Sure, The Nutcracker is sweet, but by the time January rolls around dance fans are ready for fare that is not so sugar-plummed and seasonal. Domestic companies and imports are set to oblige with a diverse calendar of productions that include quick-stepping tappers, circus athleticism, choreography inspired by pop icons, classic and contemporary ballet, breakdancing and, wait for it, wrestling.
Classic ballet
The National Ballet of Ukraine performs a traditional dance.Supplied
Before the outbreak of war in 2022, the National Ballet of Ukraine staged a dozen or more productions a month at the Taras Shevchenko National Opera House in Kyiv. Now, the frequency of performances depends on what bombs are dropping and where. This month and next, from Quebec to British Columbia, the company tours a program called Nadiya Ukraine – nadiya translating to “hope.” Featured are the ballets Le Corsaire and Don Quixote, with a bonus of traditional Ukrainian dance as well.
Wherefore art thou, Romeo & Juliet? In Manitoba, where the Royal Winnipeg Ballet mounts Rudi van Dantzig’s sword-fighting and Prokofiev-scored epic in February. Then, in April, the RWB brings Snow White to Ottawa’s National Arts Centre. Not kids’ stuff, French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj’s take on the dwarfs-and-damsel tale is as foreboding as a wicked stepmother’s side-eye, with a soundtrack that pairs Mahler with an electroacoustic ambience.
And as long as one is heading down the storybook rabbit hole, Christopher Wheeldon’s spectacle interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, presented by the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto this March, includes cheeky references to other famous ballets, among them The Sleeping Beauty. In February, the National premieres Helen Pickett’s narrative ballet Emma Bovary, based on the Gustave Flaubert’s 19th-century novel Madame Bovary, at the National Arts Centre.
Circus
SLAM!, from FLIP Fabrique and Ex Machina, premieres in Quebec City.Supplied
It remains to be seen whether the new Zac Efron film The Iron Claw instigates a wrestling revival. If it does not, SLAM! just might. Circus meets grappling in the centre of the ring in this new work from FLIP Fabrique and Ex Machina, directed by Robert Lepage. All upper case, onomatopoeia and exclamation point, SLAM! has already mastered the professional wrestling art of the splashy entrance with its title alone. It premieres in Quebec City in March, with Montreal dates to quickly follow.
Australia’s acrobatic Gravity and Other Myths specializes in circus, cabaret and what it describes as a “light spanking of kink.” The company presents The Mirror, with an LED wall and electronic compositions and pop mash-ups, in Vancouver, Quebec City, Toronto and Montreal through January and February.
Festivals
The Rock Harder Breaking Competition, featuring international breakdancers, at KUUMBA festival of Black arts and culture at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre.Supplied
January in Calgary means One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo takes over the city’s experimental dance, comedy and theatre scene. Highlights this year include Translations, an immersive production from Vancouver’s inclusive All Bodies Dance Project and Calgary’s mixed-ability Inside Out Theatre. Audience members, paired with performers, are instructed to close their eyes to experience dance in ways other than visual. The idea, one presumes, is to get lost in Translations.
The annual KUUMBA festival of Black arts and culture at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre has been around for nearly three decades, and now it has reached its breaking point – literally. One of its attractions this February is the Rock Harder Breaking Competition, featuring international breakdancers heading to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Is it performance? Is it sport? All we know is that it is on.
Contemporary ballet
In March, Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets offers a respite from the weather with Cantata, a 2001 piece from Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti that evokes an earthy Mediterranean vibrancy. Four singers and 10 pairs of dancers work to a score of southern Italian music, tambourine and castanets a-clattering. The mixed program also features shorter pieces by up-and-coming dance makers.
Anne With An Elevé
“But if you call me Anne, please call me Anne with an ‘e.’ ” The spunky heroine-orphan of the Lucy Maud Montgomery novel Anne of Green Gables demanded four letters, not three. Indeed, everything involved with the literary franchise is subject to strict stipulations. When choreographer Bengt Jorgen created Anne of Green Gables – The Ballet, it was mandatory that Norman Campbell’s score to the 1965 stage musical adaptation be used. Canada’s Ballet Jorgen tours its charming – and trademarked – production of pigtails and pirouettes to 12 Canadian cities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia in January and February.
Tap
New York dance troupe Dorrance Dance performs on March 28, 2019.©Stephanie Berger./Supplied
In April, Michelle Dorrance’s tap troupe Dorrance Dance from New York brings SOUNDspace to the Vancouver Playhouse. Expect dynamic new adventures in a truly American art form, with articulate feet that slide in socks, clack away in shoes and sometimes barefoot it altogether.
Pop star inspiration
The Toronto poet, dancer and choreographer Aisha Sasha John is interested in the expressive possibilities of Black community. In the summer of 2015, she “fell asleep to a question” that was answered in the form of a dream: Diana Ross on Broadway in a sea of rose-gold costumed dancers – “a dream of spiritedness and belonging so vivid as to announce itself as instruction, as a call,” she later explained. She presents her resulting duet, Diana Ross Dream, at Vancouver’s Left of Main on March 1 and 2.
In 2006, Ross released a version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David pop song The Look of Love, which is also the title of a touring program from New York’s Mark Morris Dance Group. At Toronto’s Meridian Hall on Jan. 19, The Look of Love: An Evening of Dance to the Music of Burt Bacharach features original choreography by Morris, with live music arranged for piano, trumpet, bass and drums. Broadway’s Marcy Harriell handles lead vocals.
Many complimentary things have been said about the former Police front man Sting, some of which he said himself. But has he received proper credit for his storytelling pop-tune abilities? From London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre comes Message In A Bottle, a narrative production danced to hits such as Roxanne and Every Breath You Take. It was created by multi-Olivier Award nominee Kate Prince, whose choreography – every move they make, every step they take – will be danced by her own ZooNation company. A story of hope, Message In A Bottle bobs up in Montreal and Toronto in the middle of March.
Sign up for The Globe’s arts and lifestyle newsletters for more news, columns and advice in your inbox.
Brad Wheeler