Planted deep in Mother Earth

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This article was published 24/07/2025 (248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s annual Ballet in the Park kicked off the company’s 2025/26 season Wednesday under new artistic director Christopher Stowell, who also served as the evening’s amiable host.

The beloved summer production has battled bugs, rain, heat, high humidity and even a global pandemic since it was first conceived in 1972. This year saw wildfire smoke added to that mix, with the midweek show, performed al fresco at Assiniboine Park’s Lyric Theatre under (mostly) blue skies, feeling like a rare, stolen moment in time.

The 60-minute mixed bill opened with a trio of works highlighting the RWB School Recreational Division students.

First up, Spectacle des Jouets, choreographed by core faculty member Kendra Woo to Hans Christian Lumbye’s Champagne Galop, filled the stage with the vitality of youth.

Its six rosy-cheeked dancers grinned ear to ear as they tossed off their carefully rehearsed plies and tendus as effervescently as a glass of bubbly.

Next up came Sing Sing Sing, with its eight dancers wearing sparkling flapper-style dresses and executing recreational division principal Nicole Kepp’s jazzy kicks and flicks to Benny Goodman’s immortal swing tune.

Revolution offered a loud ’n’ proud hip-hop number with its quartet of dancers performing faculty member Ella Rumak’s funky choreography, pulsating with energy to a playlist of Madonna, Flo Rida, Spice Girls and M.V.P., proving these young artists just want to have fun.

The second half of the program featured an excerpt of acclaimed Canadian choreographer Cameron Fraser-Monroe’s T’el: The Wild Man of the Woods, premièred by the company in April 2024.

The RWB School alumnus, appointed associated artist at Ballet Kelowna as well as artist-in-residence at the National Theatre School of Canada next season, has been blazing a trail with his eclectic artistry, blending elements of Ukrainian dance, traditional Indigenous grass and hoop dance and classical ballet technique. (Local balletomanes will also get to see his New York City hit Segatem performed next spring on the RWB stage.)

Based on a traditional oral history story from his Tla-amin First Nation home in the upper Sunshine Coast of southwestern British Columbia, the ballet, led by all-Indigenous creative team, also features a recorded narration in Ayajuthem and English by then-94-year-old elder Elsie Paul, the last fluent speaker of the Tla-amin language.

Fraser-Monroe, who was in attendance, shared plot points from the stage prior to the 30-minute performance (the lack of an onstage interview regarding his creative process was a missed opportunity).

The choice to feature T’el as Ballet in the Park’s centrepiece this year proved hit and miss.

It’s ideal — and doesn’t always happen — to see a relatively new work performed a second time, and particularly this one, birthed in a traditional European-infused ballet studio but with its roots so deeply planted into Mother Earth.

The tale of T’el (pronounced “tall”), a forest monster that kidnaps children to eat, performed on a fresh-air stage surrounded by leafy foliage, resonated with naturalistic verisimilitude.

However, selecting such a dark story was curious, given the number of tots tucked into the mixed-generation crowd on Wednesday, many of them likely dreaming of tutus and tiaras as they twirled in the grass and happily joined in the pre-show movement class superbly led by “Miss Maggie.”

Nevertheless, kids can always surprise you — witness Grimms’ fairy tales — and ageism can work both ways.

Condensing an original 49-minute ballet into a leaner 30 also poses other challenges, needing to leapfrog from scene to scene in a way that dispels its own continuity while losing its narrative glue.

An electro-acoustic score — including rafter-raising powwow drum songs and chants by Indigenous cellist and composer Cris Derkson (with credit to Northern Voice and Sheldon and Frazer Sundown) — lost some of its power in the open-air space, often feeling too abstract to fully hold the sprawling, grass- and lawn-chair-seated crowd’s attention, with Scott Henderson’s lighting design virtually MIA prior to sundown.

Despite these misgivings, bravo to the dancers, dressed in Navajo costumer designer Asa Benally’s earth-toned trousers and shirts, for their conviction in bringing Fraser-Monroe’s often highly rhythmical choreography to life. They were particularly strong during the smaller ensemble sections, frequently punctuated by his signature, jaw-dropping lifts performed with fearless athleticism.

Kudos in particular to corps de ballet members Logan Savard, reprising his archetypal, beastly protagonist T’el, and Kyra Soo as young village daughter Erica, who courageously rescues her abducted Middle Sister (another effective role reprisal by corps member Brooke Thomas).

The story ballet ends triumphantly as the stolen children are finally returned to their anxious families, although one of its most potent scenes, the climactic burning of T’el in fire, with dancers en pointe suddenly morphing into licking flames, was left on the cutting-room floor.

Still, Fraser-Monroe’s artistry is arresting, and T’el: The Wild Man of the Woods continues to resonate as a story of courage, resistance and the power of community — qualities that perfectly reflect the plucky troupe now leaping into its 86th season.

holly.harris@shaw.ca