Yukichi Hattori, centre, plays an Elton John fan in the spectacular Alberta Ballet production of Love Lies Bleeding.
Marsha Lederman
Vancouver— Globe and Mail Update
Published Thursday, Apr. 14, 2011 4:01PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Apr. 14, 2011 4:04PM EDT
Love Lies Bleeding, Alberta Ballet’s 2010 work set to pop songs by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, will travel to Vancouver later this year.
Love Lies Bleeding will be performed at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre from October 13-15.
Ballet BC’s 2011/12 season, announced Thursday, will also include
Bliss, a full program of work by Ballet BC’s resident choreographer José Navas, including a reprisal of his 2010 premiere
The bliss that from their limbs all movement takes.
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will bring
Svengali to Vancouver next April. The new ballet by Mark Godden will feature film projections by Guy Maddin (
My Winnipeg).
The season will open September 23 with The National Ballet of Canada’s 60th anniversary tour, featuring works by William Forsythe, Jerome Robbins and Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite.
Ballet BC’s 2011/12 season will also feature new works from choreographers Robert Glumbek, Aszure Barton and Ballet BC Artistic Director Emily Molnar.
Littler: Calgary’s becoming known for theatre, dance and arts events
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/806189--calgary-s-becoming-known-for-theatre-dance-and-arts-events
A two-hour ballet inspired by the life of Elton John - Love Lies Bleeding - has its world premiere May 6 - 9 in Calgary.
Charles Hope Photo
CALGARY—Culturally speaking, Calgary’s image has long been associated with 10-gallon hats, high-heeled boots and anything oil can buy.
Reality, as is so often the case, dictates otherwise, save during a 10-day period (July 9-18 this year) when the Stampede pleads Southern Alberta’s case for incorporation into the State of Texas.
Consider what confronts visitors in the finally snow-free weeks ahead. In the field of festivals alone there are the Calgary Ukrainian Festival, the Calgary International Blues Festival, the Live Stage Urban Arts Festival, the Calgary International Children’s Festival, the Reggae Festival and Global Fest.
Dance attractions range from flamenco to folk to contemporary ballet, with one of Western Canada’s finest ensembles,
Alberta Ballet, under the energetic direction of Jean Grand-Maître inspiring even Elton John to offer to collaborate on a mainstage production. The two-hour, million-dollar-plus ballet called
Love Lies Bleeding, inspired by Sir Elton’s life and music, with choreography by Grand-Maitre, had its world premiere in Calgary May 6.
Edmonton, which likes to call itself Festival City and likes as well to think of itself as the culturally deeper destination, has valid historical reasons for its attitude. Today, however, Calgary is on the march, passing its northern neighbour in size, mounting even more festivals and arguably supporting more artists as well.
Having recently staged a successful production of Mozart’s
Don Giovanni,
Calgary Opera is looking forward to a future mounting—the first in Canada—of the opera our superstar tenor Ben Heppner is currently premiering in Dallas, Jake Heggie’s
Moby-Dick. Earlier this season the Alberta company presented the latest of a number of operas yet to be encountered in Toronto, Mark Adamo’s
Little Women.
Under Roberto Minczuk’s direction the
Calgary Philharmonic has rebounded from its near-bankruptcy of five years ago to enter a new period of solvent growth, housed in one of Canada’s finest musical venues, the Jack Singer Concert Hall.
And theatregoers who can’t obtain tickets to the Siminovitch Prize-winning playwright Daniel MacIvor’s
Communion at the Martha Cohen Theatre these days will find plenty of alternatives at Stage West, Vertigo Theatre, Pumphouse Theatre, the Martha Bell Theatre or a number of other venues devoted to the spoken word. The city has become home to more than two dozen professional theatre companies.
With a budget of $3.75 million, Calgary Arts Development funds about 150 arts organizations annually and small wonder. A recent study put Calgary at the top among Canadian cities in per capita consumer spending on culture.
The city benefits as well from a newish provincial arts policy, Spirit of Alberta, reversing a western Canadian belt-tightening trend in provincial arts support that continues to affect the cities of neighbouring British Columbia.
Not that the avant-garde seems to be especially welcome, as yet. Strolling through the city’s art galleries a visitor finds naturalism habitually trumping abstraction. A recent director of the prestigious Glenbow Museum reportedly lost his job in part because of a declared intention to champion more adventurous contemporary artists.
And yet, there is now an identifiable cultural district in Calgary, with at least a dozen venues occupying prime downtown real estate, and at least a dozen events can be found listed daily on the Calgary Arts Development website.
Walking among the glass-sheathed skyscrapers of the downtown streets one notices, as well, the results of a civic requirement that capital projects contribute one per cent of their budget to public art. Calgary is even slated to build a bridge by the ultramodernist Spanish architect
Santiago Calatrava.
This is, of course, a new-looking city, much of whose history has fallen to the wrecking balls of progress. Although the earliest signs of human settlement date back an impressive 12,000 years, the metropolis of the Bow River Valley became that only in recent decades.
Yes, Calgary now hosts Canada’s second-largest zoo, easily reachable by an efficiently modern light rail system, and the Saddledome plays host to many of the same attractions who appear in Toronto’s Air Canada Centre. Does this make the city of the Flames and the Stampeders a destination comparable with the city of the Maple Leafs and the Argonauts? Athletically, yes. Culturally, not quite.
And yet, those hats and boots belie a place that has become well worth a visit for reasons other than bucking broncos and business deals. Canada’s foremost piano competition, the
Esther Honens, takes place here.
One Yellow Rabbit Theatre launched High Performance Rodeo here, reportedly the biggest such festival west of Luminato.
Back in 1887 the British parliamentarian W.S. Caine described Calgary being “as quiet as an English country village.” How times have changed.
Elton John OK's Love Lies Bleeding tour
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/theatre/story/2010/06/22/elton-john-alberta-ballet.html
Alberta Ballet will take new work on the road
Love Lies Bleeding will tour in 2011 after getting a go-ahead from Elton John. (CBC)
Elton John has given the thumbs-up to a tour of
Love Lies Bleeding, the Alberta Ballet production based on his life and music.
The ambitious work choreographed by Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maître premiered May 6 in Calgary.
Although John was not able to attend the ballet because of a scheduling conflict, his friend and adviser Ray Cooper was there on opening night.
Based on Cooper's advice — and critical acclaim — John has approved a tour of the multimedia production starting in 2011, Alberta Ballet announced Tuesday.
"I am proud of what the Alberta Ballet has created and I am looking forward to seeing this ballet live on," John said in a statement.
"It is a strong, contemporary choreography that entertains and challenges dance audiences with its new esthetics and its powerful fusion of different art mediums. I hope it will attract thousands of new patrons to this wonderful art form."
Love Lies Bleeding drew critical acclaim for its mix of contemporary music, multimedia and colourful costumes. (CBC) John approached the Alberta Ballet about the project after seeing the company's well-received
Fiddle and the Drum, based on the music of Joni Mitchell, in 2007. He picked the music and gave Grand-Maître carte blanche for the rest of the $1.2-million production.
Grand-Maître said the tour would make his ballet company "cultural ambassadors of our province and our country around the world."
Love Lies Bleeding is set to 14 songs composed by John and Bernie Taupin including
Benny and the Jets, Crocodile Rock, I'm Going To Be A Teenage Idol and
Saturday Night's Alright (for Fighting).
Lead dancer Yukichi Hattori drew critical acclaim for his interpretation of John himself and the production was hailed for its use of multimedia and colourful costumes.
On 13 April 2011, twelve year old Ryan Collinson from Southport, becomes the twenty-sixth boy to play the title role in the West End production of Elton John and Lee Hall’s musical that is about to celebrate its 6th anniversary at the Victoria Palace Thea
British singer Elton John performs on Nov. 3, 2010. He'll play on the Plains of Abraham this July. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press) 
Yukichi Hattori, centre, plays an Elton John fan in the spectacular Alberta Ballet production of Love Lies Bleeding.
Today, 13 April 2011, twelve year old Ryan Collinson from Southport, becomes the twenty-sixth boy to play the title role in the West End production of BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL. The internationally award-winning show, which opened a the Victoria Palace Theatre in 2005, has been seen by over 6 million people worldwide, including 3 million in the West End. Ryan becomes the 56th boy to play Billy Elliot worldwide since Jamie Bell in the award-winning film.
