday night, courtesy the National Ballet of Canada’s vivid presentation of the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and what a wonderful experience it was. Bumped into the most delightful creatures, a lot of them born of your own imagination – the white rabbit, the nasty queen of hearts, the grinning Cheshire cat, and, of course, Alice, dear sweet Alice, who fell first down the dizzying spiral towards that veritable garden of visual delights punctuating the journey.

Your marvellous book, Alice in Wonderland, was the inspiration behind it all, and who knew such a literary classic would lend itself so delightfully to both a balletic translation and original score? Composer Joby Talbot has created a brilliant, bubbling, boisterous piece of music that readily captures the kaleidoscopic character of your own multi-tone prose-style and verse.

Sensual and Strong: The Return of the Canada All Star Ballet Gala

Maria Kochetkova and Carlo Di Lanno, both of San Francisco Ballet, dancing the pas de deux from Christoper Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour, one of a dozen premieres presented at the Canada All Star Ballet Gala in Toronto. (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

Second time strong. The follow-up edition to last season’s inaugural Canada All Star Ballet Gala gained in power with a sophisticated showcase of classical, neoclassical and contemporary ballet as performed by 17 new-generation ballet luminaries from nine of the world’s leading classical dance companies. Artistic director Svetlana Lunkina, the Bolshoi Ballet star who today is a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, curated the three-hour program whose one-time only performance played to a capacity audience at Toronto’s Sony Centre on Saturday night. She produced the show and also danced in it, raising her own barre high while making way for emerging talents like Anastasia Lukina from the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, and Dmitry Vyskubenko from the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich, both 19 years old. The evening delivered on a promise of new discoveries.

Down the Rabbit Hole with the National Ballet of Canada

Tirion Law and Svetlana Lunkina Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Photo: Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada)

The National Ballet of Canada's presentation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland transcends mere entertainment, offering an unbridled exploration of creativity, imagination, and the human experience. Christopher Wheeldon's shape-shifting choreography, inspired by Lewis Carroll's timeless tale, serves as a poignant reflection on the power of storytelling and the journey of self-discovery. A mesmerizing use of computer-generated imagery, eye-popping colour and actual dancing in the aisles allow for a fully immersive experience, accessible to all.

Aiming High: The National Ballet of Canada’s Mixed Program

Jillian Vanstone and Harrison James in After the Rain. (Photo: Karolina Kuras, courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada)

A departure, a beginning, a wobble, a blast from the past. The ebb and flow of life united four works seen on the mixed program that the National Ballet of Canada presented at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts last week. Amid two world premieres – one each by company principal dancer Siphe November and guest choreographer Alysa Pires – was the company debut of Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, and a reprise of Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations as the evening’s frolicsome conclusion. But one at a time.

An American in Paris, Sans Alan Jay Lerner

Robert Fairchild, Brandon Uranowitz and Max Von Essen in An American in Paris (All photos by Angela Sterling)

Vincente Minnelli’s 1951 movie musical An American in Paris is simultaneously breezy and lush. With its smart, sometimes cheeky Alan Jay Lerner script, its Gershwin score and the ebullient choreography by its star, Gene Kelly, it’s one of the highlights of the golden age of M-G-M musicals. Kelly plays Jerry Mulligan, an American G.I. who sticks around Paris after the war to paint. He finds a patron, a wealthy émigré American socialite, Milo (Nina Foch), who wants to add him to her roster of bohemian lovers, but he falls in love with a shopgirl named Lise (Leslie Caron) whom he spots at a café. He courts her and wins her love, but just as he’s hampered by his attachment to Milo (he doesn’t reciprocate her sexual interest in him: these are still the days of the Hays Code), Lise also has other claims. She’s engaged to the affable music hall performer Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary), whom she doesn’t love but to whom she feels beholden, since he took care of her during the war when her parents, Resistance fighters, were captured by the Nazis. (Here Lerner reworks a plot strand from Casablanca.) To complicate matters further, Henri and Jerry have just become friends, through their mutual pal Adam (Oscar Levant), a struggling composer.

Brigadoon: Love and Loss

Robert Fairchild in Brigadoon at New York's City Center. (Photo: Joan Marcus)

The 1947 musical fantasy Brigadoon was the fourth collaboration between Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music), but it was the one that put them on the musical-theatre map. It ran for nearly two years and became a staple of regional and community theatres; there were three revivals on Broadway within a decade and a half of the end of its original run. Now it’s revived only rarely, having somehow acquired the reputation of being syrupy and old-fashioned, like a Rudolf Friml or Sigmund Romberg operetta from the twenties. That’s inaccurate. I think it’s a beauty, and that the score is one of the glories of the golden age of Broadway musicals. The 1954 movie adaptation – directed, with a surprising lack of conviction, by Vincente Minnelli, and starring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse – didn’t get at the show’s charm; nor did a 1966 TV version with Robert Goulet and Sally Ann Howes, though it did have the great dancer Edward Villella repeating his performance from the 1963 New York City Center production in the principal dance role, Harry Beaton. But anyone lucky enough to catch one of the performances of the staged concert of Brigadoon, once again at City Center, between November 15 and 19 got a taste of what made – and makes – the musical so special. Christopher Wheeldon, the deservedly lauded director-choreographer of the 2015 An American in Paris, staged the show exquisitely with no set except for a bridge, some simple projections, and a motif of hickory branches that he used in the choreography and, in one dialogue scene, to stand in for the arms of chairs. Though obviously a far more modest presentation than his work for An American in Paris, this Brigadoon was so evocative and imaginative that I’m tempted to say that it was just about as good. The music director was Rob Berman, conducting the Encores! orchestra. Visually, musically and emotionally it was a thrilling evening of musical theatre.

Falling for Dance, Canadian Style

DanceBrazil performed Jelon Vierira’s Malungos at Toronto's Fall for Dance North festival. (Photo: Andrea Mohin)

Toronto fell big time for the inaugural Fall for Dance North festival that took over the city’s Sony Centre earlier in the autumn. An initiative of artistic director Ilter Ibrahimof and executive director Madeleine Skoggard, the two-part program showcased exciting new dance creation from across Canada, and other points around the world including New York where the Fall for Dance franchise launched in 2004. Like the original, Fall for Dance North (so-called because of the event’s revamped presence north of the 49th parallel) offered up a variety of dance styles at a cost of $10 a ticket. The Sony Centre, which seats approximately 3,200, was sold-out for each of the three performances that took place from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 – proof that if you make dance affordable the people will come. But that wasn’t the only reason the festival packed them in.

Crash Landing: Le Petit Prince at the National Ballet of Canada

Dylan Tedaldi in National Ballet of Canada's Le Petit Prince. (Photo by Karolina Kuras)

Le Petit Prince, Guillaume Côtè's ambitious retelling of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic children's story of a planet-hopping boy on a quest for truth, takes a wrong turn by over-complicating what in essence is a poetic tale simply told. The two-hour long ballet, whose highly anticipated world premiere took place at Toronto's Four Seasons for the Performance Arts last Saturday night, is fussily over-choreographed in places, resulting in a blurred focus. What does Côtê want to say about Le Petit Prince? After two hours of watching the ballet unfold against Michael Levine's cosmic set design and Kevin Lau's lushly descriptive original score, this remains the million dollar question. Correction. The two-million-dollar question.

Kitty Litter: Cats

Dame Judi Dench in Cats.

For the last few days, my Facebook feed has been inundated with memes and tweets and hot takes and quips and hit pieces all commenting on the single biggest scandal ever to hit the English-speaking world: Cats, the movie. Director Tom Hooper’s hallucinogenic, CGI-fueled take on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mammoth musical success is apparently an impeachable offense, and the country is united in proclaiming it so. There are so many cat puns floating around the Internet that I’m sure the one I’ve used for my title has already gone viral for someone else, but as I’ve done my best to ignore the raging interwebs, I use it here with pride.

When Cats the stage musical first came out about 5,000 years and 2.45 billion performances ago, there were apparently millions of folks who thought, People singing and dancing dressed up as cats!? Sign me up for a couple hundred tickets! I wasn’t one of them, as the thought of people dancing and singing dressed up as cats makes me wonder if life is worth living. Besides, I’ve seen Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express, which is basically the same thing as Cats, but the people are singing and dancing dressed up as train cars, zooming around on roller skates. (Reader, I have suffered.)