2022/23 Season is underwritten in part by generous gifts from
Music In Motion
Co-produced by Dance Victoria and Victoria Symphony
April 23, 2023 • 2:30 pm
April 24, 2023 • 7:30 pm
Royal Theatre
Estimated running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes (including intermission)
VICTORIA SYMPHONY SEASON SPONSOR DANCE VICTORIA SEASON SPONSOR Photo: Ballet Edmonton by Nanc PriceLe Quattro (27 minutes)
Choreography: Wen Wei Wang
Music: Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (selections) – published by Mute Song Ltd. and presented under license. Performed by Victoria Symphony.
Lighting Design: Dorrie Deutschendorf
Costumes: Linda Chow
Performers: Full Company
Set to Max Richter’s reimagining of Antonio Vivaldi’s iconic masterpiece The Four Seasons, each movement is a musical homage to the season it reflects. From the renewal and awakening of spring to the inevitable return of a frostbitten winter.
“Behold, my friends, the spring has come. The earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun; and we shall soon see the results of their love!“ — Sitting Bull
- Pause -
Ma mère l’Oye suite (Mother Goose Suite) (17 minutes)
Music: Maurice Ravel. Performed by Victoria Symphony
– Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
– Little Tom Thumb
– Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas
– Dialogues of Beauty and the Beast
– The Fairy Garden
Maurice Ravel originally composed Ma mère l’Oye – five children’s pieces in 1910 as a work for four hands for Mimi and Jean Godebski, the young children of close friends. The score was subsequently adapted as a solo piano work, as a five movement orchestral suite (as performed today), and also further enhanced with two new movements and four interludes to create a ballet. The musical stories are inspired by historic French fairy tales by Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont.
Le loup de Lafontaine (25 minutes)
Choreography: Wen Wei Wang
Music: Le loup de Lafontaine, composed by Ian Cusson. Performed by Victoria Symphony.
Lighting Design: Dorrie Deutschendorf
Costumes: Linda Chow
Performers: Full Company
Le loup de Lafontaine — Note by Ian Cusson
Commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
This work is inspired by Le loup de Lafontaine by Thomas Marchildon, published by Société historique de NouvelOntario. The title and general story parameters are used by permission of the publisher.
Le loup de Lafontaine is part-legend and part-history, a story that takes place in the small French-speaking Ontario community of Lafontaine in 1902. The story, first recorded by the parish priest in the 1950s, is a cautionary tale where a diverse but divided community is ravaged by a lone wolf. The story is still told today through the yearly Festival du Loup, a celebration of unity and culture in the small Franco-Ontarian community.
Paula Cobo Botello rehearsing Le Quattro . Photo: Nanc PriceLafontaine lies on the banks of Georgian Bay and has long been a meeting place of diverse peoples. In the time of the story, various settler and Indigenous communities lived in close proximity, one to the other, rarely intermixing. Each had a deep mistrust of the other.
It is only with the arrival of the wolf — an outsider — that the community comes to terms with their divided nature. They unite, despite their differences, with the common goal of ridding the land of the intruder.
But this story — the terrifying wolf and the frightened community — has always given me pause. The wolf, it turns out, isn’t quite the monster the people make it out to be. It is gentle with children, it keeps to itself, and except for killing sheep for food, it does no harm.
The wolf in the story morphs into a symbol in the community. It is the testing place of the community’s fears and rivalries and hatred. It is the feared and hated outsider whose expulsion from the community will be the means to the restoration of the divided peoples.
The wolf becomes the ultimate scapegoat: it is hunted and killed, its body is strung up in the town square, and the community comes together, celebrating a Mass in honour of its death. The community is rid of this intruder and is united — but at a cost.
The miracle of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, composed just over three centuries ago, is that no matter how often it is heard, it never fails to delight. A regular feature on symphonic seasons worldwide, it also contains melodies that have launched a thousand television commercials and has been used to soundtrack dozens of feature films. Its ubiquity speaks to its enduring beauty.
But you’ve never heard or seen a Four Seasons like the one that Ballet Edmonton and the Victoria Symphony and Dance Victoria will present this spring.
Well, maybe you’ve heard it. Max Richter’s “recomposition” of the score, performed by the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and issued by the venerable Deutsche Grammophon record label, was among the best-selling classical records of 2012, thanks to its combination of cutting-edge electronic technology and Vivaldi’s enduring tunes.
“We hear it everywhere—when you’re on hold, you hear it in the shopping center, in advertising; it’s everywhere,” Richter has said of his remix. “For me, the record and the project are trying to reclaim the piece, to fall in love with it again.”
Ballet Edmonton artistic director Wen Wei Wang’s choreographic interpretation of Richter’s sleekly digitized postmodernism will be new to Victoria audiences, however, and the tantalizing glimpses that have appeared on-line suggest a work that is both as elegant as the original and as fresh as the remake.
Wang does not intend to tamper with Vivaldi’s structure, and why should he? There is no more compelling narrative in music than the inexorable procession of spring into summer, summer into fall, fall into winter, and winter into spring. But the choreographer promises to take some innovative steps in turning planetary movement into physical form.
“We don’t have a storyline in the dance, but it has the narrative of the seasons’ feelings,” he explains. “From spring to the summer… the music already has its own transitions. I don’t think I have to show the audience ‘This is summer,’ because everybody will know that. So, it’s kind of easier for me to use that music because everybody knows it, even the new remix. It’s really easy to feel and to follow.”
“Again, it’s about emotions, about feelings, about colour,” he adds. “I use green colour, I use yellow colour, I use red colour, I use white colour to make the different seasons. But each section is quite different. The transition to the winter is when one soloist is crawling on the ground, almost like an animal going back to a cave to nest. You have that kind of image—and when the image is right, people start to feel it.”
Look for the dancers to transform themselves into a flock of
birds, a fruit-laden apple tree, and a gusting blizzard in a work that, much like Vivaldi’s original, attempts to bring the natural world into the concert hall.
Listeners will have to content themselves with dancing in their heads to Associate Conductor Giuseppe Pietraroia’s interpretation of Maurice Ravel’s orchestral suite Ma mère l’Oye, which should provide a stately interlude before nature returns, with considerably more ferocity, in Métis-Canadian composer Ian Cusson’s Le loup de Lafontaine: Suite for Orchestra in Three Scenes.
Based on a real-life tale of wolfish depredation and interspecies friendship, this collaboration between Dance Victoria and the Victoria Symphony has a more explicit narrative component than The Four Seasons, and at least one additional hurdle for Wang in his role as choreographer. How can he, as an artist born and trained in mainland China, depict Indigenous culture?
“I was a little bit nervous,” he admits, noting that the story is set in northern Ontario, in a community split between Indigenous people, a Métis population, and French-Canadians. If Vivaldi has become universal, Cusson’s world is very, very specific, and his folk-inflected music reflects that too.
“I could do something completely different and just throw the story away and make something up,” Wang says. “But if people know the music, know the background story, and know the names, then they will have trouble watching the dance. So, I made a really clear decision to go with the narrative. I’m still using contemporary movement, but you can see the characters, you can see the society. And how it starts is with everybody isolated, everybody on their own, everybody fighting. Everybody has their own voice, but nobody listens. That’s the first section.”
Wang is opting to have the dancers masked, at least at first, both for visual impact and as a bridge between his own culture and Indigenous dance forms, masks being common to both. And as he began researching the dance, he found that Le loup de Lafontaine addresses other issues that are also problematic worldwide.
“It’s a way to talk about society, even the society which we are in now,” he says. “After two years of the pandemic we’re still kind of in this locked-down lack of trust. Whether you wear a mask or don’t wear a mask, people will hate you or fight over it. But this is in all our history; it never changes. You can see what’s going on in the United States, and with the war in Ukraine; we’re all fighting over who is right. So, you kind of go ‘Oh my god, history just repeats.’ So that’s how I’m looking at this story. It’s really asking ‘Are we really better than animals? Or are we the worst animal in the world?’
“That’s my question in this piece,” Wang adds, “and I want others to ask this question, too.”
Ballet Edmonton is a contemporary ballet ensemble of company dancers under the leadership of celebrated choreographer and Artistic Director Wen Wei Wang. The company creates and commissions original work each season from a variety of choreographic voices. Ballet Edmonton’s mission is driven by a passion and curiosity to explore new ways to express dance. The company offers audiences original, inspired contemporary ballet that reflects our Artistic Director’s adventurous, curatorial vision. Ballet Edmonton’s repertoire is primarily Canadian, with new creations by nationally recognized and emerging choreographers with distinctive voices. They contribute to the evolution of ballet in Canada by expressing the unique narratives of the artists whose creations we help bring to life.
Ballet Edmonton has commissioned new creations by Canadian and international choreographers, including Andrea Peña, Serge Bennathan, Shay Kuebler, Gioconda Barbuto, Rachel Meyer, Josh Beamish, Diego Ramalho, and Karissa Barry.
Ballet Edmonton engages dancers who are committed to their own growth as artists. Our ensemble is comprised of dancers from all over the world, each bringing with them a breadth of training and experience required to articulate the work we present.
Artistic Director: Wen Wei Wang
Rehearsal Director: Yoko Kanomata
Lighting Designer/Technical Director: Dorrie Deutschendorf
Executive Director: Sheri Somerville
Managing Director: Jennifer Hinnell
Artistic Administrator: Sarah Baker
Read the dancers’ full biographies here: balletedmonton.ca/com pany/dancers/
Photos: Cooper and Ohara Photography Chloe Bennett Paula Cobo Botello Adrian de Leeuw Devon McLean Yoko Kanomata Ariana Barr Diego Ramalho Samuel Ramos Matthew Wyllie Connor McLeary
Wen Wei Wang began dancing professionally in China in 1978. In 1991 he came to Canada, where he was invited to join the Judith Marcuse Dance Company, followed by positions with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and Ballet BC. In 2000, Wen Wei received the Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award and the Rio Tinto Alcan and Isadora Awards for Choreography. In 2003, Wen Wei formed his own company, Wen Wei Dance. Wen Wei Dance has presented his work across Canada and at the International Dance Festival in Vancouver, the Dancing on the Edge Festival, the Canada Dance Festival, and the International Contemporary Dance Festival in Colombia, South America. The company has also been invited to perform at the Venice Biennale Festival in Italy, the Beijing National Performing Arts Center, and the Shanghai Grand Theater with the Beijing Modern Dance Company in China.
Wen Wei has choreographed 12 full-length works for his Vancouver-based company Wen Wei Dance and created original works for Alberta Ballet, Ballet Jőrgen, Ballet BC, Ballet Kelowna, North West Dance Projects, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, Arts Umbrella, and Simon Fraser University. He has also choreographed the dance sections for the Vancouver Opera and the San Francisco Opera for their piece, Nixon in China. In 2013, Wen Wei was awarded the RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrants Award and recently worked with the China National Center for the Performing Arts for its production of Hamlet. Wen Wei assumed the role of Artistic Director of Ballet Edmonton in 2018.
Max Richter stands as one of the most prodigious figures on the contemporary music scene, with ground-breaking work as a composer, pianist, producer, and collaborator. From synthesizers and computers to a full symphony orchestra, Richter’s innovative work encompasses solo albums, ballets, concert hall performances, film and television series, video art installations and theatre works. He is classically trained, studying at Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy of Music, London, and completing his studies with composer Luciano Berio in Florence, Italy.
In recent years Richter’s music has become a mainstay for many of the world’s leading ballet companies, including The Mariinsky Ballet, La Scala Milan, The Joffrey Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre,
Semper Oper, and NDT, while his collaborations with Wayne McGregor for The Royal Ballet have been widely acclaimed. Richter’s most recent commissions are from the city of Bonn to mark the Beethoven 250th year anniversary, and a further collaboration between Richter, Margaret Atwood and Wayne McGregor, based on Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy of novels, premiering in Toronto in September 2022.
His latest recorded project, The New Four Seasons, was released in 2022 marking 10 years of his Vivaldi Recomposed project, re-recording the piece with period instruments.
Ian Cusson is a composer of art song, opera and orchestral work. Of Métis (Georgian Bay Métis Community) and French Canadian descent, his work explores Canadian Indigenous experience including the history of the Métis people, the hybridity of mixed-racial identity, and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures. He studied composition with Jake Heggie (San Francisco) and Samuel Dolin, and piano with James Anagnoson at the Glenn Gould School. He is the recipient of the Chalmers Professional Development Grant, and grants through the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
Ian was an inaugural Carrefour Composer-in-Residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra for 2017-2019 and was Composer-in-Residence for the Canadian Opera Company for 2019–2021. He was Co-Artistic Director of Opera in the 21st Century at the Banff Centre and the recipient of the 2021 Jan V. Matejcek Classical Music Award from SOCAN and the 2021 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize. Ian is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers. He lives in Oakville with his wife and four children.
Dorrie Deutschendorf is a rarity in the world of theatre and dance. For over 20 years, she has been a lighting designer, dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, stage manager, and theatre technician. Having worked on productions on both sides of the stage, Dorrie has had the opportunity to produce unique and supporting visions for over 30 dance artists and directors in the Edmonton area, including Usha Gupta and Kate Ryan. This season, Dorrie will continue to support dance as Technical Director/Lighting Designer and Stage Manager for Ballet Edmonton.
Wen Wei Wang
Photo: Nanc Price; Max Richter
Photo: Wikimedia Commons; Ian Cusson
Photo: John Arano
Giuseppe Pietraroia is Associate Conductor for both the Victoria Symphony and Pacific Opera. As a guest conductor, he has been engaged by l’Orchestre Métropolitain, Orchestra London, Vancouver Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Hamilton Philharmonic, Okanagan Symphony, Regina Symphony, Kingston Symphony and Thunder Bay Symphony. His extensive opera engagements with Pacific Opera include productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia, La traviata, La bohème, Lucia di Lammermoor, Norma, Rigoletto, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, La Cenerentola, Tosca, and Let’s Make an Opera/The Little Sweep. In addition, he has conducted productions for l’Opéra de Montréal, l’Opéra de Québec, Opera Lyra Ottawa, Edmonton Opera, Opera New Brunswick, Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Program, and l’Institut Canadien d’Art Vocal. With Victoria Choral Society where he was Music Director for seven seasons, Maestro Pietraroia conducted performances of Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Mass in C minor with the Victoria Symphony, a choreographed production of Orff’s Carmina Burana in collaboration with Ballet Victoria, Dvořák’s Stabat Mater, David Fanshawe’s African Sanctus, and the Duruflé and Fauré requiems.
Maestro Pietraroia has recorded a CD with soprano MarieJosée Lord and l’Orchestre Métropolitain for the ATMA label, which won a Felix award granted by l’ADISQ and was also nominated for a JUNO award. Giuseppe Pietraroia is the recipient of the George and Jane Heffelfinger Pacific Opera Victoria Artist of the Year Award and the Canada Council’s Jean-Marie Beaudet Award in Orchestral Conducting.
Consistently praised for his intense musicality and impressive technique, Canadian violinist Terence Tam has performed in Canada, the US, Australia, Europe and Japan as a recitalist and chamber musician. Currently concertmaster of the Victoria Symphony, he also previously held this prestigious position with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia and Symphony Nova Scotia in Canada. Tam has appeared as a concerto soloist with orchestras in Canada, including those in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Halifax. An active chamber musician, Tam’s performances have taken him to many festivals, including those presented by the Montreal Symphony, Sitka, Pender Harbour, Sarasota, Ravinia, Meadowmount, Banff, Aspen, Encore, Hamptons, Scotiafest, Sweetwater, Music in the Morning and La Conner music festivals. Tam made his New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1994; for his Paris concerto debut in 2000, he played the Ligeti Violin Concerto with the Academy of 20th Century Music Orchestra. His CD recording of composer Wim Zwaag’s Violin Concerto with the Victoria Symphony was chosen as one of CBC In Concert’s best classical recordings of 2011. Mr. Tam’s musical studies took place at Toronto’s Glenn Gould School, Baltimore’s Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Music School in Germany.
Giuseppe Pietraroia & Terence Tam
Photo: Kevin Light Photography; Ballet Edmonton rehearsing Le loup de Lafontaine . Photos: Nanc Price
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