1. Funeral For A Friend - Love Lies Bleeding
2. Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting
3. Levon
4. Madman Across The Water
5. Tiny Dancer
6. Philadelphia Freedom
7. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
8. Daniel
9. Rocket Man
10. I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues
11. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
12. Take Me To The Pilot
13. Something About The Way You Look Tonight
14. Band Intros
15. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
16. Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
17. Candle In The Wind
18. You´re Never To Old To Love Somebody
19. Honky Cat
20. Burn Down The Mission
21. Benny And The Jets
22. The Bitch Is Back
23. I'm Still Standing
24. Crocodile Rock
25. Crowd
26. Your Song
27. Circle Of Life
Elton John touched down in Alberta on Thursday night, though the man himself wasn't there.
The occasion was the world premiere of
Love Lies Bleeding, an Alberta Ballet production based on Sir Elton's music that bends the rules of genre and gender. The over-the-top costumes, pop music - to which the performers often lip synched - and the sometimes over-used multi-media staging may have snubbed the traditional tutu crowd, but it certainly justified the budget. Artistic director Jean Grand-Maître's ballet was expensive - over $1-million, in fact. The song and subject choices also had people wondering. And now the question is: was the risk worth it?
The inspiration, subject, and artistic advisor to the production couldn't attend opening night, though his blessing will determine whether the show travels. Presumably, Sir Elton will watch a recorded version of it and rely on feedback from his "people" who were there.
Grand-Maître, speaking before the curtain rose, admitted that "my knees are shaking" and said he had received flowers from Sir Elton that were so large they blocked his dressing room door. This isn't his first experience with pop stars - he produced
The Fiddle and the Drum with Joni Mitchell in 2007, and he'll work with Sarah McLaughlin next year - but he's still cautious. "Let's hope this ballet has a future," he told the VIP after-party crowd, "I think it has a chance."
The ballet opens with Elton - played by the powerfully graceful and charismatic Yukichi Hattori - watching a younger version of himself, riding a tricycle in circles on stage, while old news footage plays on a giant screen behind them. These brief clips are interspersed with Elton's performances and red carpet appearances, apparently setting the scene for the decades through which he has lived.
Elton is dressed in a skin-tight, sequined, baseball suit. He leaps onto a smaller, rotating stage while the rest of the company, also in blue and white sequined baseball uniforms, flood onto the stage and dance around him. Bats are knocked against the platform while Elton raises his arms to the sky. It's a weird start, and, perhaps because it's opening night, a bit uncoordinated.
"We had those baseball bats and were saying to ourselves... OK, here we go," dancer Melissa Boniface told me later, "Then the crowd's reaction in the first few minutes was like pow - and we were off. We were really there. The crowd loved it; we could feel them with us."
Grand-Maitre is known for theatricality. Here, though, his flair been both unleashed and harnessed, directed and trained onto a specific subject. Not that it's an easy subject.
In the ballet, the most classical dances are between men, and involve love, sex, or both. Two heart-wrenching pas de deuxs tell the story of love and loss in a gay relationship. The first, set to the song
Sixty Years On, was danced by Mark Biocca and Kelly McKinlay. (McKinlay also plays the title role on other nights.) There is a large sword/cross hanging above them as they dance, embrace, pull apart. The sword drops lower and one dancer drapes himself on it, and swings from it as well. The prop, and the song, make the AIDS theme very clear, perhaps too much so. It is, after all, a beautifully tragic piece of choreography on its own.
There are two other homo-erotic pieces which are more in keeping with conventional ballet. The first, strangely enough, involves drag queens. Yes, three tall, muscular, heaving men in garish make-up, frilly black dresses, and six inch stilettos.
The second, set to
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, includes a chorus of men in nothing but shiny gold loin cloths and white afro-wigs. And yes, it's good. The choreography of the entire ballet is punchy, bold, athletic and compelling. Hattori is lifted, contorted, spun around en pointe, and dragged across the stage. The company was tight and expressive.
It is a liquid scene that had audience members shivering and nearly on their feet with applause. That piece left a moment of silence though, for all its ballet beauty, the dancers finished in an explicitly sexual position, shadowed onto the screen behind them for emphasis.
"I was surprised by how erotic it was," said Alykan Velji, who was in the audience with partner Jason Krell, "Calgary is a little gayer now."
Drug addiction is the second demon in this story. That too, is made literal when the words "Introducing the Inner Demons" appear on the screen behind three bowler-capped
Clockwork Orange types who slink across the stage now and then, leaving clouds of white powder in their wake.
Despite the heavy themes and literal storytelling, there is some nuanced and compelling ballet here. The choreography is fresh, and this very international company is first-class. The music and costumes are seamlessly incorporated into both. The lighting and staging are also spectacular. Pierre Lavoie has gone easy on the lights, allowing shadows to play a role in each scene. At a one point, an entire dance is seen only in tiny red lights, which are wound around the dancers, moving across a starry night sky. It is exquisite.
The audience was buzzing during the intermission and after the show when there were three curtain calls.
Of course the Calgary critics and audience love it. The ballet is a sensation by any standard, way above the scale of productions normally found here. But will Elton love it? Will the world?
Tickets for the opening night performance were sold out within hours of their release. Amongst the audience were Calgary's elite. Mayor Bronconnier, who said he loved the performance, declined to answer any questions about the ongoing race to fill his seat. David Swann, the leader of the opposition, chatted about health care and the mayoralty but was clearly distracted by the buzzing crowd of boas at intermission. Pink boas and star-shaped sunglasses were sold in the lobby. Neither Bronconnier, nor Swann, nor provincial culture minister Lindsay Blackett, were spotted wearing them.
Board members of the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle came as a group to see the show. They were suitably impressed, calling it fabulous and triumphant, but when asked if their company would mount the show there were head shakes and frowns, "No way!"
Later, I asked another of their group if it was true that they would not mount a show like
Love Lies Bleeding. "I wouldn't say never," she said carefully, "It's ... bold."
Love Lies Bleeding plays tonight and tomorrow in Calgary and May 11-12 in Edmonton. albertaballet.com
Sir Elton John en Khayelitsha
(FIFA.com) Viernes 7 de mayo de 2010
En una reciente visita al Centro Football for Hope y Grassroot Soccer (GRS) de Khayelitsha (Sudáfrica), el fundador y presidente de la Elton John AIDS Foundation, sir Elton John, hizo hincapié en el papel que puede desempeñar el deporte rey en la lucha contra la epidemia de sida: “Las estrellas del fútbol son los modelos de conducta más potentes para los jóvenes hoy en día… así que es fantástico que organizaciones como Grassroot Soccer aprovechen ese poder para educar a la juventud acerca del VIH”.
El Centro Football for Hope de Khayelitsha se inauguró el 5 de diciembre de 2009, y forma parte de
20 centros para el 2010, la campaña oficial de la Copa Mundial de la FIFA 2010 de promoción de la salud pública, la educación y el fútbol en comunidades desfavorecidas de toda África. Cada uno de los veinte centros será gestionado por una organización comunitaria ya existente. El de Khayelitsha ayudará a enfrentar el VIH/sida, uno de los mayores problemas que afectan a la juventud africana. Lo administra Grassroot Soccer, organización sin ánimo de lucro que emplea el fútbol para educar a los jóvenes acerca del VIH/sida y proporcionarles los conocimientos necesarios para que puedan evitar contraer el VIH.
La Elton John AIDS Foundation se complace en respaldar otro de los programas emblemáticos de Grassroot Soccer, situado en Lusaka (Zambia), en el marco de su estrategia de utilización del fútbol para incrementar el acceso de los jóvenes a las pruebas del VIH, y permitir a quienes acaba de diagnosticársele disponer del tratamiento y los cuidados correspondientes.
La prevalencia del VIH entre las personas de entre 15 y 19 años es de casi el 5% en Zambia, y se calcula que sólo el 28% de los pertenecientes a este grupo saben si tienen o no el VIH (UNAIDS considera que el número total de afectados por el VIH en todos los segmentos de edad se halla entre 1.100.000 y 1.200.000). El gobierno zambiano ha declarado que es necesario realizar una campaña acerca de los beneficios que implica saber si se ha contraído o no el virus, y ha solicitado la ayuda de organizaciones no gubernamentales para aumentar la demanda y el suministro de pruebas del VIH. Eso es exactamente lo que espera conseguir GRS a través de sus programas basados en el fútbol.
Grassroot Soccer contribuye a formar a estrellas del fútbol africano, entrenadores, maestros y jóvenes educadores para que difundan entre la juventud un programa docente de prevención del VIH interactivo y de tipo práctico. Se ha aprovechado de manera innovadora el entusiasmo de los niños zambianos por el fútbol con el fin de mejorar el acceso de este grupo vulnerable a tratamiento y cuidados para combatir el VIH. Las intervenciones son llevadas a cabo mediante entrenadores locales de GRS a través del programa básico de GRS
Skillz, compuesto por ocho sesiones de habilidades sociales de 45 minutos cada una. Los entrenadores son jóvenes (entre 18 y 25 años), muchos de ellos chicas, muchos viven también con el VIH y algunos han realizado personalmente el programa
Skillz, lo que posibilita una relación positiva y de confianza, de profesor a alumno, entre ellos y los participantes.
La Elton John AIDS Foundation concedió hace poco una subvención de más de un millón de libras para un periodo de tres años con la que Grassroot Soccer podrá paliar las actuales carencias en prevención del VIH, pruebas y tratamiento mediante el fútbol. También permitirá a GRS ampliar su programa de pruebas en Zambia y establecer un sistema de apoyo psicológico y seguimiento eficaz, de manera que todos los jóvenes VIH positivos del programa tengan acceso inmediato al tratamiento adecuado.
La Elton John AIDS Foundation es una de las obras benéficas independientes más destacadas del planeta. Trabaja en el ámbito de la prevención y los cuidados en 15 países de todo el globo, y ha llegado a 150 millones de personas en sus 17 años de historia. Atajar la propagación del VIH en adolescentes y jóvenes adultos es una de las prioridades de la fundación, que también se centra en el tratamiento de niños infectados por el VIH, impedir la transmisión del VIH de madres a hijos, proporcionar servicios a los niños que han quedado huérfanos por culpa de la enfermedad y trasladar información, cuidados y apoyo a grupos vulnerables, como los hombres que mantienen relaciones sexuales con otros hombres. Sus oficinas, ubicadas en Londres, funcionan con unos gastos generales de menos del 5%.
Michael Hewitson, personal manager for Elton John, and percussionist Ray Cooper attended the premiere of Alberta Ballet's Love Lies Bleeding in Calgary on behalf of the British pop icon. (Margo Kelly/CBC) The world premiere of
Love Lies Bleeding, Alberta Ballet's new production inspired by the life and music of Elton John, was a smash hit in Calgary Thursday night, earning three curtain calls and kudos from dance critics and friends of the pop music icon.
"I thought the ballet was a lot of fun. It was a good time. The audience obviously thought the same. I don't think I've ever heard such a howl of approval at the end of a ballet premiere in this theatre as I did tonight," veteran dance and opera critic Michael Crabb told CBC News shortly after the final curtain.
"This is a ballet that aims to have wide appeal and achieves that in a very direct way."
Crabb, who has reviewed dance and opera for the past 40 years, said he found it interesting how different styles were blended in
Love Lies Bleeding, a multimedia production that incorporates video images in its staging.
"It's a sort of mix of Chippendales, Vegas,
A Clockwork Orange [and] a number of classical ballets that are quoted in it," he noted.
"There's a lot of ballet in it.… The women are on pointe shoes. They're on their toes, [dancing] to Elton John music. It gives a sort of an interesting contrast between the qualities — the refined qualities — of ballet and this very visceral, heartfelt quality that the music has."
Though John was unable to attend the debut due to a long-standing engagement in Los Angeles, he sent his best wishes and a flower arrangement "as big as a car" to Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maître, who put together
Love Lies Bleeding in about six weeks.
"I'm always proud of the dancers," Grand-Maître said late Thursday, just after the premiere.
"When they reach a place where it's so brave what they're doing and they take risks — I think they went there tonight. There [were] different styles of dance and there's a lot of different theatrical moments that they have to really nail down.… In the end they pulled it together quite beautifully with just three rehearsals on stage. I was very proud of them."
John's personal manager, Michael Hewitson, and his regular percussionist, Ray Cooper, attended the Calgary premiere on his behalf.
![Critic Michael Crabb described Love Lies Bleeding as 'a sort of
mix of Chippendales, Vegas, A Clockwork Orange [and] a number of
classical ballets.'](http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/topstories/2010/05/06/tp-cgy-elton-ballet-2.jpg)
Critic Michael Crabb described Love Lies Bleeding as 'a sort of mix of Chippendales, Vegas, A Clockwork Orange [and] a number of classical ballets.' (CBC) "I thought that Jean [Grand-Maître] couldn't top
The Fiddle and the Drum, but he has — a thousand times over. Joni won’t like to hear that, but she can do another one," Hewitson said, laughing, after the performance, referring to Grand-Maître's celebrated ballet collaboration with Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.
"It's fantastic.… It's genius stuff. World class," he said of
Love Lies Bleeding.
"I just loved everything about it: the costumes, the energy, the mixing of modern and ballet and modern dance. It was fantastic. It's just something so different."
John's approval is required for the $1.2 million production to expand beyond Alberta's borders. The hope is that the pop ballet will eventually be staged elsewhere in Canada or even internationally following its run in Calgary (which ends Sunday) and Edmonton.
With files from Margo Kelly
