National Ballet dances back after 14 years

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The second detail is danced to an electronic score.

Dance preview

The National Ballet of Canada

• Centennial Concert Hall
• Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.
• Tickets $37.75 to $102.25 at Ticketmaster

Four on the floor

Here’s a look at the four works on Tuesday’s program:

• the second detail was created in 1991 by the American William Forsythe, a giant of contemporary ballet. Danced to an electronic score, it’s for 13 dancers, makes playful allusions to Balanchine ballets and includes a placard carrying the word “THE.” “Most of the company are dancing very classical steps, pushed to their most extreme and demanding,” Kain says.
• Other Dances is a romantic 1976 duet by Jerome Robbins, choreographer of West Side Story. Originally created for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova, it was added to the National Ballet’s repertoire last season to celebrate 20 years with the company for Greta Hodgkinson, who had always wanted to dance it (and will do so here). It’s performed to Chopin piano pieces played live on stage.
• The Man in Black, set to the poignant latecareer voice of Johnny Cash as he covers six songs by Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, Nine Inch Nails and others, was created last year for an American troupe by Canada’s James Kudelka. It’s “a celebration of American working-class grit, and of the man whose gravely voice embodied it” for three men and one woman who wear cowboy boots.

• Emergence by Crystal Pite, commissioned by the ballet in 2009, is a dark, fast-paced work for a huge, stage-filling swarm of dancers, set to an electronic score. Inspired by the world of insects, it has earned multiple awards and raves for Pite, one of Canada’s most in-demand choreographers.

 

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Kain is keenly aware of the company's financial limitations. (POSTMEDIA)

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Emergence is a dark, fast-paced work inspired by the world of insects. (CYLIA VON TIEDMANN)

The National Ballet of Canada and its most famous personality, Karen Kain, both began life in 1951.

So this is the 60th-birthday year for both.

Kain, a beloved ballerina, hung up her pointe shoes at age 46. She has stayed with the 68-dancer, Toronto-based company and since 2005 has been at its helm as artistic director.

Speaking by phone from Victoria, Kain recalls that Winnipeg was the final stop on her emotional 1997 retirement tour.

But the company hasn't been back since. Now, 14 years later, the ballet is finally touching down in Winnipeg for one night of its mixed-repertoire 60th-anniversary tour. That night happens to be Tuesday, election night -- a fact that takes Kain by surprise.

"We didn't know that -- that's too bad," she says, though Jeff Herd, executive director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, later says at least some staff at the National Ballet are aware of it.

Kain says she hopes people will vote early and head to the Centennial Concert Hall in lieu of watching election results.

"If people don't come out -- if there isn't a support for us to be there -- we can't afford (to return)," she says.

Kain and Herd both say that for economic and logistical reasons, the ballet often skips isolated Winnipeg when it tours the West. When the company does come here, RWB partners with it as a marketing arm, earning a small fee in return, Herd says.

In 2009, the company had to cancel its Sleeping Beauty tour to Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo -- the same cities as the current tour -- because it had a $1-million deficit and the financial risk was too great. Herd reveals that Winnipeg was originally on that itinerary, but was dropped even before the dates were made public.

"When you're a custodian of a large cultural institution," Kain says, "you can't make foolhardy decisions."

The reason the diamond-anniversary tour isn't of a lavish story ballet like Swan Lake or The Sleeping Beauty is prohibitive costs. Those shows require an orchestra, elaborate sets and costumes and a huge cast and crew, totalling more than 100 people.

Instead, Kain is leaving the tutus at home and showing off 50 of her dancers in more cutting-edge works. She's bringing a program of four acclaimed contemporary ballets, three danced to recorded soundtracks -- one to the voice of country legend Johnny Cash -- and one accompanied by a live pianist. It's the first time the company has ever toured without an orchestra.

"I love this program... and it's the program we can afford to bring," Kain says. "If you bring out a big ballet with a big title, you're going to have a better response at the box office. The Catch-22 is that I can't afford to do that.

"The response to this program has been extraordinary. People are on their feet in every single city, screaming. I have so many young, talented dancers who are very hungry to push the envelope.

"I do believe the technical level is higher with each generation. I love to watch these young people attack these works."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Dance preview

The National Ballet of Canada

• Centennial Concert Hall
• Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.
• Tickets $37.75 to $102.25 at Ticketmaster

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 1, 2011 G3