BALLET AT GRANDSTAND
Hallelujah! It’s Cohen’s music
At last year’s TransAlta Grandstand Show at the Calgary Stampede, the dancers from Alberta Ballet dazzled with their interpretation of Prince’s Purple Rain.
They made their dancing look as effortless as it was beautiful and spectacular.
According to Alberta Ballet’s artistic director Jean GrandMaitre, who choreographed Purple Rain, that ease and grace was quite an illusion.
“We rehearse these Grandstand ballets in our studio, which is not even a quarter of the size of the actual TransAlta Stage,” says Grand-Maitre.
“The dancers have to multiply everything they learn by threes. Every step they take has to be three times as huge and their jumps so much higher. I call what they end up doing sprinting. It’s a real killer for the dancers because it’s like putting a magnifying glass on their ballet. I wouldn’t ask them to do much more than five or six minutes.”
Grand-Maitre says he never hears a complaint about the demands of such a performance.
“The dancers love it. They are real athletes and these performances are as athletic as they are esthetic so it’s really fun for them.”
Because Alberta Ballet made such a splash with audiences last year, the Grandstand Show’s producer Dave Pierce asked them back for this year’s production of Together, a tribute to the Canadian spirit.
“Last year’s homage to Prince was such a success with audiences Dave wanted another one this year, and he felt it absolutely had to be an homage to Leonard Cohen and I couldn’t have agreed with him more.”
Grand-Maitre’s enthusiasm was dampened temporarily when Pierce said he was using Cohen’s Hallelujah as the song.
“I had choreographed to k.d. lang’s version of Hallelujah in Balletlujah and I was afraid I’d be influenced by that version, but Dave said he and Adam James, who’ll be singing, worked together on an entirely new version of the song and it really was a whole new inspiration for me.”
For last year’s Purple Rain, Grand-Maitre used only the company’s male dancers, but this year Pierce asked for the entire company of 12 women and eight men.
“We’ve dressed the dancers identically. They are all look- alike Cohens dressed in his archetypal hat and suit. You might not even know which dancers are male or female and that’s part of the impression we wanted for the dance.”
Grand-Maitre is excited to be part of the Grandstand Show because, “we dance for 250,000 people over the run of the Stampede.
“We play to around 17,000 people a night. That amounts to the entire audience we get for our yearly Nutcracker performance in one night.
“It’s so exciting and gratifying and it’s really challenging because it becomes our job not only to entertain these audiences but to touch them emotionally as well.”
For Hallelujah this year, singer Adam James is performing on an elevated platform above the dancers.
“Because Adam is performing live, it will give the dance a new feeling every night. It will be electric for the dancers, as well as the audience,” promises GrandMaitre.