Serving up a ‘great tasting menu’ of ballet
All Star Ballet Gala returns to shine light on new work and crowd-pleasing classics
Local dance fans have the chance to sample a choreographic cornucopia at the Sony Centre on Saturday night with the second edition of the Canada All Star Ballet Gala, an event that seeks to shine a spotlight not merely on great dancing, of which there promises to be plenty, but on the art of ballet itself.
Apart from featuring leading dancers from such illustrious companies as London’s Royal Ballet, Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky and Milan’s La Scala, the one-night-only performance will include work by choreographers rarely if ever represented on local stages such as Britain’s David Dawson and Douglas Lee, Italy’s Mauro Bigonzetti and Ukrainianborn Yuri Possokhov.
By the conventional rules of garden-variety ballet galas, this emphasis on art over mere crowd-pleasing showmanship might seem a risky undertaking. For Svetlana Lunkina, the 38-year-old National Ballet of Canada principal dancer and former Bolshoi star who is the mastermind behind the event, this is precisely what makes her gala distinctive.
“This is a cultural event,” says Lunkina. “It’s about the art form itself; a chance to celebrate and be inspired by it.”
As a leading dancer with the Bolshoi from 1997 until she decided in 2012 that Kleinburg, Ont., was a safer place than Moscow to live and raise a family, Lunkina was much in demand on the international gala circuit and remains so.
It was thus not surprising that after joining the National Ballet full-time in 2014, Lunkina began thinking about filling a conspicuous gap in the local dance landscape by producing a new kind of ballet gala for Toronto, one that would include National Ballet colleagues alongside international stars and be thoughtfully programmed to emphasize a specific theme.
With Lunkina’s own family resources to fund it — Vladislav Moskalev, her businessman/entrepreneur/impresario husband, is a huge ballet fan and seasoned hand at producing galas — and with a formidable international ballet Rolodex at her disposal, Lunkina launched her first Canada All Star Ballet Gala just last February.
That inaugural event focused on demonstrating the distinctions between the various historically established international styles of classical and neo-classical ballet. The enthusiastic audience response encouraged Lunkina to move ahead quickly with a second gala primarily focusing on modern and contemporary ballet choreography.
The only 19th-century classical bonbon on the 15-part program is a pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty.
There is a smattering of works from the 1940s, such as a torridly coital duet from French choreographer Roland Petit’s Carmen and Russian ballet master Victor Gsovsky’s retrolooking Grand Pas Classique, but most of the program features the Canadian premieres of much more recent work by such celebrated living choreographers as Christopher Wheeldon, whose full-length The Winter’s Tale opens the National Ballet’s new season on Nov. 10, and Wayne McGregor, also very familiar to local ballet fans.
In a deliberate nod to emerging local talents, the program also includes rising National Ballet dancers Emma Hawes and Christopher Gerty in an excerpt from Children of Chaos by National Ballet choreographic associate Robert Binet, given its fulllength premiere earlier this month as part of Fall for Dance North.
Lunkina explains that while she wants her gala to be entertaining she also hopes it will help audiences, who are sometimes wary of new work, appreciate the artistic continuum of ballet’s development.
“It’s a chance to see different approaches and different forms of bodily expression, yet all part of an historical evolution.”
“You could think of it as a great tasting menu,” says National Ballet principal dancer Evan McKie.
“It’s a wonderful mix, a portal into other programming and a nice kind of lead-in to the National Ballet season.”
McKie, a Canadian who until 2014 was based at Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet, is also a veteran of many galas but is picky about which invitations he accepts.
“I’m not one for galas where you feel you have to go out and do endless pirouettes. If I want to see circus I go to the circus. I like to show new choreography. The work itself has to be interesting.”
McKie will partner Lunkina in two of her three gala appearances, in Douglas Lee’s Mask and the “White Swan pas de deux” from Swan Lake, but not just any Swan Lake. Lunkina and McKie will perform a strippeddown, contemporary and controversial staging of the Tchaikovsky classic, choreographed by David Dawson in 2016 for the Scottish Ballet.
“It’s very different,” says Lunkina. “It’s incredibly challenging to dance and David demands so much of you, but somehow it becomes more personal because of that.”
Until the Canada All Star Ballet Gala arrived it had been several years since Toronto audiences had the chance to watch impressive international A-list dancers perform together. From1993 until 2010, Toronto was intermittently treated to the itinerant “Stars of the 21st Century” ballet gala, produced and imaginatively directed by Solomon and Nadia Veselova Tencer. From as early as 2002, Lunkina herself appeared in a number of them.
Galas are risky business and not necessarily an easy sell, at least at prices that will attract a 3,000-member audience.
It remains to be seen if the Canada All Star Ballet Gala grows long-lasting legs. McKie certainly hopes it does.
“It’s just so much fun. I hope we can do it again and again.” The Canada All Star Ballet Gala is at the Sony Centre, 1 Front Street E., on Saturday at 7 p.m.; canadaallstar.com or 1-855-872-7669. If you do decide to go, buy directly via Sony Centre’s official channel, Ticketmaster; otherwise you’ll pay a hefty premium to third-party ticket sellers.