Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts

Mozartiana
The ballets of George Balanchine are characterized first and foremost by their sublime and seemingly effortless musicality. Nowhere is this trait so clearly in evidence as in the works he set to Tchaikovsky's music.

Mozartiana, a late work from 1981 (revised from an earlier version made in 1933) differs from his other Tchaikovsky-inspired ballets in that it is also a response to Mozart. The audience gets the best of both worlds. Its crisp, classical elegance and sprightliness suggests the Viennese master; its Russian seriousness grounds it in a voluptuous emotion.

Song of a Wayfarer
Based on the famous song-cycle for baritone and orchestra by Gustav Mahler, Maurice Béjart’s powerfully moving ballet Song of a Wayfarer is a work of riveting emotional intensity for two male dancers.

In the work, a young student wanders grief-stricken and disconsolate until he encounters the figure of fate, who calms and placates him. The work was originally conceived for Rudolf Nureyev, who premiered the ballet in 1971 in Brussels. It became one of the works with which he was most closely identified.

In The Upper Room
In The Upper Room is quintessential Twyla Tharp: quick, vigorous, highly physical and rambunctious dancing that almost but never quite loses control.

Twyla Tharp's choreography embodies a variety of cultural and choreographic influences that range from pop iconography to classical purity and she absorbs them all and refracts them as a wholly new way of looking at dance - and movement itself.

Set to a stunning electronic score by Philip Glass, In The Upper Room is a workout for artists and audiences alike, leaving everyone breathless but exhilarated.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
North American Premiere

A co-production of The National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Ballet

The premiere of a new full-length story ballet is a special occasion for any ballet company. When the work is by a choreographer such as Christopher Wheeldon the anticipation is that much greater.
Wheeldon's unique synthesis of neo-classical and modern dance vocabularies has established him as one of the most important – and sought-after – choreographic artists at work today.
 
National Ballet of Canada audiences who have seen performances of Wheeldon's breathtaking Polyphonia will have some sense of the range, subtlety and instinctive authority he brings to his ballets.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a co-production between The National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Ballet and is, of course, based on the famous Lewis Carroll book of the same name. The Alice stories have long fascinated and attracted other artists, including choreographers, both for their fantastic effects and the rich psychological and emotional terrain they present.

Wheeldon’s ballet, however, seeks to restore the book's fundamental appeal: its brilliantly anarchic and unfettered evocation of the imaginative world of childhood, a world that, having lived it once, we all carry within us.

"I think the characters cry out for movement – it's a very physical story, which was what attracted me."

In Nigel Charnock’s Children, two people are plunged into the ecstasy and the agony of trying to stay together for the sake of their kids. The second piece, A Few Minutes of Lock, revisits three Édouard Lock’s duets, including excerpts from 2 and Salt. Known for her work with La La La Human Steps, this is the first time Lecavalier has performed in Toronto since founding her own dance company in 2006. Her fascination is in the impulse of movement, which precedes all forms of human communication and allows us to read the soul. At 50, Lecavalier brings a unique perspective to her work by examining the relevance of dance through time. This is an absolute must-see for dance fans.

Theme and Variations
George Balanchine was always mindful of his Russian roots and the classical training that shaped his sensibility and aesthetic. Theme and Variations is Balanchine's homage to that tradition.

Set to the final movement of Tchaikovsky's third orchestral suite, the work consists of a set of 12 variations, through which the intricacy and beauty of classical dance is celebrated. It is a modern master's tribute to his forebears.

Don Quixote
Boisterous, bawdy and bursting with colourful incidents and outlandish characters, yet quietly touching in the truths it embodies about human nature, Cervantes' Don Quixote has long been a favourite subject for choreographers.

The touchstone for modern dance artists has been the famous version created by the great 19th-century Russian choreographer Marius Petipa, set to music by Ludwig Minkus and later restaged by Alexander Gorsky. Although variously interpreted over the years, it has remained the basis for most subsequent dance readings the world over.

The National Ballet's version, after Nicolas Beriozoff, hews close to the original, with its lively characterization and scope for virtuosic solos, but it heightens and gives more lavish expression to the work’s essential Spanish feeling and the robust comedy at its heart.

The ballet relates the well-known story of the aged and slightly dotty Don Quixote who, inspired by his reading of chivalric romances, goes in search of a fair lady, Dulcinea. Determined to prove that the old code of chivalry still lives, he embarks on his quest with his comical squire, Sancho Panza, but is soon beset by all manner of confusion and peril.

From this simple idea emerges an archetypal romance journey, ironically told yet perfectly made for dance, that has spanned the centuries and never ceases to find echoes in the hearts of audiences everywhere.

The Ninth International Competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize
Erik Bruhn was one of the 20th-century's greatest male classical ballet dancers. Closely associated with The National Ballet of Canada, one of his most cherished legacies is The Erik Bruhn Prize.Throughout his illustrious career Erik Bruhn maintained a strong and affectionate bond with The National Ballet, a bond that reached fruition in his artistic directorship of the company from 1983 until his death in 1986.

Bruhn endowed a prize in his name in order to award two young dancers, one male and one female, who "reflect such technical ability, artistic achievement and dedication as I endeavoured to bring to dance." In 2009 a Choreographic Prize was added to the event to honour the best newly commissioned dance piece.

Since its inception in 1988, The International Competition for The Erik Bruhn Prize has featured many of the finest young dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Royal Ballet and The National Ballet of Canada. The competitors for the prize are between the ages of 18 and 23 and are chosen by their respective Artistic Directors. They perform in a classical pas de deux and variations and a contemporary pas de deux or solo work.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Erik Bruhn's passing and his namesake prize continues to honour his legacy with the rare and exciting opportunity to see the future stars of international ballet in one thrilling evening of dance.

Last seen at World Stage in 2008 with La pornographie des âmes, the always-provocative Dave St-Pierre returns to Toronto with an exultation both of love (and the search for it) and the human form. Twenty male and female dancers take the stage, naked as the truth, in their irrepressible thirst for communication, contact and human touch. Un peu de tendresse… is part two of St-Pierre’s trilogy (part one being La pornographie….), exploring the rites of contemporary love. St-Pierre’s work is often playful, controversial and confrontational, but there is always an emotional core that speaks to our need to love and be loved. His last run at World Stage became one of the season’s hottest tickets.

The Nutcracker
James Kudelka's 1995 version of this evergreen seasonal classic is a perfect gem of a ballet, affectionate and reflective, at once cheeringly traditional yet freshly attuned to the rhythms and accents of the contemporary.

Rarely have the dreamscapes and wonder of childhood fantasy, the allure of spectacle and the mood of reverie been integrated in such a seamless blend of dazzling stagecraft, virtuosic choreography and ravishing design. Kudelka's gentle re-shaping of the narrative releases the story (based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's Christmas tale) into new thematic territory.

Follow the quarrelling siblings Misha and Marie as they move not just through marvellous and extraordinary experiences but through surprising phases of understanding as they prepare to leave childhood behind and enter the very different world of adolescence.

The costumes and sets by Santo Loquasto themselves cast a spell, evoking an enchanted, rustic world of long-gone Imperial Russia, a place where folk rituals and the cycles of nature make way for the magical, ice-coated world of the Snow Queen and the spectacular beauty of the golden palace of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The entire production, underscored by Tchaikovsky's glorious, timeless music, is like rediscovering a beloved heirloom and seeing it as though for the first time.

 

Chroma
Company Premiere
The acclaimed British choreographer Wayne McGregor revels in the amalgamation of the unlikely – and the results are never less than enthralling.

His multi-disciplinary works emerge from those experimental frontiers where the theoretical merges with the physical, and dance pushes up against and interacts with film, the visual arts, architecture, technology and science. Chroma, from 2006, is a perfect example.

Set to a score by British composer Joby Talbot which includes Talbot's unique orchestrations of three songs by the rock band The White Stripes, alongside four of his own original compositions.

The work pits the angular, rough-edged music and the choreographer's energetic, exacting style against a stark, minimalist architectural space, allowing the audience to see the nature of physical movement in an entirely new and invigorating light.

 

Cinderella
Few choreographers have managed to find such fresh and arresting ways of re-imagining the classic story ballet as James Kudelka. In his 2004 version of Cinderella, Kudelka has retained the distinctive features of the timeless fairy tale, but has brought to the fore the latent comedy and the subtly anarchic underpinnings of the narrative.

The result is a ballet both wildly colourful and physically inventive, riotously funny yet poignantly romantic, an enthralling confluence of theatre and dance. Taking full advantage of Prokofiev’s vibrant and suggestive score, which careens dizzily from farce to romance to satire, Kudelka’s consummate choreographic imagination, signature wit and psychological perceptiveness combine to locate new themes, perspectives and dramatic exuberance in one of the most beloved of all stories, without ever sacrificing its enduring traditional appeal. Less a conventional rags-to-riches fable, Kudelka’s version renews the story as an allegory of individual growth, understanding and change through the reconciling force of love.

The production features stunningly beautiful Érte-inspired sets and costumes by David Boechler and a wonderfully imaginative lighting design by Christopher Dennis that together form the perfect complement to Kudelka’s unique choreographic vision.