‘Love Lies Bleeding’
Rocking out with Alberta Ballet
“Sir Elton John wants to give you tickets and meet you,” the caller said.
Jean Grand-Maître, the Alberta Ballet artistic director, thought it was a joke.
Houston audiences will soon see it was not. That phone call led to the 2010 Las Vegas-meets-Broadway spectacle “Love Lies Bleeding,” which rockets into the Wortham Theater Center Friday-Feb. 1.
It’s the second of four collaborations with pop stars that have become a signature for the Canadian When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday Where: Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas Tickets: $40-$95, 713-2272787, houstonballet.org company since 2008, when it premiered Joni Mitchell’s “The Fiddle and the Drum.” Dances to music by Sarah MacLachlan and k.d. lang also are in their lineup.
In the pop music world,
as in the ballet world, one relationship often leads to another. When Mitchell’s friend Michael Hewitson heard about “The Fiddle and the Drum,” a contemporary ballet that expresses the environmental crisis of the Iraq War, he was intrigued enough to tell his boss. He’s retired now, but for years Hewitson was Elton John’s personal manager.
Hewitson arranged the first backstage meeting with the British megastar in Calgary. A few months later, after he’d watched the Mitchell ballet on DVD, Elton John invited the choreographer to Las Vegas to talk.
Grand-Maître was surprised that Elton John didn’t want to dwell on his fame. Instead, he envisioned a ballet about all the troubles he’d overcome, from addictions to the age of AIDS and coming out before it was common.
“He wanted me to use some of the struggles he had to educate people,” Grand-Maître said. “He envisioned a battle with someone and their inner demons, which is a perfect narrative for ballet. Especially because we know that in the end, he won. He’s married now, with two kids.”
Grand-Maître based the show on a character named Elton Fan who experiences ups and downs similar to his idol’s.
“I don’t think dance is the best art form for biographies,” he said. “This is like the dream of a play about the cult of celebrity in a certain era. There’s a dangerous world around him.” It became a little bit of a “Citizen Kane” story about simple things in life being the most satisfying, he added.
Not that the production looks simple. Costume designer Martine Bertrand based its 150 outrageously bawdy costumes on the performer’s. The dazzling array of special effects includes projections, flying and, um, a scene in which flames appear shoot out from the lead dancer’s rear end as he roller blades across the stage.
“Love Lies Bleeding” is so outrageous, beyond baroque, it could give you a hangover. It reflects the flamboyant spirit of the 1970s and ’80s — hallucinatory times, GrandMaître said.
“It had to be provocative. If you don’t go there, you’ve missed the shot.”
Since the music swerves from honky-tonk to rock to ballads, GrandMaître took carte blanche with dance styles. He was also working at the time with Cirque du Soleil on performances for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Some of that crept in, along with Bob Fosseinspired jazz and a bit of Old Hollywood musical glitz. There’s some dancing en pointe, but “Love Lies Bleeding” is a ballet only in the sense that it’s performed by a ballet company.
GrandMaître didn’t see it as the kind of project that called for choreographic innovation. “It’s more performance art,” he said.
Elton John donated the music rights, normally one of the most expensive aspects of staging a new work. He also helped choose the show’s 14 songs and suggested the title. (Although the song by that name isn’t included.)
Grand-Maître got the green light just a few weeks before the company announced its 2010 season; his board, in shock, scrambled to raise $1.3 million to produce the extravaganza, which came with a caveat: Elton John wanted to give his blessing before the show left the company’s home theaters in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta. (A DVD sufficed; he has yet to see it live.)
That was risky, GrandMaître admitted. “But once you’ve got a foot in the door, you’ve got to go for it.”
“Love Lies Bleeding” was an instant hit, selling out even after the company doubled the number of premiere performances. While it has been the most financially successful of Alberta’s so-called “portrait” ballets, GrandMaître’s board now expects a new pop-music based production every two years.
Those dances now rotate through the company’s subscription seasons, almost as obligatory as “The Nutcracker.” The 2012 McLachlan collaboration “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” traces a woman’s journey of love. Last year brought “Balletlujah!” with lang, about finding love on the prairie.
Other factors may have contributed, but since 2008, the company’s subscription base has doubled, its roster has grown to 34 dancers and its season now stretches to 46 weeks with touring. And it’s become a hot property on the road.
Alberta also has added four big classical story ballets to its repertoire: “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Swan Lake,” “Giselle” and Houston Ballet’s production of “Don Quixote.”
“Love Lies Bleeding” also has helped facilitate an important exchange, enabling Houston Ballet to travel to Canada to give eight performances of Stanton Welch’s “La Bayadère.”
“I feel like we’ve been able to move the art form forward a little bit,” said Jennifer Faulker, Alberta Ballet’s associate executive director.
Grand-Maître worries sometimes that his company might be pigeonholed. “You can be a victim of a certain success,” he said. “Sustainability in the arts means an educated audience. You want people to understand dance in all its forms.”
He doesn’t know if “Love Lies Bleeding” will be around in five or 10 years, but he believes portrait ballets help balance a repertoire that includes classical masterpieces, family entertainment and avant-garde ballets, which are the toughest to sell.
His dancers are more open to stylistic diversity than he was as a young man, he said. And some relatively iconic pop music can be new to them. With an average age of 20, most of them had never heard “Rocket Man” before; they only knew of Elton John as the composer of “The Lion King” and “Billy Elliott.”
While Grand-Maître still likes to kick the can with classical composers, working with living music legends has been profound for him, too. “It’s been as nourishing as any ballet I ever choreographed to Stravinsky,” he said. “All of them have a vibration — passion, tolerance, something about them that wants to change the world.”
For the musicians — even stars as iconic as Elton John and Mitchell — a ballet brings a new approach to their work along with cultural cache. It’s also tax-deductible.
Canned music can be an anathema for ballet aficionados, although legendary choreographers such as Sir Christopher Bruce and Paul Taylor have produced notable exceptions. Houston Ballet fans know Bruce’s “Sergeant Early’s Dream” (with the Chieftans), “Hush” (to Bobby McFerrin songs) and “Rooster” (to the Rolling Stones) and Taylor’s “Company B” (to the Andrews Sisters).
Grand-Maître said shows like “Love Lies Bleeding” tap into a different kind of emotion.
“People really react. It’s like a rock concert,” he said. “They clap, they laugh. The dancers freaked out the first night.”
While some pop songs may the nuances of classical music, Grand-Maître hears contagious joy and deep melancholy in the compositions by Elton John and his lyricist, Bernie Taupin.
“There’s something human inside of it,” he said. “This music has been around for decades. There’s something in it that lasts.”
molly.glentzer@chron.com