(orchestra tuning)
(indistinct chatter)
(piano playing)
(applause)
- Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
my name is David Fountain.
And Margaret and I are our daughter, Gwyneth,
we're delighted to be here with you today on this very
special evening.
We as Nova Scotians are especially pleased,
the world premiere of Anne of Green Gables, The Ballet
is taking place in Halifax tonight.
Anne is truly an East Coast Canadian story,
I know you all think that Anne spent her whole life
on Prince Edward Island,
but I may remind you that Anne's story begins
at an orphanage, what they called asylum, at the time
in Nova Scotia,
and we're very happy to welcome her back.
(audience laughing)
As you know, it takes a lot of time,
a lot of hard work and a lot of people
to make an event like this happen.
And we'll try and thank Bengt
and the whole creative artistic team.
(audience applause)
(klieg light turning on)
(orchestra plays bright music)
(wind blowing)
(single violin playing)
- [Kate Butler] I was so harrowed up in my mind
last night that I didn't think
about my clothes at all, said Anne.
(pages turning)
I'll fold them nicely tonight.
They always made us do that at the asylum,
half the time though, I'd forget.
(pages turning)
I'd be in such a hurry to get into bed.
Nice and quiet.
And imagine things.
(pages turning)
Lucy Maud Montgomery was a photographer.
She was a gardener.
She did handiwork.
As a child she started writing
and I think there was never a time in her life
when she didn't write, she had to write.
- Anne of Green Gables is just such a heartwarming,
wonderful, iconically Canadian story.
- Anne's story is so powerful and compelling
because it's change. It's family. It's legacy.
- [Kate Butler] Anne of Green Gables is just relatable.
Everybody relates to her.
And I think she's about belonging
and she's about friendship and love and she's feisty.
She doesn't take things sitting down.
She spoke up for herself.
In 1908 when Lucy published Anne of Green Gables,
she wasn't recognized.
The book was rejected five times by publishers.
And finally she decided to give it one more go.
And she sent it to Page & Company. A Boston Company.
There was a secretary at the publishing house who loved
Prince Edward Island, who really pushed this through
and made sure that the powers that be would read it
and they did, and they accepted it.
And then here we are,
more than a hundred years later, still in print,
been translated into more than 40 languages
around the world.
Adaptation is a very interesting thing.
And to know that it's being adapted for a ballet,
it's just a natural progression.
I really feel that it landed in the right hands.
(pages turning)
- For any ballet, it really starts with the artist
and the artistic team,
and it starts with Bengt and his artistic vision
and his creativity as a choreographer.
The ballet like Anne of Green Gables
really started with Bengt's vision
for what that ballet could be.
- [Kate Butler] I just loved him from the minute I met him.
And then we had lots of meetings on the phone
and I just think he's true blue.
He's like the salt of the earth.
He's trying to do the right thing and do a good job.
- Think of a great Canadian story.
Well, Anne of Green Gables is probably right up there.
It's one of the, not the most Canadian story.
What other stories should we do next?
There's no other story that's more suited for us,
that reflects communities that we work in and that we're
proud to share with all of Canada and beyond.
So it was a natural choice.
And the real question was
why haven't anyone done this already?
A full length ballet of Anne of Green Gables.
And so here we are.
- [Female dancer] I think so, yeah, 'cause one time, I.
(bright orchestral music)
- The partnership between Canada's Ballet Jorgen,
and George Brown is our most important partnership.
It's been around 27 or 28 years now.
And Bengt started teaching in the George Brown dance program
years ago and was brought on as the artistic director
of the program. We've moved in here with our office space.
The company has access to the studios,
also having access to young dancers
who want a career in dance.
(piano music)
- Ballet Jorgen is famous for doing the grand ballets,
executing them with great honesty, charm and expertise.
Dance excellence.
- [Robert Brouwer] Ballet Jorgen's been doing this
for over 25 years, bringing performing arts,
bringing ballet to communities that would never,
ever otherwise have access to that kind of art form.
- This is new ground for Ballet Jorgen,
but it's a path they know.
- Ballet Jorgen, a hundred percent creates new work.
So that means that everything that we do
has ultimately not been done before, except by us.
(piano music)
- This is the first time that a full length ballet,
based on Anne of Green Gables has been created.
So there's been a lot of excitement
and interest around that.
(piano music)
- The book, it's so strong.
Just changing the medium or expression to dancing,
in my mind, I hope is going to be more direct and profound.
- [Heinar Piller] Ballet Jorgen is the logical one
to do this production.
(door crash bar activating)
- My name is Hannah Mae Cruddas.
I started dancing when I was three,
in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
I had been in a kinder music class where all of the moms
and kids would sit in a circle and clap along to rhythm.
And I would not sit still and clap.
I just got up and spun the whole time.
I was about 10 years old when I saw Ballet Jorgen perform
for the first time. And I thought, Hmm,
this is something I'd like to do.
That one time when I was 10, when I watched Ballet Jorgen,
I was also doing a solo,
and that was kind of the first time that Bengt saw me.
When they came to town to do Anastasia,
it was the world premiere and I got to be a local dancer.
I had an interaction with one of the company dancers.
And I got to observe all of the company
in their natural habitat.
It was then that I knew that this company
in particular was exactly where I wanted to be.
This is my first time as a, kind of, first cast lead role.
And the first time that I've had a lead role created
with me in the room.
Anne is such a strong character.
If I can figure out how to just slide
into who she should be, I think she'll carry it.
And it won't be me. It'll be, it'll be her.
There are so many moments in the book that I can glean from.
And Bengt, I know, will have wonderful choreography,
so it'll be a really exciting,
slightly terrifying experience.
- Okay. So just into the nature bow,
we're just going to work the transition.
Okay.
You're ready.
(bright music begins)
(on pointe toes moving across the room)
Good. Thank you. We're going to pause.
(music ends)
Okay. Good.
Little calmer, sprites, but that's a good look,
I like it.
(quiet giggle)
Yeah. It's alive.
Now. What are you doing when you wake up?
- I see the beautiful tree come to life in front of me.
(group laughter)
- And I would expect nothing less from Anne Shirley
than what I just got.
(group laughter)
So it's all good.
All right. Perfect.
(music begins)
- Hannah loves Anne.
Just from the core of her soul
and just wants her to be true.
- [Kate Butler] I love Hannah's expressions.
She also sorta embodied the character like no other.
- I have always loved Anne.
I think I've read the first book when I was eight.
And I read all eight of the books.
I've always felt a true connection with her.
I've really admired her,
her strength and her bravery
and her beautiful, bubbly energy, her imagination.
All of these things that are quintessentially Anne.
Now getting a chance to work on that in the studio
and try to figure out the best ways possible
to bring that essence of Anne through dance.
- I think every dancer,
their personality's reflected in their dancing.
When I read Anne, I see Anne being danced by Hannah Mae.
So we're going to see how close we get
to everybody's idea, who Anne really is.
(indistinct chatter)
Why am I sitting in the center?
- [Heinar Pillar] Because you are the center.
- [Sue Lepage] You are the center
- You know how uncomfortable that makes me feel
when people that make me the center of attention.
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
- It seems to me that you, you know, you would naturally,
you would root Anne's dance in her experience of nature,
which was something that we've been building vocabulary
for all the way through.
- Yeah, because she.
- [Sue Lepage] So you could start off with a couple
of nature people with her or, or handmaids or anything,
but you, it doesn't mean you have to start
in an abstract place.
- No. I just think because she recites in the book
and it's always very.
- Mmhmm
- [Bengt Jorgen] Beautiful.
- [Sue Lepage] She transports
- [Bengt Jorgen] Transports people. Yes.
- Process. Very difficult because the main challenge
for us being a ballet production, i.e. not relying
on people's voices through singing or speaking,
and only using body language and gestures
and mime to a certain degree.
The book as it is written, the basis is Anne's wonderful,
precocious flow of words.
She uses words, which for a kid of her age,
is an encyclopedia almost,
and her fantasy just goes rampant.
You push a button, and she goes and imagines
the most heavenly place on earth.
That was the difficulty in using the novel
and translating it into movies.
I liked the idea of connecting with nature
and they don't have to be part of the dance,
- Yeah.
- Even if they're just there as a flower and she can refer
to it or whatever, and then continue her.
- Actually, we could have her classmates be.
- The tableau
- The tableau.
(bright orchestral music)
(ballet shoes hitting the floor)
- [Bengt Jorgen] Perfect.
Good. Thank you.
That's good.
That's nice. That works.
Now this little step here.
Doesn't look good for the ladies.
Maybe if we go cou-de-pied developpe out.
Or is it better is it better that we soutenu
and we bring it, cou-de-pied back?
Like when should we, when, when would we,
when would we switch over?
What's what feels?
Or just do it like a turn then. Okay.
Let's pique turn.
You stay back, you stay back.
Don't open it until we step up, with the step.
Can we try that? Cause this it, the line just isn't sharp.
We drop down on seven or we step tombe on seven.
- [All Responding] Six.
- Okay. So what does that mean?
We pique on three or four.
- [All Responding] Five
- Oh my God. I'm totally off.
Five. And.
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
- What are you thinking about Gilbert's dress right here.
- Make somebody look older specifically.
We put them in long pants.
We're like Norfolk jackets and things for the first time
and whether really that's restricted.
Again. I don't want to have a dancing students
all in jackets.
- So they take their jackets off.
- Yes, yeah.
- Meaning they lighten up.
- It's letting steam out.
- Yeah.
The process of adapting a novel into a ballet
is to bring something from a reference point to life
and to find shapes and rhythms and how to turn something
into a three-dimensional living world.
- Maybe 40, 40 costumes here for this ballet? You need?
- Hundred.
- Hundred, God! Oh my god!
- In a lot of ways,
my own tastes run to a kind of less is more sensibility.
I'm not one to start really flinging around the bling
unless I really feel the story is calling for it
and the moment needs it.
I'm at the preliminary design stage.
And so what I have here are tools that we use
to figure out things along the way.
Here are very small little thumbnail sketches.
These are thoughts for props and puppetry.
And this actually, this book, this workbook
is full of very simple sketches and rough notes
about what people might look like in a given scene
or a couple of them just in pencil,
but there's Anne herself.
And these are the things that would go out
and be given to the costume shop and presented
on the first day of rehearsal so that people would build
and things would go from there.
(pages turning)
(bright orchestral music)
- Bringing characters to life with dance
and with music is almost easy
because it's the emotions,
the characters have to be true.
And the arc of the characters have to work.
Character artist is usually something you get into later
in your career.
It's a dancing role because you're part of a ballet.
It doesn't have the sort of prowess of physicality
when it comes to, you know, high legs, lots of turns,
big jumps, flipping, but it has very important narrative
work with characterization within the context
of the story that you're telling.
- I became a dancer when I was seven years old,
this will be my 12th, 13th season.
I have been learning the role of Matthew Cuthbert.
He's awfully shy,
not very good with expressing through feelings.
And I find quite similar. And parallel to myself.
I find myself very expressive through dancing,
but not with the words.
So that is very similar to what I find is Matthew.
How he is and how I am is very close in that sense.
- If you look at it from,
you're not trying to take the words and put them on stage,
you're trying to take the emotions and the characters
and the feeling.
You have to bring it to life.
- She walks back to the table.
She sits down and
(hand slamming the table)
I'm here for you.
- I don't think, I think you're missing something still.
- Okay. We agree to disagree.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I feel it's too abrupt,
but I don't have the right answer for us.
- It's a breath. It's not a scene, it's a breath.
- [Bengt Jorgen] Yeah.
- [Heinar Pillar] Mmhmm.
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
(solemn music)
- I am the stage director.
Anything that is not dance. I take care of.
In other words, I try to, no, not try,
I succeed in turning dancers into actors.
The story requires a lot of acting scenes
and dramatic moments.
A moment is this.
Ah
(foot stamp)
You want it. Oh, ice cream! Where do you find it?
Whistle, okay
(foot stamping)
And I want some people to, not in sync, Oh ice cream,
others just go yay! Whatever, okay.
Whistle
(group yelling)
That's it, that's it, exactly.
The dancers.
They were inspired by the story
and brought new ideas to it.
How to do it.
Things like that came out of rehearsal.
(bright music)
- [Bengt Jorgen] That was better than on Friday.
Do you know when the trip has to happen or when you step in.
- Yeah
(indistinct)
- Don't push it, just.
You step in and put your foot out, he just
(foot stomp)
In this case, we're very lucky.
Our company's really young.
They are like sponges.
They take in anything you suggest and they do it.
And they take risks and it's a joy.
- [Female Voice] I think we need a new microwave.
- Well, yeah, we do. We could get another one.
- But more importantly, I think we need another fridge.
- We do
- It's a priority right now.
I would never joke about this sort of thing.
- That one?
- I'm originally from Brazil.
I started dancing there with a teacher called Anahita.
She was the one that pushed me to,
to become a professional ballet dancer.
I got a scholarship to a school in Vancouver,
I auditioned for the company.
And I've been with the company for 10 years now.
Ballet Jorgen is,
I would say a company filled with odd people.
Odd, and real people really
because everybody's different.
Everybody got their own personality.
And because of that, we were able to bring
a sense of realness to everything we do.
We can play many different characters
and it brings real life
into the stories that we tell.
- Not only are they diverse and talented,
but they're brave and gutsy and resourceful.
All dancers are disciplined,
but these dancers are in a different class altogether.
- I am from Stockholm, Sweden.
- (speaking Portuguese), Brazil.
- Colorado.
- New York.
- England.
- Vancouver.
- Halifax, Nova Scotia.
- Japan.
- Souffville, Ontario.
- From Brazil.
- Nova Scotia.
- Having to socialize with all these different mix of people
in one class just helps you grow as a person.
- I find people here, we're more like a family
than colleagues and we help each other a lot.
So I feel very, very supported in the environments.
We make our home.
We don't have this like place really,
but we have each other and it doesn't matter where we are.
We make it work. It's different from other companies.
- I have never felt this safe in a dance space
or like this cared about.
They just take me in. And they're all my friends.
- It's just a really, really nice environment.
I love dancing during rehearsals and class too.
It's always so much fun.
And the choreography is absolutely amazing.
(laughter)
- You respond to her, right? She's like (bird noise)
and she's already done it and you go, yeah, bird.
(laughter)
- Bengt is really hands-on.
He's always up out of his chair and he's acting,
he'll let you know exactly what he wants
and what he wants it to look like.
- It's a lot of give and take. So he will say, oh,
I could do something like this or be like this.
And we take it from there to create the movement itself.
- Bengt is very good at bringing that dynamic alive
between people and their interactions.
- And then maybe if we could have like, (monster noise),
(laughter)
Yeah.
- Okay
- Should do bum, bum, bum again.
- He'll show us a couple of things
or he'll ask us to do a move like this.
- [Bengt Jorgen] Stay down.
Yeah. I think the thing is we gotta,
we gotta see you really checking out, yeah.
Like property, it's property, yeah.
Yeah. Just too fast.
You have to see like,
and I don't know I'm going to spend money on this thing.
- [Ayva Rossouw-Holland] Sometimes, it can be challenging
because you're not a hundred percent sure what he wants.
(pounding)
You really learn to sort of just play with it.
And then sometimes through just playing,
it ends up being exactly what he wants to see.
It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of,
sort of back and forth
with the choreographer and the dancers.
- Shake it so, like you know, if it was today, you would,
the police would come and get,
get you for like you just want it to stop. Yeah.
(sigh)
Yup.
Yup. Yeah. Shake it
And before you like, look at the baby, (sigh)
can't take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you go.
- [Clea Iveson] He's a mentor
with the most sort of hands-off
that you can have yet still be a mentor.
- [Sue Lepage] He wears so many hats.
He refuses to let the fundraising and the business
obligations and the organizational obligations inhibit
him too much in the studio and in the choreographic work.
And then there is the pure dance. Of course he's a dancer.
(jazz piano playing)
- [Male Voice] Five, six, seven, eight.
- I was born in Stockholm, Sweden.
A long, long time ago, in different place,
different time, society was very regulated
and a little gray.
I think most people today would go, why,
why couldn't you do this? And why couldn't you.
Well, the government decided I wasn't good for us.
For me, I didn't have that because I lived
in this imaginary world of the arts.
So I could live in a parallel universe
and have a lot of freedoms that other children
didn't have really.
I grew up within the Royal Opera House.
So I get to engage with so many artists,
so many great artists.
I went and did my first professional dance show
as a child in Petrushka.
And I don't think I've ever looked back.
I was supposed to join the Royal Swedish ballet.
And I did have a burning desire to explore the world
of dance beyond the borders of Sweden.
And the decision I had to leave
was I was at doing two shows of Copellia
and I would have been an apprentice at that time.
And I loved it.
It was in Stockholm, Sweden in winter.
It was one. I loved the music.
I loved being on stage.
I looked out in the audience and I realized that there were
more people on stage than in the house.
And I thought, I don't want to be in a place where,
what we do doesn't matter.
I had to go to North America and find out what it would be
like to work in a place where if people didn't show up,
there will be no pay. There will be no job.
And that you had to be relevant to the people
that actually came to see you.
Whichever way it is, we just have to make sure
we don't end with, where it feels kind of like,
we want to make sure really wraps up the story,
but it's, it's growth in her.
- Are we agreed that we finished this session?
- Session.
- Yeah, I think, I think we have got the synopsis.
(laughter)
- No, very good Heinar, very good.
- We have build a little bit now.
There's still a lot of texture into it,
- But the main job will now be working with Sasha
and for him to come up to support all of that musically.
(page turning)
(wind blowing)
(orchestra playing bright music)
- You're not in the right place. You're not making the turn.
(piano playing)
(page turning)
(wind blowing)
- My name is Alexander Levkovich,
I am classical music composer.
I just make orchestration.
I just using the theme and then make variations it seems.
And because it's not my music, it's music Campbell.
It's music from musical, but ballet's another genre,
absolutely another different genre.
In musical, we have information from the singers,
they give us action, but here it's action by moving.
- To make the music
the best it needs to be doesn't mean it's
necessarily made for dance
or for the choreography that we've already made.
And so it's a little bit of a re-evaluation like, okay,
okay, now we're doing everything slower
in order to fit it into, into the music now that we have,
or the music is all the same,
but it's been stretched out and now it's this slow,
beautiful section. So it's a bit like, Hey,
we're just going to reinterpret this
and get a little bit more flowery on top.
And you don't really know until you're in it.
And you're testing everything out. You're like, oh yeah,
it sounds great. And then you start dancing
and you're like, oh,
it's very different than what I thought it was going to be.
- Music itself should express what is going on.
Music needs to be danceable.
The change is, not music, just time of music.
Make shorter. Make more tempo, more fast.
(bright orchestra music)
(pointe shoes hitting the ground)
- Thank you.
It feels all right.
But if you feel like,
if anybody feels like this is the time that I'm using you,
because you're the only ones moving inside it,
can we have two and a half more minutes?
Is that enough time to nail it?
- It's not enough. I think we need more music.
'Cause I'd even stretch the music you have for the
tutu ballet right now.
- Because already right now the queens
don't need to kind of disappear.
- True. Hey, Sasha,
(laughter)
would you be able to add a minute to the blossom ballet?
Yeah, wherever, just the actual,
like anywhere in the blossom ballet.
- One minute? Okay.
- You can do that?
- Okay. Last time guys.
(laughter)
- Yeah
- No really.
No time for score, yeah?
- [Group] Yeah.
- For parts for printing no?
- If you can add one minute but keep this version
and send me the new version so I can listen to it.
That's it though. Sasha.
We have no other music notes.
- Yeah?
- You're good to go.
- Okay.
- Great score.
(laughter)
But, Ivan will kill me.
- I know
(laughter)
- That's okay.
- [Female Voice] Oh Sasha!
- But yeah. I know Ivan, it's okay.
Vanya will be fine.
- For a minute,
- Tell them to kill me. Yeah. Send him my way.
- Okay.
(laughter)
- He'll know, just tell him it's
those impossible choreographers.
- Okay
- All right. Thank you. Thank you. Great score.
- Thank you Sasha
(applause)
- Thanks, thanks.
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
(door slams)
- I'm going to the office right now.
- I have some mail with your name on it.
- Oh, if there's good mail, I want it,
otherwise you can throw it in the garbage.
- Looks like it's from the foundation.
- See if there's any money in here.
See if we have dancers, we can pay our dancers.
- See?
- I'm happy when somebody just responds.
- An answer is nice.
I've been trying to see if we have a letter opener,
I haven't found one.
- We used to have one.
- Must be here somewhere, I just haven't found it.
(paper unfolding)
- It's so nice. Somebody sent us $300. That's terrific.
- Money!
- Great.
(paper ripping)
- Without money, we can't do anything.
(paper ripping)
Our guardian angels.
- The big thing for creating a new ballet
is the funding.
It's getting out there and finding people
that that believe in what you're doing
and support this new ballet.
Not for any gain, real gain, they're going to get in return.
They're not going to see their money back,
but hopefully they'll see something on stage
that they're proud of supporting.
- Financial risk is always there. Every year,
I look at the budget around August and I go,
how the heck are we going to get through the year
without going bankrupt?
And every year I have no idea how are we going to do it?
And the process is brutal.
- When we were fundraising for this ballet,
it was all private funding.
So it was all individuals, it was all corporate donors,
all foundations.
There's limited access for creating a new ballet.
There is limited access to government funding.
So we basically raised $700,000 through private funding
to create this ballet.
- Clearly, most of the programming for us,
it's developed with earned revenue, private donations.
I wish it was easier.
I wish more people give us money to help us do what we do.
But I also recognize as something you have to earn.
We're trying to get finally sort of a 52 week contract
for our dancers after 32 years.
But it's still, depending upon, you know,
grant gets caught and all of a sudden that's all gone,
ticket sales go up and down.
And you live in a real world that is very unstable
for resources, but fundamentally for dance companies
like ours, what's the biggest challenge
is just to make sure we have the money to pay our dancers.
It is a challenge for sure,
but we're still here and still doing great work
and we're still making a difference.
We're still reaching a lot of people.
(underwater sounds)
- One, two, three, go
(yelling)
(splashing water)
- Awwww.
(car passing by)
(indistinct chatter and laughter)
- Good to see you, my man.
- Hi
- Hi, welcome.
- Every year we do a early season get together,
for the company, for everyone just to relax.
It's not a fundraiser.
It's all about letting the dancers
and all the other support staff get together
and mingle and have fun.
- It's so nice, actually, everyone's having
a wonderful time. It's so sunny, and it's a really good
chance for us all to get to know one other.
Some of us are new this year.
We still have to do all the choreography.
So yeah, it is building that's for sure.
So having this nice sunny warm day with really yummy food
and super sweet people to host us.
It's, yeah, it's so essential.
(sound of cicadas humming)
- We're coming into the very end of the creative period.
I have a one and a half weeks
before going to production week.
My goal is to basically have everything mapped out
in the next week and a half,
and we still have a few scenes to do,
but we're moving really fast.
(multiple people talking to each other)
- It's getting crazier. There's so much to do.
There's so many things that need to be done, you know,
with the costumes, and sets and props. 1000 props.
So many props. So many props.
(screams)
(underwater muffled noise)
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
(fan running)
(hammering)
- Oh our snowballs, books, lots of stuff.
(bright music)
- We wanted pieces that moved quickly
and where it would take just a gesture
to suggest a specific location.
And the inner window frame can be cream and, and that, okay,
so green, green, this cream and again,
benches and a blackboard for the school house
and chairs and a cupboard, and a kitchen table
for Green Gables, those were going to serve us very well.
(wood cracking)
- And again, this one is meant to stay with it
so you don't lose it on stage.
There is an entire scene where Anne's imagination takes off
and it happens when they're out playing and collecting bugs.
I made them fake beanbag snowballs,
and they can throw them at each other.
So they're nice and soft and they, if they hit the floor.
They won't roll away.
The slingshot itself has to be pointing down,
and the elastic pointing up.
- I'm working on a breakaway slate board
for Anne of Green Gables. That's used as a gag on stage
that gets smashed over someone's head.
So it's just a piece of Gator board.
It snaps apart with magnets so it can be smashed over
someone's head safely and then reset every night.
- Mmmm! Slates.
Is somebody going to get it?
- Don't know
(laughter)
- She looked at you.
(laughter)
- Your glasses though.
- Hi
- Oh, it's so cute.
- So cute! I love, too, how it's very bare
- [Sue Lepage] Yeah, and this line is really very sweet.
- [Hannah Mae Cruddas] Yeah.
- [Sue Lepage] In a fitting, some performers
really are nervous.
People don't like standing in front of full length mirrors,
but many, many use that as an opportunity
to get a sort of glimpse, a look ahead,
at what the costume will give them
and what they can become.
We often ask in fittings,
if people would like to take a walk,
to test some of their moves.
And I want to see how the fabric moves.
Victorian corsets and simple clothing
and good sturdy fabrics that wear well
are no friend to dance.
So always looking for a compromise.
And then of course, when it's all out there and in motion,
that's something that dance gives you to a greater degree.
Opera, you're not going to get the same sense
of the movement in space and the various aspects
of the design that you will with dance.
Dance is special that way.
The process of the imagining it all is great,
but then to get it out of your head
and see it in the dancers,
or see it in the other people's work.
That's really satisfying.
- If, like, two people are supposed to share a tutu,
if we should both try on the same tutu.
- Well, these are built by expert tutu builders, right.
Anne Armit is the most experienced
tutu builder, all right, in the business.
(inaudible)
So, the questions is
if you don't think the tutus are built the right way,
you need to address it.
- So people are wondering if they can have
all the people that share the same tutu and the same team to
make sure like. 'Cause the girls actually, like.
- The girls will know by the end of today.
- Right.
- Yeah, they'll know.
- And if it doesn't work, you know what,
we are hoping what we have worked out, if it doesn't work,
we're going to go and pull out a girl and get it right.
So that by the end of today,
we know who's sharing everything
and Bengt will know it as well.
- I'm going to have it fit some.
- [Sue Lepage] Yeah, just some moves.
- I mean like the material is a little bit hard.
- Do you feel tight here?
It will soften, it's brand new. Right?
We did wash the under, the coutil.
- So that's already broken in.
(slow music)
(indistinct chatter)
- Well, the zipper is going to make it fast.
They don't, they're worried about the zipper
and the fitting, but if it fits,
it's going to be much faster than the hooks.
So what do you think? How long?
Switch over into pointe shoes and a new tutu?
- A minute and a half?
- A minute and a half, that's good.
Yeah, that'll be good.
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
(piano playing)
(pointe shoes tapping on the floor)
- Yeah, I don't know what that is.
It looks like a water blister surrounded something.
- Yeah.
- [Female dancer] This skin is all ripped up
and I have this weird thing here.
And some floor burn.
This toenail is like rotting.
- The challenges of being a dancer
is that you always have to make sure that your body
is in good health and that your mind is in good health
really, because you spend the whole week, six hours,
seven hours a day with somebody in front of the room
telling that you're not doing it right.
You always trying to improve yourself.
And sometimes that can get taxing
and difficult to cope with.
- There have been a few days where
I have just felt kind of swallowed in frustration
about something with the dance.
There've been some Jonah days, as Anne likes to say.
- There will be days where you maybe aren't performing
as well as you know, you can, so you might get inside
your own head, telling yourself all these negative things
that you might be thinking at the time,
and you just really have to stay positive
or have a clearer mindset on the bigger picture,
rather than just the little here and now's.
You really have to look forward to
what you are working for.
- There's always a sense that no matter how well you do,
you will never come up to that imaginary perfection.
So you're constantly chasing the sort of shadow
that you can never catch
because you move, it moves further along,
the better you get, there's always another level.
The constantly striving to reach that place,
the drive and perseverance, stubbornness, perhaps
You have to like it.
Most of us love it, but sometimes you hate it too,
because it is so brutally demanding.
- [Adam Davidson] Not getting injured is always a big one
because you never know when it could happen.
- [Colton West] In this company because of the size.
There's an understanding that you're going
to be learning a lot of different parts.
If someone gets hurt,
you need to take that responsibility to have the knowledge
or at least an understanding of their part,
just in case you need to step in.
- I came here in my late twenties when I,
my body was probably at the prime.
So I could dance without difficulties.
With much more ease to do difficult jumps,
difficult steps, but as the age goes, of course,
my stamina will go away.
My strengths has been kind of decreasing.
I used to do a lead role up until 2016.
Then I decided to take on my new roles as a ballet master.
Every now and then it's always been sort of,
managing how much I can push, how flexible my body is,
how effective my body can move, too.
I don't want to lose my skill set
that I have been trained for a long time.
So I have to be in shape.
Two and a three and a four and five, six and seven.
Balancing, for me has been a very, very tough
and challenging role for this last two, three years. Yeah.
It's like, I'm juggling the ball all the time and yeah,
I feel like I'm dropping one ball somewhere all the time.
That's not a great feeling, but I am learning,
so yeah, I can not be perfect, but I can do my best.
- [Bengt Jorgen] Virtually every single dancer I know
has had to overcome some challenges, major challenges,
you have to fall in love with the entire process of becoming
a dancer because it's not, you know,
if you just want to be there, get there.
You will never actually get there.
Because it's the process of getting there that is
the hard work and it's relentless, it never stops.
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
- I'm the chair of Canada's Ballet Jorgen.
And it is a great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight
to celebrate the bestowing of the Order of Canada
on Bengt Jorgen, the founder, CEO, and artistic director
of Ballet Jorgen.
(applause)
- Thank you.
Thank you, Mara.
I am humbled by all of you coming, sharing this with me.
I'm humbled by being appointed to the Order of Canada.
This is more than I could ever have expected.
When I came to Canada, I found a place that
I could do what I wanted to do.
Great people willing to accept me.
And I just,
I thought I'd found heaven and it's never stopped.
I'm still in heaven.
(laughter)
I get to meet people coast to coast.
And in early nineties, I was in, in a shopping mall
in socioeconomically challenged area, I guess,
is what we would call it.
And it was a lady with two kids and she was buying milk.
I could see she was in distress.
So I go over and say, can I help you?
And she said, the milk, it's going up by 10 cents.
She breaks down because she can't meet her budget
for her kids.
I realized that if we want to have an impact as artists,
and if we want to connect with people,
we have to remember that there are people out there
that cannot afford the tickets.
They can't even afford the bus fare
and they live all over this great country.
So we focus on underserved communities.
I'm very, very proud of the fact that the majority
of the people we reach have never before seen
a dance performance and a majority live in households
with under $35,000.
And that's because we're committed to sharing what we do
with as many people as we can,
because we know that every time we do this,
there's someone out there that will be impacted
in a way that will change their life.
Many of the dancers today in this company have previously
come through these local communities
and our local participant programs,
and they've now grown up and become dancers with a company.
And it's very rewarding for me
to see that type of impact that we have.
And the Order of Canada is a great honor,
but I wouldn't have it if it wasn't for all of the people
in this room. I just want to say thank you again.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you, Bengt, and I will say, you clean up nicely.
(audience laughter)
I usually don't see them much out of his sweats
and the big puffy slippers he wears on his feet.
(laughter)
- So we will run from the top. We will play the music.
I want you to go as quickly as you can,
but if we can't make the quick change in this time space,
I just need someone to say stop.
There's no point in anyone getting hurt.
So if you think of the problem, stop is great.
We stop, we fix it and we move on.
Are we, guys, are we ready to go?
So confirming everybody's here. Right?
So Jennifer, we're good to go.
(bright music)
- It's a little bit difficult to describe
because not everybody knows how much time they need.
We have never tried the costumes on before,
we never done the quick changes before.
So we're all kind of scrambling,
trying to time everything out,
while we're also trying to listen for the music
and our cues and make sure we're not late.
- The first scene we got, oh, I got to get on by Monday.
And I left it to last precisely, because
everything we've done will inform how we do the first one.
- That's the first one.
- So that scene is not done.
We have Marilla and Matthew and Anne on stage.
And we're just about to do the scene change.
(bright music)
So are we good on the scene change?
We're still missing a chair.
What is, what is the confusion?
We need a table and a chair.
(inaudible)
- Music, costumes, sets, props.
I mean, Anne is full of props
and prop handling is an important part of the choreography.
So it's all challenging and you have to work it out.
And sometimes you'd rather work it out
in a different order or in a different way,
but you just, you just have to work it out,
you've got to be able to move forward.
- My challenges are more on the stage.
Like I have all of those things to think about onstage,
but the rest of the cast, they have so many costume changes.
I don't know how they're doing it. Everything is so quick.
And there are so many costumes in the ballet
and so many different roles that they're all playing.
So that is really, really tricky.
That is one of the major challenges that people
are feeling right now.
(thoughtful music)
We've figured out that costumes add so much,
but they also make the movements seem a little bit smaller.
So we want to be able to have these beautiful costumes
and the beautiful big movement.
And with those costumes,
we have to just pile on extra energy
and force into our movement so it doesn't get lost
and swallowed in the fabric.
(bright music)
We are able to get all of the cleaning bits done, now.
We have to really go back and change the things
that aren't working on stage.
Bengt and Heinar were able to see it from afar
and they could see the whole picture.
So now seeing all of that
and knowing exactly what they need to fix,
they're able to come into the studio
and just speed through things, now,
it's really just cleaning and working
and perfecting as much as possible.
(bright music)
(pages turning)
(wind blowing)
(bright music)
- [Flight Attendant] Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to Halifax.
The local time is 1:20 please remain seated.
- We've worked hard over the past 10 years
to really establish Halifax as a sort of a second home
for the company.
Bengt saw need in Halifax,
where there's no professional company,
audiences that are hungry for ballet.
And we have this great partnership
with Symphony Nova Scotia,
where the dancers have an opportunity to perform
the ballets with live music.
And the fact that Anne is a, it's an Atlantic Canada story.
So we thought it was important for it to premiere out there.
(bright piano music)
- What?!
Hi you guys!
- Hey
- Hello.
- It's so good to see you.
- Hello. Oh my gosh. This is so cool.
This Sarah, and Yusef, so crazy.
- I'm so excited for your show.
- You're coming?
- Yeah
- Yes, yes, yes.
Saturday.
- Yeah
- You're going too? I'm so glad you'll be there.
Thank you.
It's getting a little bit nerve wracking for sure.
- Yeah. For sure.
- Bye guys.
- Hi! This is so funny!
I'm well, how are you?
I'm sorry.
- I'm great, this is my friend Jeanne-Marie,
she's coming on Saturday night.
- Really?! Oh, I'm so glad.
This is Anne of Green Gables!
- Hello
- Hello, so nice to meet you.
- Hi!
- I work with Dance Nova Scotia
- Oh my gosh!
- I can't wait to see you.
- So cool, thank you.
- You guys are so sweet.
I just ran into other people, too.
(laughter)
- [Female Voice] I'm going to be there.
I'm looking forward to seeing you.
You're the perfect Anne.
- Thank you
- [Female Voice] Absolutely perfect.
- See you Saturday. Bye. So nice to meet you.
I love this about Halifax, I see people I know,
all the time, never that many all at once.
Like that's really, that's a big thing.
(oboe playing with orchestra)
- There's a miniature landscape of PEI
all around from about knee height and down,
that gives you that lovely,
wonderful patchwork quilt of fields and farms that is PEI,
those rolling hills and those tidy, tidy, lovely towns
and landscapes, and that kind of miniaturization
and completeness to me was very, very expressive.
(orchestra plays bright music)
- We're still working at practical problems
that weren't core to the dramatics of the story,
that choreography, but we have a lot of scene changes
and every theater is different.
- [Daniel Da Silva] The stage is quite different
from the one we had for our tech rehearsal,
so we had to figure it out
how the set pieces work on that space
and how the dancing works with the space that we had.
- We actually had been in non-fly house
up until that point where we had all the sets to try
and work out those things.
It's good, but it's not good enough guys.
Way too much snow. You guys are going too fast
and too flippant.
Where's the trail of snow? I don't get it.
Let's do it again, let's just put everything out,
just dump a bunch of snow out here.
(laughter)
You've gotta get in sync with each other, right now
'cause you're not helping each other.
Even the snow, the winter scene, using the sprites
to create it almost looks better than having
the traditional technique of the theater using flies
to create snow and have all of that falling.
It is beautiful, but in some ways it's almost funnier
and more engaging and we were just hoping
it was going to work.
All right, so we're going to do this with music,
with a table, lots of snow on, we've gotta get there.
(orchestra begins)
- [Female Voice] Go, go, go, go snow.
- [Bengt Jorgen] Let's do it again, it's getting better.
- That's making some rice right now.
So I take this on tour. I'm going to make.
You can make everything, eggs and rice
and can cook like meat.
You can bake a cake in there too.
Today we went from 10 to nine and a little break
during the afternoon.
Tomorrow we start at nine o'clock
and finish at nine o'clock again.
And we only have one dinner break and one lunch break,
that's it.
- Long day.
- Long day!
- This is Jennifer's of Nova Scotia. They're amazing,
they have local artisans and stuff,
producing lots of really cool gifts.
And this is actually my friend. She makes these cards.
I trained in ballet with her.
I love these cards.
They're so pretty.
So I'm basically getting little gifts for people.
It's kind of a tradition in ballet to get premiere gifts
or like opening night gifts, I guess.
I feel like Daniel and Hiroto both microwave things
all the time.
And they're always like using their sleeves.
This is kind of fun.
Look, guys. Anne books.
This is so cool.
Just a scrapbook of all of Lucy Maud Montgomery's things.
So nice to see what inspired her, too.
- You ready?
- Yeah, I think so.
I can't believe that I remember a few months ago,
I guess, my dad sent me the countdown.
It was like this many days Hannah Mae, and now we're here.
It's basically time.
(suspenseful music)
- We're going to do the entrance of the buggy again,
the LPs. Chloe, you control that, you're early.
In the very first scene, when the buggy comes out,
which of course will be made basically
just of bodies out of sight
with the exception of just a sort of a horse head
and a bit of the bench that Matthew and Anne sits on.
In a sense we showed the very first different type
of concept, I was very nervous
and we were just hoping it was going to work.
(contemplative music)
We had done everything we could,
all the orchestra rehearsals were done.
We had a show coming up.
This was the first test to see if all the ideas
and a sense of conviction I and my team had
about how we were going to tell this story.
(whistle blows)
Now the rubber hits the road.
When you put in front of people.
It was the first time we put in front of a general audience
and I was very nervous to see what the reaction was going to
be to the work.
And I didn't expect myself to be that nervous, but I was.
(orchestra tuning)
- Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
My name is David Fountain and Margaret and I
and our daughter, Gwyneth,
we're delighted to be here with you today
on this very special evening.
We as Nova Scotians are especially pleased,
the world premiere of Anne of Green Gables, the Ballet
is taking place in Halifax tonight.
(audience applauding)
Anne is truly an east coast Canadian story.
You know, I know you all think that Anne
spent her whole life on Prince Edward Island,
but I may remind you that Anne's story begins
at an orphanage, what called an asylum
at the time, in Nova Scotia,
and we're very happy to welcome her back.
(audience laughing)
I'd like to introduce a special guest. She's here
in no official capacity,
but only because she wanted to be here for this very special
night to see the world's first show of Anne of Green Gables.
Ladies and gentlemen, Karen Kain.
(audience applauding)
- You probably wouldn't know that Bengt Jorgen and I
danced together in the National Ballet of Canada,
a number of years ago,
and Bengt had this wonderful idea to create a company that
could go into every size city and provide brilliant ballet.
And I support him so much in that.
And I'm so excited for a world premiere
on such a Canadian theme, such a famous Canadian story,
something we all grew up with and we love very much.
I know you're all in for a wonderful evening. Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- [Hiroto Saito] What I usually try to do before
any show is to be at that moment, just be in the moment.
Try to stay as calm as possible.
- [Daniel Da Silva] I was really focused trying
to make sure everything is ready to go. It was just go time.
- [Clea Iveson] I want to make it happen.
I want to bring it to life.
I want to do what I've done in rehearsal.
I trust what the people have given me to do.
And I just, I want to go out and do it and I'm ready.
Like, let's stop talking.
(bright orchestral music)
- [Kate Butler] My grandmother,
I believe would have been so proud to know that her work
has been adapted into a ballet.
- [Daniel Da Silva] The story of Anne of Green Gables
it's a reality to many, many of us.
Somebody that's not very well accepted by others.
She makes her way through other people's hearts.
And then they found out that there's other ways
to feel the world.
And I think that's why the story is so touching
and so relatable.
- [Hannah Mae Cruddas] It's about a young woman
who is very, very strong, very independent,
very imaginative, and very loving.
And those are qualities that I feel that our community
and our world really, really can relate to.
And we really need to be able to embrace.
It lasts. And it, it does so beautifully
because of that imagination and that strength.
With this ballet, we're just able to share
all of that love in a different way.
(quiet piano music)
- [Hiroto Saito] Audience's reactions, they were laughing
and they were crying.
That's a very empowering moment as an artist.
When I can move some people, on stage,
I feel great about doing my job.
- [Daniel Da Silva] There is audiences out there
that wants to see a nice performance,
that wants to have a story being told to them,
to feel the love, the sadness, the laughter, the excitement,
bringing that to people, that's what keeps driving
us performers.
- [Clea Iveson] We want to have an impact
in getting directly with people.
We want people to be experiencing it.
So let's do a main stage performance.
Let's move into a library and do something,
let's work with young dancers. Let's work with young people.
Let's make sure that everybody has the opportunity.
Audiences really appreciate that.
I think we as humans want our history in what we do,
but we also want to see ahead.
Where that's going to go as the times progress,
I think you have to stay true and you have to stay honest.
- [Hannah Mae Cruddas] When I was young in Nova Scotia,
hardly any dance came to my hometown.
That was really difficult as someone who wanted who be a
dancer, and I knew that I wanted to be a dancer.
I know that there are so many other young people across
Canada and in the States, where dance just isn't celebrated.
Ballet Jorgen, going into these smaller communities
and sharing our love of dance
and showing that we have dancers from all across the world,
from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes,
all genders, and we are all sharing
and we need to be able to continue sharing that.
(quiet orchestra music)
- [Bengt Jorgen] We go to every province, we deliver
more dance program than anyone else across Canada.
And we're only doing it because people like
to see what we do.
My greatest job is to try to convince people
that we should have access to art
outside of the major centers.
And that it's important, it's important for everyone.
I love teaching. I love seeing changes in students.
I love helping students become better dancers.
This is how we've always passed on our knowledge.
(quiet orchestra music)
It comes a point where as an older dancer.
It's probably the greatest gift you could do for your own
art form is to try to help other dancers
that are going to come up and continue.
Because when we pass on, dance exists because other people
before us taught me and they were taught by someone
who were passionate about it.
You can't replace the human contact of live performing arts
and ballet is part of that.
People, I think partially are so relieved and so pleased
to be engaging in a live environment.
And something that they understand
and something that they can laugh with us
and they can cry with us.
There's something part of that that makes ballet
more relevant today than maybe it was before.
And not just ballet, many performing arts, but ballet,
we can speak to you immediately and I love that.
- [Clea] When we do a story like Anne of Green Gables,
people come because it's Anne of Green Gables.
They don't necessarily come because it's a ballet,
but they come, they get the story and they're like,
wow, this is ballet?
Yeah, this is ballet!
(wind blowing)
(pages turning)
(quiet orchestral music)
(audience applauding)
(bright orchestra music)
(indistinct conversation and congratulatory sounds)
- You were phenomenal.
- Really exciting.
I really enjoyed that it was humorous, too
It was fun experience.
- It was great.
- She was born to do this, she was really born to do this.
(indistinct chatter)
- Oh my goodness, you're beautiful!
(indistinct chatter)