YOUNG TALENT
Laure Billeau rehearses the role of the young Maleficent with École de Ballet Ouest de Montréal director and choreographer Claude Caron.
Maleficent is now a ballet. The production by the École de Ballet Ouest de Montréal comes to the Salle Pauline-Julien for five shows over three days, beginning May 26.
The ballet is based on the 2014 Disney film starring Angelina Jolie in the title role. The film and now the ballet take a look at the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale from the perspective of the evil fairy Maleficent. She is evil for a reason. Betrayed and maimed as a child by an ambitious friend, Maleficent grows up to curse the baby Aurora, then lives to regret her decision. Twists and turns abound.
School director and choreographer Claude Caron, who is also artistic director and choreographer of the professional company Ballet Ouest, sets the ballet against a backdrop of layered images projected onto an upstage screen. The music is plucked from the movie soundtrack, with some adjustments made to the arrangements to accommodate the choreography.
“I love seeing the story of Sleeping Beauty told from a different perspective,” Caron said. “And it was a story which allowed me to put more dancers onstage.”
There are 37 scenes, 500 dancers ranging in age from preschool to adult, and close to 600 costumes. Caron choreographed 18 of the scenes including all the segments involving the ballet’s six leads. The remaining scenes are choreographed by the school’s eight ballet, jazz and contemporary teachers.
“I never want the movement to stop,” Caron said. “I want the audience to feel like they are watching a live movie.”
During a recent rehearsal break at the Ballet Ouest studios in Pointe-Claire, Raphael Bernardi (the young Stephan); Andrew Barkman (grown Stephan); Laure Billeau (young Maleficent); Sabrina Polewczuk (grown Maleficent); Mateo Picone (Prince Philip) and Sylvia McCaughey (Aurora) sat in a circle and talked about the excitement swirling around the reworking of the film as a ballet.
“I like how empowering the role of Maleficent is,” Polewczuk said. “She controls everyone.”
Polewczuk dances alone throughout, unlike McCaughey and Picone who dance a pas de deux — as is the case in the original Sleeping Beauty ballet.
“And they kiss!” one of the dancers shared with a big grin.
Polewczuk and McCaughey are graduates of the ballet school’s Danse-Études program and junior members of the company’s corps de ballet.
Picone, who danced with the company this season in Caron’s production Pinocchio, recently won male dancer of the year at the American Dance Awards’ Montreal event and has been invited to the National Championship in Orlando, Fla., in July.
“What (Caron) does with this show is the raison d’être for us all being here,” Barkman said of the Maleficent show. “Our purpose is to get onstage and tell stories.”
“I don’t think of Maleficent as a school show,” Caron said. “It’s a production that uses dancers as young as three years old.”
Following the Maleficent run, Caron gets busy preparing Ballet Ouest’s trip to New York in July to perform his ballet Mechanical Waltz at the United Nations.
The commissioned ballet about the devastating effects of climate change was first performed at the World Social Forum in Montreal last August.
The École de Ballet Ouest de Montréal performs Maleficent at the Salle Pauline-Julien (15615 Gouin Blvd. in Ste-Geneviève), May 26 at 7 p.m., May 27-28 at 1 and 4 p.m. Tickets cost $20. For reservations, visit www.balletouest.com.