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.

Lost in Translation: Wayne Mcgregor’s MADDADDAM

Siphesihle November and Jason Ferro in Wayne McGregor’s MADDADDAM. (Photo:Bruce Zinger; Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada)

"But the people couldn’t be happy because of the chaos.” It’s a line uttered during the course of MADDADDAM, and it comes close to summing up reaction to a ballet where the dance got in a swirl of virtuosic theatrical effects. Based on a trilogy of dystopian novels by Canada’s Margaret Atwood, British choreographer Wayne McGregor‘s lavish three-act adaptation for the stage, a co-production of the National Ballet of Canada and England’s Royal Ballet, commission of The National Ballet, confuses and disappoints. It doesn’t tell a story that’s easy to follow, and it doesn’t use the art of dancing that measures up to the soaring imaginative peaks of Atwood’s speculative prose. Where her novels feel futuristic, McGregor’s ballet, whose world premiere took place at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre at the end of November, appears curiously anachronistic, being more concerned with scenography – a hallmark of the early-20th-century Les Ballets Russes – than with pushing classical dance into brave new territory.

Subtly Scintillating: The National Ballet of Canada’s Winter Season Triple Bill

Koto Ishihara in UtopiVerse. (Photo: Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada)

The National Ballet of Canada's Winter 2024 program — at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, March 20-March 24 — presents a dynamic blend of tradition and innovation, showcasing three distinct works that push the boundaries of contemporary ballet.

Leading the charge is William Yong’s Utopiverse, a world premiere exploration of alternate realities and the human quest for utopia. It is a first classical dance commission for Yong, a Hong Kong-born independent choreographer whose Toronto-based Zata Omm Dance Projects is known for creating interdisciplinary eco-conscious works that merge dance, technology and other art forms for creative explorations.

This Spirit Soars: Giselle at the National Ballet of Canada

Artists of the National Ballet of Canada in Giselle. (Photo: Aleksandar Antonijevic)

Giselle is a work of fantasy, as compelling as anything seen today on Game of Thrones or Outlander, or any other contemporary pop culture enterprise probing the paranormal. No matter that the story of a Rhineland peasant girl who returns to earth as a ghost after dying of a broken heart is now 175 years old. It remains a powerful tale of love and vengeance – ballet as powerful theatre. Certainly, this iconic Romantic work has enabled the National Ballet of Canada to conclude the bumpy 2015/2016 season with a bang. The company’s performance of Giselle at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Arts two Fridays ago was especially sharp, with everyone from ensemble dancers to solo artists turning on the charm to make the ballet come alive for today’s audience. Sir Peter Wright’s 1970 remake is both logical and lively, despite dwelling 50 percent of the time in the land of dead. It is also sumptuously gorgeous. Adolphe Adam’s original 1841 score is a hauntingly beautiful – and readily recognizable – piece of music which the National Ballet Orchestra, under the baton of David Briskin, made poignantly dramatic. You can’t help but be moved just listening to it. But the ballet is really a feast and on this point Desmond Heeley’s eye-grabbing sets and costumes, bathed in tones of emerald green, burnished gold and lapis lazuli blue, more than deliver. The celebrated designer, a fixture of Canada’s Stratford Festival, died five days before Giselle opened on June 10; the National Ballet used the occasion to pay tribute to Mr. Heeley, dedicating the opening night June 15 performance to his memory.

John Neumeier’s Nijinsky: As Brilliant and Mad as its Subject

Guillaume Côté in Nijinsky. (Photo by Erik Tomasson)

I am aware that saying I am over the moon mad for a ballet about a dancer who spent half his life in and out of insane asylums sounds, well, a little crazy. But go ahead, commit me. Because I am certifiably nuts about Nijinsky, choreographer John Neumeier’s two-act homage to the great Ballets Russes dancer who tragically lost his mind in 1919, at the age of 29, after only 10 years of blazing like a comet across the stage. This ballet is my amour fou.

I saw it twice earlier this month during its recent run at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the National Ballet of Canada’s spring season and each time the ballet was a revelation to me. Neumeier captures the epic sweep of the singular dancer’s triumphs and tragedy and as such his ballet is a masterpiece. It held me mesmerized, start to finish. 

Spies, Lies And Pointe Shoes: The National Ballet Of Canada's Mixed Program

Aszure Barton's Watch her

Dancers can act. This is one conclusion to be drawn from the mixed program of dramatic work the National Ballet Canada is presenting this week at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. There are only two ballets on offer now through Sunday: a reprise of the Edmonton-born Aszure Barton’s shadowy and complex Watch her (originally created for the National in 2011) and Sir Frederick Ashton’s decidedly more sunny and farcical A Month in the Country (originally created for the Royal Ballet in 1976). Barton's ballet is idiosyncratically contemporary while Ashton’s is rooted more firmly in the language of classical ballet. But while diametrically opposed, stylistically speaking, both works foreground the art of acting in ballet in delineating character and driving plot. Emotions are inevitably drawn to the surface, and people tested along the way.

The Ashton ballet is more obviously a narrative being an adaptation of the Ivan Turgenev play of the same name. Barton’s piece, on the other hand, is more evocative and less declarative about its intentions. Yet, there is no mistaking the taut dramatic line upon which her choreography hangs and sways. Like the Ashton ballet, hers is a work which eviscerates human psychology, laying the guts on the floor. Both one-act ballets, the works have other elements in common. Each is concerned with themes of keeping secrets, spying and feeling betrayed. Each also offers up a chocolate box of impossible relationships doomed to have unsatisfying endings for all involved. In both works, the dancers use dancing to bring to life characters attempting to navigate a vivid situation. And really they have rarely looked better: solid ensemble performances and acting worthy of an Academy Award. This is the real show to watch this weekend. The range alone is marvellous.

Dance Evolution: The National Ballet of Canada's Mixed Program

Evan McKie and Tanya Howard in Wayne McGregor's Genus. (Photo: Aleksandar Antonijevic)

Science and art perform an intriguing pas de deux in the work of Wayne McGregor, the British-born choreographer for whom dance provides a malleable framework for ongoing investigations into the mind-body relationship. Known for his angular and precisely articulated movement vocabulary, the 47-year-old trailblazer, who early on trained in modern dance in New York, has collaborated with cognitive scientists, cardiologists, polar explorers and robotics specialists to create visually exhilarating work.

His principal laboratory is his London-based Company Wayne McGregor (formerly Random Dance), which travels the world, disseminating McGregor's inquisitive and experimental approach to ballet and making him one of the world's most in-demand choreographers. His kinetic intelligence has brought him recognition from top academic institutions, including Cambridge, which in 2004 gave him a year-long residency as a research fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology, and Plymouth University, which in 2013 bestowed upon him an Honorary Doctorate of Science degree. Appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011, McGregor is also something of a hero among dancers.

News that he would be returning this season to the National Ballet of Canada to stage Genus, his 2007 meditation on the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, had company members sharing their unadulterated glee through Facebook and Instagram during the rehearsal period earlier this winter. Dancers love McGregor because he offers them a brave new world of physical expression, combining extreme athleticism with lyricism, drama and emotional vulnerability. Weaned on 19th-century depictions of grace and elegance, they devour his dangerously off-kilter pieces whole.

A Thing of Wonder: National Ballet of Canada Mixed Program

The National Ballet of Canada performing George Balanchine's Theme and Variations.

It’s not every day you get a news hook attached to your dance review. But here you go, and hot off the presses: National Ballet of Canada principal dancer Guillaume Côté has just been appointed to the newly created position of choreographic associate, the company announced Sunday following the final performance of his No. 24, an eight-minute pas de deux performed to a live accompaniment of Niccoló Paganini’s virtuosic violin solo, Caprice 24.

No. 24, which was performed by three separate casts over a five-day run, was one of three works on the Mixed Program which opened last week at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The other works were Jorma Elo’s Pur Ti Miro, a revival of the work which the Finnish choreographer first created on the National Ballet dancers in 2010; James Kudelka’s decidedly unballetic but indisputably powerful The Man in Black, inspired by an unusual series of hurtin’ songs by the late Johnny Cash; and, for the glittering finalé (and that is meant literally given the the abundance of faux diamonds which lent sparkle to the ballerinas’ necks and ear lobes), George Balanchine’s 1947 neo-classical masterpiece, Theme and Variations.