Subscribe! Save up to 50% off regular ticket prices • Get the best seats at the best price ALWAYS • Secure your seats before they go on sale to the public • Enjoy FREE and Exciting • convenient exchanges Get advance tickets to The Nutcracker at the best price • Premiere! Receive great discounts at local restaurants and businesses Anna Karenina • Piotr Stanczyk. Jillian Vanstone. Fall Season North American Premiere November 10 – 18, 2018 Tolstoy’s great prose masterwork towers over the western literary canon as one of the most fully imagined and riveting works of fiction ever written. It is no wonder that John Neumeier, one of the most frequent and fearless adapters of literary works into modern choreographic form, should have eventually taken on the challenge of the great Russian novel. Using the book more as an inspiration than as a strict narrative template, Neumeier chooses to adapt the work freely. He sets the story, for instance, in the present day, rather than the 19th century, and structures his ballet in two acts with numerous scene changes, condensing the material and focusing on its key themes, which he allows to merge through an intuitive and poetic rather than a literal process. Music by Tchaikovsky provides a link with the Tolstoyan world of the novel, but Neumeier also incorporates modern work by Alfred Schnittke and Cat Stevens/ Yusuf Islam to further underscore the central characters’ conflicts and emotional lives. The work of a great literary artist meeting the imagination of a great interpretive choreographer, Anna Karenina is an unforgettable ballet experience. Anna Karenina A Ballet by John Neumeier Inspired by Leo Tolstoy Choreography, Sets, Costumes and Lighting Concept: John Neumeier Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alfred Schnittke, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam Anna Karenina’s Costumes: AKRIS, Albert Kriemler Scenic Design Collaborator: Heinrich Tröger presents Anna Karenina is a co-production between The National Ballet of Canada, The Hamburg Ballet and The Bolshoi Ballet. Lead philanthropic support for Anna Karenina is generously provided by The Walter Carsen New Creations Fund, Richard M. Ivey, C.C., Rosamond Ivey and Tim & Frances Price, with additional support from The Volunteer Committee of The Anna Karenina National Ballet of Canada, The Producers’ Circle and Warren Sorensen in memory of Gregory Williams. The Producer’s Circle: Gail & Mark Appel, John & Claudine Bailey, Inger Bartlett & Marshal Stearns, Gail Drummond & Bob Dorrance, The Thor E. and Nicole Eaton Family Charitable Foundation, Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan, Kevin & Roger Garland, Ira Gluskin & Maxine Granovsky Gluskin, The William & Nona Heaslip Foundation, Anna McCowan-Johnson & Donald K. Johnson, O.C., Judy Korthals & Peter Irwin, Judith & Robert Lawrie, A Ballet by John Neumeier Mona & Harvey Levenstein, Jerry & Joan Lozinski, The Honourable Margaret Norrie McCain, C.C., Julie Medland, Sandra Pitblado & Jim Pitblado, C.M., Lynda & Jonas Prince, Susan Scace & Arthur Scace, C.M., Q.C., Gerald Sheff Inspired by Leo Tolstoy & Shanitha Kachan and Noreen Taylor, C.M. & David Staines, C.M., O.Ont. Heather Ogden. Photo by Kiran West. 6 Fall Season The Dream November 21 – 25, 2018 Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Being and Nothingness Night’s Dream, is one of the most universally admired and artistically satisfying of all ballet adaptations of the playwright’s work. Using Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved music, arranged by John Lanchbery, Ashton’s version of the play is a miracle of dramatic concision, giving us the familiar characters of Titania and Oberon, the four confused lovers, Puck and the rude mechanicals in a taut but lyrical one-act re-imagining of the story set in Victorian times. Ashton’s vibrant, moonlit choreography is seamlessly integrated with every magical shift in the narrative’s mood. National Ballet Principal Dancer Guillaume Côté has always brought to the many roles he has performed an unstinting spirit of passionate exploration and emotional honesty. As a Choreographic Associate with the company, those same principles apply. In Being and Nothingness from 2015, he finds in his source material, Jean-Paul Sartre’s landmark philosophical work of the same name, questions of freedom, the nature of selfhood and the meaning of existence and illuminates those abstract ideas in his highly expressive, richly physical choreographic style. Being and Nothingness Choreography: Guillaume Côté Music: Philip Glass Set Design: Michael Levine Costume Design: Krista Dowson Lighting Design: David Finn The Dream Choreography: Frederick Ashton Staged by: Christopher Carr and Sir Anthony Dowell, CBE Music: Felix Mendelssohn Overture and Incidental Arrangement: John Lanchbery Scenery and Costume Design: David Walker Lighting Design: Thomas Saunders after The Royal Ballet design Lead philanthropic support for Being and Nothingness is provided by an anonymous friend of the National Ballet, The Volunteer Committee of The National Ballet of Canada and The Producers’ Circle. Greta Hodgkinson with Artists of the Ballet in The Dream. Photo by Lydia Pawelak. 8 Holiday Season December 8 – 30, 2018 James Kudelka’s ravishing and gloriously re-imagined version of the evergreen Christmas spectacular was created for The National Ballet of Canada in 1995 and it remains an unparalleled holiday entertainment for both children and adults. Replete with Kudelka’s signature dynamic and exuberant choreography and gliding with wonderful ease from whimsical and often boisterous comedy to breathtaking spectacle and touching emotion, the ballet is a feast for both the senses and the imagination. In Kudelka’s adaptation, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original tale is re-situated in rural 19th-century Russia, a world in which nature and the rituals of farm life are harmoniously and organically entwined. The story centres on a brother and sister, Misha and Marie, and their Christmas Eve dream journey which carries them from their family home through a world of wonders to the glittering winter realm of the Snow Queen and finally to the splendour of the palace of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Santo Loquasto’s beautifully evocative sets and costumes combine perfectly with the enchantment of Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous score to complete a genuinely magical Christmas experience for ballet lovers of all ages. The Nutcracker Choreography and Libretto: James Kudelka, O.C. Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Set and Costume Design: Santo Loquasto Lighting Design: Jennifer Tipton presents The Nutcracker is made possible by generous financial support from production underwriters Sandra Pitblado & Jim Pitblado, C.M., Lawrence & Ann Heisey and an anonymous friend of the National Ballet. The Nutcracker Tanya Howard. Photo by Karolina Kuras. 10 Winter Season Apollo March 1 – 3 & March 20 – 21, 2019 George Balanchine’s Apollo is one of the signal moments in both the choreographer’s Night oeuvre and in the legacy of cultural modernism. The work, set to Igor Stravinsky’s music, almost singlehandedly established a new aesthetic that brought the language of classical ballet into a modern context, merging the past with the future in a way that would alter our The Sea Above, The Sky Below conception of ballet forever. Paquita Canadian-born Julia Adam created Night for San Francisco Ballet in 2000. The work’s rapturous reception led San Francisco Ballet to tour the work to Palais Garnier in Paris, London’s Royal Opera House and City Center in New York, further bolstering Ms. Adam’s reputation as one of North America’s most exciting choreographic voices. The National Ballet of Canada’s Choreographic Associate Robert Binet has shown himself to be one of Canada’s most inventive and thoughtful dancemakers, an artist of wonderfully original physical imagination and thematic boldness. The Sea Above, The Sky Below is an intricate pas de trois that captivated audiences when it premiered at the MAD HOT BALLET Gala in 2017. An unabashed celebration of ballet’s virtuosic possibilities, Paquita revels in the dazzling panache, colour and period exoticism of nineteenth-century classicism. Originally created in 1846, but today performed in Marius Petipa’s version from 1881, the ballet—ostensibly a perfunctory story of a young gypsy girl who is really of royal birth—is less about narrative concerns than it is a breathtaking example of technique raised to the level of spectacle. Apollo The Sea Above, The Sky Below Choreography: George Balanchine Choreography: Robert Binet Music: Igor Stravinsky, Apollon Musagète Music: Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5, Lighting Design: Robert Thomson 4th Movement, Adagietto Costume Design: Erdem Moralioglu Canadian Premiere Night Lighting Design: Jeff Logue Choreography: Julia Adam Music: Matthew Pierce Paquita Costume Design: Benjamin Pierce Choreography: Christopher Stowell, Lighting Design: Lisa Pinkham after Marius Petipa Music: Ludwig Minkus and Riccardo Drigo, orchestrated by John Lanchbery Set and Costume Design: José Varona Lighting Design: Robert Thomson Apollo is a gift from The Volunteer Committee, The National Ballet of Canada. The Sea Above, The Sky Below costume design by Erdem Moralioglu is generously supported by Suzanne Rogers. Lead philanthropic support for Night is generously provided by The Producers’ Circle. Guillaume Côté and Xiao Nan Yu with Artists of the Ballet in Apollo. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann. 12 Winter Season Winter Season Alice’s Adventures March 7 – 17, 2019 in Wonderland Perfect for March Break! Few books of any kind are as unique and have left