National Ballet of Canada’s Le Petit Prince: choreographed by Guillaume Côté; Kevin Lau, composer; sets and costumes by Michael Levine. Performances to June 2 at the Four Season’s Centre for the Performing Arts.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince may be 73 years old in 2016, but the fable-like novella of an adult coming to terms with the long journey from childhood is ageless, and continues to inspire artists who wish to translate its deep layers of meaning into different media.
The latest is a made-in-Toronto effort presented on a grand scale at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts by the National Ballet of Canada. Saturday night’s opening performance was a showcase of remarkably fine choreography by principal dancer Guillaume Côté, an engaging score by composer Kevin Lau, and a brilliant set and costumes by Michael Levine, alongside impressive lighting by David Finn.
I’m not entirely sure that the whole of this Petit Prince is greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts do assemble into two hours of arresting dance with striking visuals and music to make it come alive.
Côté and the National Ballet chose a popular story that, because of its deeply psychological content, should be able to translate the author’s intentions into movement. With a bit of narrative juggling and re-prioritizing, Côté largely succeeds, especially in re-casting the Wild Birds into a dance equivalent of a Greek chorus, acting as a through element in the story.
The first half of the ballet is a succession of breathtaking solos, pas-de-deux and ensemble pieces that unfold inside Levine’s magical black box riddled with circular doors that offer up a multitude of visual tricks and treats. I found it worked best to imagine the black box as a metaphor for the inside of the aviator’s head (or heart).
The second half is much tamer than the first, and the role of the fox, the conveyor of so much wisdom to the title character, seems a bit too abridged in its translation to the stage. But Côté redeems the ending with a touching reunion between the prince, the aviator and the rose.
If Côté portends a bright future forToronto ballet choreography, Kevin Lau represents the same for music for the stage. The composer has a lot of experience for someone still in his 30s, much of it in the writing of music for film. This experience shows in an uncanny ability to evoke mood with a few, simple musical strokes.
Lau’s score is not memorable music, however, with much of it sounding like something out of an epic movie blockbuster. But it more than succeeds as a beguiling vehicle for Côté’s story. The orchestration is colourful, deftly interweaving textures and changing shapes – even if, at times, big crescendo passages are not paralleled by an equivalent increase in drama o the stage.
The music pulsed with life, thanks to David Briskin’s assured conducting, a great orchestra, and the wonderful acoustics of the Four Seasons Centre.
The dancing was uniformly excellent, but first soloist Dylan Tedaldi deserves special praise for his turn as the Little Prince on opening night (a role he shares with two other dancers over the course of the run). Tedaldi combined purpose and vulnerability, strength and childhood innocence, and moved about the stage with the ease and lightness of a butterfly.
Given the cost of creating a two-hour work from scratch for a main stage, it is so rare for us to experience something on the scale of Le Petit Prince in Toronto. How gratifying that the National Ballet has been willing to take this risk – and that is has turned out so nicely.
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