Read the 2013 Romeo and Juliet Ballet Notes
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The National Ballet of Canada Winter 2 013 Per forman ce Presents Romeo and Juliet Elena Lobsanova and Guillaume Côté. Photo by Bruce Zinger. Conten ts 4 John Neumeier’s Nijinsky by Michael Crabb 10 Exciting Times – The 2013/14 Season by Artistic Director Karen Kain centre Today’s Performance 20 Dancer Biographies The National Ballet of Canada Winter 2013 Corps de Ballet member Skylar Campbell. Photo by Sian Richards. Per forman ce n National Ballet Editors: Julia Drake and Belinda Bale n RJ Performance Media Inc .: n President and Publisher: Joe Marin o n CEO: Frank Barbosa n Finance: Gina Zicari n Secretary Treasurer: Rajee Muthuraman n Art Director /Design: Jan Haring a n Graphic Artist: Glenda Moniz n National Account Directors: Danny Antunes, Gary Bel l , Tom Marino, Paul Radford The National Ballet of Canada’s edition of Performance magazine is published quarterly by RJ Performance Media Inc., 2724 Coventry Road, Oakville, Ontario, L6H 6R1. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written consent is prohibited. Contents copyright © Performance Inc. Subscriptions available by contacting publisher. Direct all advertising enquiries to 2724 Coventry Road, Oakville, Ontario, L6H 6R1 or Telephone 905-829-3900, Ext. 222, Fax 905-829-3901. John Neumeier’ sNij ins ky by Michael Crabb Guillaume Côté, His dancing career lasted scarcely a decade. He Heather Ogden and Otto Bubenicek. choreographed just four works, only one of which has survived Photo by Erik Tomasson. with any serious claim to authenticity. Yet, 63 years after his death, Vaslav Nijinsky remains an iconic figure – and a haunting presence in the life of American-born choreographer John Neumeier whose two-act Nijinsky now joins the National Ballet’s repertoire. Neumeier’s fascination with Nijinsky began when, as a dance-loving Grade 6 student in Milwaukee, he came across a stirringly titled book: Anatole Bourman’s The Tragedy of Nijinsky . “It made Nijinsky a real person in my mind,” Neumeier recalls. Page 4 national.ballet.ca Artists of The Hamburg Ballet. Photo by Holger Badekow. “Nijinsky broke new and original paths towards modern choreography... completely independent from the classical brilliance of his own virtuosity and the astounding projection of his performance presence.” - John Neumeier From then on Neumeier devoured whatever information could be gleaned about Nijinsky, as an incandescent performer and innovative choreographer, and as a tortured soul. He even interviewed Nijinsky’s widow, Romola. “Such a clever woman. I’m quite kind to her in my ballet,” he says, in oblique reference to the way Romola has often been disparaged. By then Neumeier had a well stocked library of works about his idol and had begun building what is now the most extensive Nijinsky collection in private hands. Apart from artistic representations of the dancer there are photographs, costumes , the only plaster cast of his foot and an autographed menu from Nijinsky and Romola’s wedding breakfast. It all resides in Neumeier’s house. “It’s quite full,” he says laconically. Nijinsky, born in Kiev in 1890, was a product of the Russian Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. He entered young adulthood during an era of revolutionary rumblings that spilled over into the ballet. Michel Fokine, nine years Nijinsky’s senior, offered a choreographic challenge to what he regarded as the formulaic conventions of Russian classicism, epitomized by the sprawling spectacles of Marius Petipa. When the great impresario Serge Diaghilev presented a season of Russian ballet in Paris in 1909, Nijinsky was already Page 5 one of the Imperial Ballet’s brightest hopes. Under Diaghilev’s tutelage and with a succession of Fokine ballets to showcase his unparalleled talents – Petruschka , Le Spectre de la rose and, most famously, Scheherazade – Nijinsky quickly became an international sensation. During successive Ballets Russes tours, Western audiences were astounded by Nijinsky’s athleticism, animal magnetism and miraculous ability to absorb himself totally into every role. His fame, fuelled by a tantalizing aura of androgyny and the frisson of scandal surrounding his scarcely discreet relationship with Diaghilev, made Nijinsky a celebrity. In 1912 Diaghilev encouraged his lover-protégé to try his hand at choreography. The results were startling. L’Après-midi d’un faune , to the Debussy score, shocked audiences with its unabashed eroticism and Nijinsky’s presentation of himself in radically stylized, almost minimalist movement. (Top) Heather Ogden Nijinsky followed in 1913 with Jeux , a quasi-abstract ballet and Guillaume Côté. that used the metaphor of a tennis game to depict, again with (Above) Guillaume Côté. carefully symbolic movement, the tangled relations of a man Photos by Erik Tomasson. and two female companions. The biggest shock came later the same year with Nijinsky’s Sacre du printemps to Stravinsky’s seismically controversial score. Nijinsky, hailed as a god of the dance, excluded himself from the limelight, choosing instead to emphasis group patterns in his savage portrayal of ritual sacrifice in pagan Russia. The Paris premiere provoked a riot. Page 6 national.ballet.ca “A ballet can never be a documentary,” says Neumeier, characterizing his Nijinsky as “a biography of the soul.” Heather Ogden and According to Neumeier, Nijinsky “broke new and original Guillaume Côté. paths towards modern choreography... completely independent Photos by Erik Tomasson. from the classical brilliance of his own virtuosity and the astounding projection of his performance presence.” When Nijinsky choreographed Till Eulenspiegel in 1916, there were already indications of the schizophrenia that was prematurely to terminate his career. In January 1919, he gave his last public performance, a solo recital, in the ballroom of a St. Moritz, Switzerland hotel, the Suvretta House, which Neumeier photographed before its demolition and meticulously evokes in his designs. This poignant farewell is depicted by Neumeier in a prologue where Nijinsky imagines Diaghilev, from whom he’s been long estranged, among the audience. It triggers a cascade of memories, flashbacks that in the course of the first act trace his years as a Ballets Russes star with references to key roles, but also to the complex interweaving of Nijinsky’s professional and private life. Michael Crabb writes Neumeier describes the second act as “more an interior about dance for landscape,” a war-ravaged world viewed through the prism The Toronto Star . of Nijinsky’s own wounded psyche. A longer version of “A ballet can never be a documentary,” says Neumeier, this article originally characterizing his Nijinsky as “a biography of the soul, appeared in Canada’s a biography of feelings and sensations.” It is, he says, Dance International “a choreographic approach” to the complex puzzle of a dance magazine. phenomenon. n Page 8 national.ballet.ca 20 Exciting Times: by Artistic Director Karen Kain 13 These are exciting times for 14 The National Ballet of Canada. season After many years we have returned “to the world stage with recent performances in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and very soon London, England. It has been gratifying to see how well-received we were, by audiences and critics alike and I have every confidence our upcoming tours will be just as rewarding. I think there is a new vigour and character to the National Ballet these days, a freshness in our approach and attitude that stems from the combination of our work with exciting choreographers, our commitment to the highest standards of classical technique and expression and our spirited embrace of the contemporary. I think that freshness is what people are responding to, both here at home and abroad. Guillaume Côté and Heather Ogden in Swan Lake . Photo by David Cooper. Page 10 national.ballet.ca Our 2013/14 season at the Four Seasons Centre reflects that freshness and excitement. We open the season with the enduringly beautiful Swan Lake , a staple of the classical canon that in our version acquires a totally distinct identity. Our second Innovation series brings together three brilliant and very different Canadian choreographers. James Kudelka is familiar to our audiences, but the other two, Robert Binet and José Navas, are less well-known. All three though, judging by their work to date, promise to give us world premieres that, seen together, should make for an extraordinary evening of new and cutting edge dance. Jenna Savella in Watch her . Photo by David Cooper. Xiao Nan Yu and Jiˇrí Jelinek in Onegin . Photo by Aleksandar Antonijevic. Page 11 Our Winter Season features a mixed programme comprised of the wonderful Aszure Barton work Watch her , which premiered with us in 2009, and Sir Frederick Ashton’s vivid and moving A Month in the Country . It is followed by John Cranko’s Onegin , one the finest of modern full-length narrative ballets and an audience favourite, both for its emotionally gripping story, its choreography and characterization and its stunning sets. Swan Lake will return for the March Break. And finally, our Summer Season features a powerhouse mixed programme of a stunning re-imagining of the famous Ballets Russes work Spectre de la Rose by Marco Goecke, Jerome Robbins’ gorgeous Opus 19/ The Dreamer and William Forsythe’s daring and brilliantly enigmatic the second detail . James Kudelka’s riotously funny and sweetly touching version of Cinderella concludes our season in June. I think the season, like our touring, reflects an indisputable and happy fact: the National Ballet is going through a very exciting time right now, an excitement you can sense in both our repertoire and our performances. I hope you will share in that excitement by subscribing to our season and experience the wonderful creativity and artistry that ballet at its finest embodies. ’’ Sonia Rodriguez and Artists of the Ballet in Cinderella . Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann. Page 12 national.ballet.ca Xiao Nan Yu and Nathalie Nordquist of Guillaume Côté in Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo Opus 19/The Dreamer .