The National Ballet of Canada's 2011-12 season, which celebrates the company's 60th anniversary, is full of surprises. Not only are the production choices unusual, but the time-honoured format of one full-length ballet and one mixed concert per fall, winter and summer season has also been overturned.
To kick off the anniversary year, artistic director Karen Kain announced the world premiere of Romeo and Juliet (Nov. 16 to 27) by red-hot Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. John Cranko's version of Romeo and Juliet, long considered a National Ballet signature piece, has been retired.
Kain told The Globe that the Cranko version no longer defines the National Ballet. "It represented an era," she says. "Now many companies perform Cranko, and our sets and costumes are always being rented out somewhere." Kain also noted that the company has the world rights to the Ratmansky version, which increases touring possibilities. The new Romeo and Juliet, set to the beloved Prokofiev score, is the only production in the fall.
The winter season consists of three full-length ballets - Sir Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée (Feb. 29 to March 4), Rudolf Nureyev's The Sleeping Beauty (March 10 to 18) and John Neumeier's The Seagull (March 21 to 25).
Kain outlined her reasons for having three full-length ballets in one season: First, the 60th-anniversary celebration is a tribute to the National Ballet's volunteer committee, which has underwritten 47 new ballets for the repertoire over the years. Ashton's Fille was the first ballet the group funded in 1976. The Sleeping Beauty returns because it is the quintessential classical ballet, while The Seagull, based on Chekhov's play, is an example of contemporary ballet at its dramatic best. The company presented the North American premiere of The Seagull in 2008.
The summer season is back to the regular format. The full-length work is the North American premiere of Kevin O'Day's Hamlet (June 1 to 10). The mixed program (June 13 to 17) brings back Wayne McGregor's Chroma, the runaway hit from last season. Chroma is coupled with Maurice Béjart's powerful male duet Song of a Wayfarer, set to Mahler's moving song cycle, and Sir Kenneth MacMillan's saucy Elite Syncopations, performed to Scott Joplin's ragtime score.
The National Ballet will also tour this fall to Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo and Winnipeg in September and October with William Forsythe's the second detail, Jerome Robbins's pas de deux Other Dances and Crystal Pite's award-winning Emergence. Both the Forsythe and Pite pieces were originally created for the company. The Seagull production tours to Ottawa in the spring of 2012.
James Kudelka's The Nutcracker (Dec. 10 to 31) also returns for its annual holiday-season run.