The National Ballet of Canada/Winter Season Mixed Program, choreography by Antony Tudor, Marco Goecke, and David Dawson, Four Seasons Centre, closes Mar 2. Tickets here.
The purpose of a ballet mixed presentation is to expose the audience to the new and the different, while challenging the dancers by pushing boundaries, and that is exactly what the National Ballet does in this winter offering.
The first half of the program consists of The Leaves Are Fading by British American Antony Tudor (1908 – 1987) and the world premiere of German-born Marco Goecke’s Morpheus’ Dream. The second half is the debut of British choreographer David Dawson’s The Four Seasons.
David Dawson’s The Four Seasons
The ballet was first mounted on Dresden’s Semperoper Ballett in 2018, and is the major work on the program. Like most of Dawson’s creations, the piece was an instant hit, and obtaining the ballet for its North American premiere is a real coup for the National.
There is, however, a wrinkle.
The National already has a Four Seasons, namely the much beloved 1997 James Kudelka version. Thus, one assumes, that this new addition is going to be remarkably different, or why bring it into the repertoire. As it turns out, Dawson’s creation is far removed from Kudelka in both style and music.
Take the music, for example.
Dawson uses Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons. This reimagining of a classic by German/British composer Max Richter was released in 2012, and like all of Richter’s nouveau-classic pieces, his legion of fans propelled this recording to Number One on the classical music charts.
Richter has transformed Vivaldi’s four 17th century violin concerti by mixing in his edgy new composition. While hints of the original pop up to remind us of Vivaldi, this is essentially a new work, and its restless, anxious nature is right up Dawson’s ally.
Solo violinist Aaron Schwebel does a magnificent interpretation of Richter’s complex merging of the old and the new, accompanied by the excellent National Ballet Orchestra, conducted by David Briskin.
I see Dawson as medium cool. His works are intellectual, abstract and conceptual, but there are aways narrative and emotional threads that underlie his intensely athletic and highly physical dance style. His choreography pushes traditional ballet onto new planes by transforming shape and movement.
The central structure of The Four Seasons is a never-ending parade of dancers. As the company journeys through the seasons — spring, summer, autumn and winter — they move in a stream from right to left across the stage, which for Dawson represents the continuing evolutionary cycle of humanity.
Yumiko Takeshima has costumed the dancers in similarly styled body suits so they become indistinguishable everyman as they execute Dawson’s taxing choreography, tossing off intricate footwork, jumps, and turns at astonishing speed.
Each of the four Richter/Vivaldi movements has different patterning, sometimes a straight line, or a bunched group, or a circle formation, but always the dancers are crossing the stage in the endless mandated passage of life.
The first three movements have challenging duets that break away from the pack, which continues relentlessly behind them. They are very emotional in nature but in different ways, with each becoming more fraught as the seasons continue.
Genevieve Penn Nabity and Larkin Miller represent spring, Heather Ogden and Ben Rudisin summer, and Calley Skalnik and Spencer Hack autumn. Difficult lifts and intricate body configurations dominate the structure of the duets. Interestingly, the entire company performs winter propelled by Richter’s pulsating, menacing score.
The evolutionary cycle is also represented by Enzo Henze’s set design, which takes the form of large symbolic structures that slowly change positions both behind and above the dancers. The work begins with a pyramid on the back cyclorama, followed by a square frame above, then a straight line behind, and finally a circle above.
Bert Dalhuysen’s lighting baths these structures with colour such as bright red for the square and a vivid yellow for the circle. The movement and colour changes of these symbols match the subtle shifts in the dance itself. As the seasons progress, the lighter summer choreography becomes more heavy until the dense winter is reached.
Dawson’s complex The Four Seasons is both deep and thought-provoking. It is a ballet that demands a second showing so that the audience can get a better grip on its intricacies.
Coincidentally, as The Four Seasons was making its debut, the National announced that David Dawson had been appointed resident choreographer with the company, the first since 2007. This position gives Dawson a North American base while the National gets the brownie points for snagging one of the hottest choreographers of today.
Marco Goecke’s Morpheus’ Dream
Goecke is the bad boy of ballet. He infamously in 2023 smeared dog feces over the face of a critic who wrote bad reviews of his productions. The assault cost him his job as ballet director of Hannover State Opera in an incident that made headlines all over the world.
Interestingly, companies are able to separate Goecke the creator from real life, volatile Goecke, and thus his career continues. He is even becoming ballet director in Basel next season.
Not surprisingly, Goecke is the master of unsettling short ballets. Morpheus’ Dream is only 10 minutes in length but is so dark that one wouldn’t want the work to be any longer.
This world premiere is a reworking of a piece that Goecke set on Stuttgart Ballett in 2021 under the original title of Nachtmerrie, which means nightmare in German. The new title broadens the scope of the ballet. Now called Morpheus’ Dream, the work moves from the concrete idea of a nightmare to a more complex canvas.
Morpheus is the god of sleep, so what kind of dreams does the one who brings sleep, have himself?
The intense duet, performed with exacting precision by Genevieve Penn Nabity and Ben Rudisin, certainly has nightmarish qualities, which is in complete contrast to Keith Jarrett’s mellow, improvised, jazz fusion piano score.
We first see Rudisin in an awkward position, arms raised, with the lower arms and hands dangling from the bent elbows, his knees bent. The dancer performs a series of jagged steps, and this rough-hewn choreography continues throughout the piece, even after the woman (Nabity) arrives.
There are moments of calm in the ballet, but these are offset by the edgy, restless movement that is vintage Goecke. The arms, hands and upper torso shake, smash and spasm in rapid and wild outbursts of motion. Goecke has been accused of deliberately creating ugly dances, but his choreography is undeniably compelling to watch — like being fixated on a train wreck.
There seems to be no romance in this psychologically ravaged, fevered dream, dominated by frantic, jarring movement. The duet is fraught with tension and naked raw emotion, yet the impact is powerful as the two dancers, despite their frenzied attempts, fail to connect in any meaningful way.
Morpheus’ dream is built upon turmoil, a visceral nightmare of a distorted and disturbed mind that is expressed through striking, idiomatic choreography.
In a huge surprise, which also generated a degree of laughter, as the piece comes to an end, we hear Lady Gaga singing from her hit song, Bad Romance. The lyrics are certainly appropriate — “I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as it’s free”.
The program states that Morpheus’ Dream is the National’s first original commission from Goecke, which implies more to come, so stay tuned.
Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading
A mixed program always contains a tutu ballet, meaning a work evoking traditional ballet. While Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading puts a modernist spin on the genre, this beautiful work, created in 1975, is in sharp relief to the state-of -the-art choreography of Dawson and Goecke.
The ballet is celebrating its 50th anniversary and what a welcome return it is. The National last performed Tudor’s beloved work in 1995.
Along with George Balanchine, Tudor is considered among the first originators of modern ballet dance forms. He is also credited with developing the psychological ballet, meaning dance expression that is the outward manifestation of the psyche. His characters are caught up in some kind of emotional turmoil, and his themes are very human ones.
Tudor did create tragic and comic works, but ballet historians state that the choreographer’s true legacy rests with his dramatic psychological ballets that convey inner conflict or spring from some strong motivation. These aspects of character are also visible in the narrative or symbolic nature of the corps de ballet. In other words, the corps is there for a reason.
The Leaves Are Fading contains all these aspects as well as Tudor’s trademark poetic elegance that is often tinged with poignant melancholy. The choreographer’s choice of music was always exceptional, and this ballet is performed to the haunting beauty of Antonin Dvorak’s chamber music for strings.
A woman enters a leafy glen in late summer. Clearly this is a special place for her as she reflects on happy memories of times past, which are rendered through a group of young people in dance. As the day darkens, and the leave fade, the woman leaves this beloved place carrying these nostalgic memories with her.
Ming Cho Lee’s gorgeous set dominates the stage on all three sides so that the dance is surrounded by trees. Jennifer Tipton’s lighting slowly darkens as it follows the path of the setting sun.
The work is set on 15 dancers and the walk-on (Alexandra MacDonald). The women wear lovely pink, knee-length flowing ballet dresses with the men sporting blousy shirts and tights designed by Patricia Zipprodt.
The ensemble is a joyous group. The girls perform gay circle dances, and when the men arrive, couples form, and the friends share in the happiness of their gathering.
The various duets are gorgeous. Rapture is captured in high lifts. The bodies of the dancers sensuously entwine closely together. The couples look lovingly at each other. One duet is allowed to stand out and Tirion Law and Naoya Ebe magnificently perform one of the most lushly romantic pas de deux in all of ballet.
There are nine women and six men, so we have three girls without partners. Tudor has them hold hands and dance prettily together, but perhaps not as gaily as before.
Sometimes the group dance together, sometimes they perform separately. Occasionally a man or a woman grab a partner’s hand, and they run off into the woods. No matter what the patterning of the choreography, the stage is always a whirl of movement. The dance is energetic, but never rambunctiously so. Grace and refinement are the Tudor stamp.
While The Leaves Are Fading might seem a tad old-fashioned, its beauty and sophistication cannot be denied.
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