White Stripes Ballet Coming to Canada

Ballet originally performed in London in 2006 to fairly good reviews.

By Fred Mills

Heading to Toronto anytime soon? Well, not actually soon; more like next November 24-28. But if you are, you should first consult the 2010-11 calendar of the National Ballet of Canada, as among the performances they'll be doing in the new season is Chroma by Britain's Wayne McGregor - a ballet featuring orchestral versions of White Stripes songs. (Thanks to Pitchfork for the tip.)

According to the NBoC's website, choreographer McGregor "revels in the amalgamation of the unlikely," which is a pretty fair description of how most folks would think about a marriage of contemporary ballet and White Stripes music.

"McGregor's multi-disciplinary works emerge from those experimental frontiers where the theoretical merges with the physical, and dance pushes up against and interacts with film, the visual arts, architecture, technology and science. Chroma, from 2006, is a perfect example. Set to a score of orchestrated versions of songs by the rock band The White Stripes, the work pits the angular, rough-edged music and the choreographer's energetic, exacting style against a stark, minimalist architectural space, allowing the audience to see the nature of physical movement in an entirely new and invigorating light."

So there you have it. Apparently the dancers will be performing in "flesh colored dancewear," which is entirely logical (should be white and red dancewear, actually). Although trying to imagine them hoofing it through "The Hardest Button to Button," "Aluminum" and "Blue Orchid" is a head scratcher, but no matter - this is all pretty intriguing news.

The ballet was previously staged in London in November of 2006 at the Royal Opera House and you can read a pretty lively review of it here.

Other shows during the 2010-11 season for the ballet company include relatively standard fare such as Cinderella, The Nutcracker and Don Quixote. Currently they have Swan Lake and West Side Story among the performances slated for the coming months.