Crash Landing: Karen Kain’s Swan Lake Stumbles Again

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

The National Ballet of Canada’s revival of Karen Kain’s Swan Lake is back, and two years later, it remains an exercise in frustration. What should have been a triumphant reimagining of one of ballet’s most iconic works is instead a muddled mess—a lavish production that fails to soar and instead flounders in its own contradictions.

Pulling Off a Miracle: The Sleeping Beauty at Toronto's Four Season Centre for the Performing Arts

The Sleeping Beauty (Photo by Sian Richards)

A ballet based on a fairy tale, The Sleeping Beauty celebrates the victory of order over chaos, a theme the National Ballet of Canada expressed with particular exuberance during the week of performances that opened at Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on June 10. The company was down 18 dancers as a result of injuries, a number representing almost a quarter of its artistic staff, and so the necessity of transforming a situation of adversity into one of triumph wasn't just a fiction. It was a matter of artistic survival. The wounded ran the gamut from seasoned performer to newcomer: principal dancers and soloists right down to members of the corps de ballets. It is unusual for so many dancers to be sidelined at once, and in the days leading up to opening night the situation looked dire. The classical repertoire's most famous ballet is also its most opulent, typically requiring legions of dancers to do it justice. Rudolf Nureyev's lavish version, which the National Ballet has been dancing since 1972, is no exception. Only a large classical dance company – and with 66 dancers the National Ballet is the biggest in the land – can pull it off. So what do you do when suddenly your numbers are down? You panic. Or, if you are Karen Kain, you think on your feet and pull off a miracle.

Karen Kain’s New Version of Swan Lake Fails to Fly

Harrison James and Jurgita Dronina in Swan Lake. (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

As far as highly anticipated world premieres go, Karen Kain’s Swan Lake had an extraordinary amount of buildup, making it – from a box office perspective alone – a hit before it even opened. Originally scheduled for 2020, and delayed two years because of the pandemic, the $3.5-million production, a presentation of the National Ballet of Canada, sold out its two-week run in advance of its debut at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre on June 10. This is unprecedented for any ballet outside The Nutcracker, let alone one whose merits had yet to be assessed. At the end of the day, those merits were found to be wanting, making this Swan Lake, after all the hype, a total letdown.

What was wrong with it? In brief, everything.

When Being Petty Makes You Big: Ross Petty's Final Boo

Ross Petty as Captain Hook in Peter Pan in Wonderland, Toronto's Elgin Theatre. (Photo: Racheal McCaig Photography)

Ross Petty, the Canadian actor who has helped make sick mean something awesome, takes his final bow as the creator of a Canadianized version of the traditional English Christmas pantomime he has produced for 20 years. This season's "fractured family musical" is Peter Pan in Wonderland and it's at Toronto's Elgin Theatre until Jan. 3. Tracey Flye directs Canadian playwright Chris Earle's pop culture-inspired script with a cast that includes panto stalwarts Dan Chameroy and Eddie Glen along with Jessica Holmes and Anthony MacPherson in the lead role. Petty plays the villain, as he does every year. Captain Hook will be his final stage role, he announced earlier in the summer, adding that he will continue to produce. Petty is nearing his 70th birthday and keeping up with the high-kicking dancers and fellow high-vamping actors is proving to be too much. I for one will miss him.

From Ballet to Bharatanatyam: Dance in Toronto Breaks New Ground in 2012

Piotr Stanczyk in Hamlet at the National Ballet of Canada (Photo: Corbin Smith)

With the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world, 2012 was a year tinged with doomsday prophecies if not apocalyptic visions. But in dance, the zeitgeist was reversed. Instead of calling it quits, artists whose métier is choreographed movement instead ushered in a new era of renewal, presenting dance pieces that pushed forward into new directions. This feeling of regeneration was wide-spread, affecting a diversity of genre from ballet in the West to bharatanatyam in the East, all traditions re-considered and re-calibrated to make them more relevant and reflective of the times. Accepted notions of beauty were also re-investigated and re-invigorated, with some dance artists exploring the beast within as a way of unbalancing the audience, stripping away complacency, in presenting dance as a conduit for exploring the human condition. This transformational trend in dance was global but proponents of it reached Canada as a result of inspired artistic directors at the helm of the country’s leading and experimental dance troupes. looking to rejuvenate the domestic dance scene with work signalling, if not the end of dance as we have come to know it, then certainly its rebirth. Among them was Karen Kain who, as head of the National Ballet of Canada, this year ushered in the North American premiere of Hamlet by Ballett Mannheim artistic director Kevin O’Day – a dark and difficult and occasionally obtuse work that pushed both the ballet dancers and their audience members to the far-most edges of their comfort zone. For that, Canada’s former prima ballerina needs to be applauded. In adding non-traditional ballets to her company’s roster, Kain is helping to strengthen the dramatic, emotional and technical range of her dancers. Composer John King's electro score is largely improvised, forcing the dancers constantly to be on edge. No two performances are alike as a result of the dancers having to adapt the choreography to suit the music on a given night. There's nothing safe or predictable about it, for neither spectator or performer. And yet the NBOC took to it well, seamlessly holding together the fragments. Dancers include principal dancer Piotr Stanczyk, alternating with Guillaume Côté and Naoya Ebe in the eponymous role of the Shakespearean prince immobilized by analyzing situations he instead needed to act upon, performed acrobatic stunts on one hand but also soft shoe shuffles as part of his character’s schizophrenic relationship with both himself and his dysfunctional society. Stancyzk’s Ophelia was Sonia Rodriguez. 2012 was Rodriguez’s season to shine. Besides garnering standing ovations for her role in Hamlet, the wife of Canadian figure skater Kurt Browning, a working mother of two, went from strength to strength in the company’s revival of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in which she played the female lead. She rounded out the season getting a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. The ballerina is back, but as new and revitalized artist. (See also my book!)

Still Going Strong: James Kudelka's Swan Lake, Christopher House's Eleven Accords and Margie Gillis' The Light Between

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Runaway Train: John Neumeier’s Anna Karenina

Svetlana Lunkina as Anna Karenina in John Neumeier’s Anna Karenina. (Photo: Kiran West)

John Neumeier’s Anna Karenina, at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts until Sunday, is a classic novel turned into a train wreck of a ballet. Running over three hours in length and said to have cost $1.9 million to produce, this meandering two-act narrative dance – the first co-production of the National Ballet of Canada, the Bolshoi and the Hamburg Ballet – is not just overlong but overdone. Superfluous scenes, anachronistic details, misplaced humour, histrionics and a surfeit of clichés not only try the patience; they threaten to kill empathy for one of the greatest female characters created in the whole of art.

Give And Take: The National Ballet of Canada’s Mixed Program

Svetlana Lunkina, Peng-Fei Jiang and Artists of the Ballet in Concerto. (Photo:Karolina Kuras, Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada)

A mixed program is usually a study in contrasts with something new, something old and something breezily entertaining often sharing the same bill. The diversity of styles, frequently representing disparate ballet eras, creates its own sense of drama, making it a winning formula for companies wanting an alternative to the full-length classics that more draw in audiences. Take that variety away and a mixed program can fall flat, despite all good intentions. That’s the conclusion drawn from the National Ballet of Canada’s recent presentation of three works at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, representing Hope Muir’s first curated program since becoming artistic director a year ago, while Karen Kain was still in charge. Comprising two contemporary ballet premieres and a modernist revival, the program unveiled on November 9 felt disconcertingly monotonous as a season opener. Thematically as well as stylistically, the ballets were more similar than they were different, particularly the contemporary pieces, whose shared fondness for over-busy choreography made them seem like two sides of the same ballet coin. The exception was the still centre of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto, a dazzler of abstract academic dance whose vivacious opening and closing sections bookended a pas de deux so serene it was blissful.

Feathers In their Caps: Svetlana Lunkina and Evan McKie in Swan Lake

Evan McKie & Svetlana Lunkina (with the National Ballet of Canada) in Swan Lake. (Photo: Aleksandar Antonijevic)

The highly anticipated debuts of principal guest artists Svetlana Lunkina and Evan McKie in James Kudelka's version of Swan Lake readily explains why Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts was packed to the rafters last Saturday night (March 8). McKie who self identifies as a dancer-actor is the Toronto-born principal dancer with Germany's Stuttgart Ballet who is internationally celebrated for his ability to dramatize a role, and make it matter. Last month, the 30-year-old McKie headlined the Paris Opera Ballet, a first for a Canadian ballet dancer. In April, he will be a featured performer with the New York City Ballet where doubtless his long lyrical lines, his buoyant jumps and aristocratic mien will get audiences there as excited as they have been this past week for his homecoming in Toronto. Russian trained, McKie has also performed with the Bolshoi, making him a choice partner for Lunkina, a star ballerina of the Bolshoi who made headlines last year when she announced she was quitting Russia for Canada following a series of malevolent threats made against her and her family at a time when the Bolshoi was rocked with violence, an acid attack on its artistic director, Lunkina's former partner Sergei Filin, being one. McKie's undisputed talent as a gifted dramatic dancer notwithstanding, she was the one everyone had come to watch. The house was filled with ex ballet dancers and au courant balletomanes, all eager to see the controversial Russian ballerina show her stuff. She did not disappoint.

More Fair Than She: National Ballet of Canada’s Romeo and Juliet

Chelsy Meiss, first soloist for the National Ballet of Canada. (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

Last Saturday, Chelsy Meiss did the remarkable.

Dancing the lead role of Juliet in choreographer Alexei Ratmansky’s 2011 reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s star-cross’d lovers, the National Ballet of Canada soloist imparted that elusive thing that only rarely occurs in the theatre – a tingling sensation at the back of the neck.

It’s pretty much an invisible phenomenon. But the pleasurable shiver experienced as a result of a particularly vivid performance is a true occurrence. While not entirely proven by science, Autonomous Sensory Meridien Response, or ASMR, is backed by anecdotal evidence. When a buzz along the spine is prompted by art it generally signals that a feeling of euphoria has overwhelmed the spectator, resulting in a temporary state of awe. Except with Meiss that feeling tended to last the full three hours she was on the stage.

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.

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.

Deirdre Kelly Discusses Her New Book: Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection

Deirdre Kelly (Photo: John Cullen)

Deirdre Kelly has been obsessed with dance and the ballerina since she was three years old. Much of her professional writing life has been devoted to looking at ballet and dance. Now, in her new book, Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection (Greystone Books: an imprint of D&M Publishers), she pulls back the curtain and gives us a rare peak behind the scenes at what it means in the past and the present to be a ballerina. She sat down with David Churchill recently to discuss her book and the history of the ballerina. Tomorrow, we will run an excerpt from her new book.

dc: What was the inspiration for writing the book?

dk: There's a macro and micro reason. I've been a professional dance critic for close to, gulp, 30 years. I truly have been fascinated by ballerinas from since the age of three. One of my first memories was incessantly drawing ballerinas together with flying fish and other powerful creatures of nature. Then I started writing about dance when I was 15 before taking creative writing in high school and going to University of Toronto. I first started to professionally cover dance at The Varsity, the University's oldest newspaper. Then I went to the Globe and Mail right out of university and was the dance critic there for 16 years. So, I actually identify myself as a dance lover, dance writer, dance critic. Someone who thinks about it a lot and writes about it.

There are other reasons I became fascinated with this topic. I was concerned with a kind of schizophrenia that I saw in this particular culture which came in the form of a major seed planted by the Kimberly Glasco case at the end of the '90s. [The late] Frank Magazine broke it, but I took that story out of the gate for the Globe and Mail and it became an international cause célèbre. It also sparked a national debate in Canada about just what the role of the ballerina was in the 21st century, and what was the role of the artistic director. However, I also learned that that wasn't the whole issue. At the time I remember being quite fascinated, saddened and horrified that while Glasco had a real right to voice her complaint about perceived injustices within the company, The National Ballet of Canada took umbrage. Now she was entitled to raise those concerns at board meetings as an elected dancer's rep, and yet, her company tried to silence her by firing her. But more to the point it was the reaction of the Canadian people that really surprised me. People seemed very uncomfortable about a ballerina opening her mouth to say anything, but especially to complain about injustices within her profession. I even saw headlines describing her as an “uppity ballerina,” and other almost antediluvian things said about her. It became an unbelievable backlash against this woman who opened her mouth. It was so antiquated and frankly quite shocking in this day and age. And it really did drive home that the iconography of the ballerina as the 'delicate, lilly-white being' is so deeply entrenched in the popular imagination that people cannot seem to brook a ballerina “stepping out of line/stepping away from the ranks.". It got me thinking about the metaphor of the ballet itself where it is celebrated as being a culture of uniformity and conformity.