Angels’ Atlas

A Company Reunited: Angels’ Atlas

The National Ballet of Canada will make its first appearance at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in nearly 20 months with Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas, whose ensemble work feels prescient in light of recent global events. The intimate, communal experience it portrays, with nearly every dancer in the company coalescing against a spectral wall of light, is sympathetic to the yearning, suffering and solace of life in the pandemic, making the ballet’s return an emotional one.

After a stunning debut, Angels’ Atlas won two Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 2020 for Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Achievement in Design. It was one of the last works for the full company that the dancers performed before theatres closed and it is now the first to reunite them en masse, as they express Pite’s theme of the ephemerality and vitality of life. Second Soloist Hannah Galway, who created a featured role in Angels’ Atlas, says it would be impossible to detach the ballet from its current context.

“Returning to this large and emotional piece, I can’t help but reflect on the past year and a half. Being separated from my colleagues and friends due to the pandemic makes me appreciate our collaboration on this piece even more. I can’t wait to return to the stage with this work and once again connect so intimately with all of those artists I admire.”

Pite, who was born in British Columbia, is a leading international choreographer with a body of work that is uniquely imaginative, generous and moving. For Angels’ Atlas, she used an ethereal lighting design by Jay Gower Taylor as the springboard for exploring the human condition in a way that is unexpectedly tangible.

“Crystal’s choreography is epic in scope yet I feel as though there’s a great sense of humility in it,” says Galway. “She has a way of making the choreography feel personal. It is a gift to be able to perform this piece.”

Angels’ Atlas is set to original music by Owen Belton and choral works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the American composer Morten Lauridsen. Pite has said that she chose choral music partly because of its connection to the body, a quality that resonates with Galway as a dancer: “The choral music fills our rehearsal rooms and the theatre. Once it fills the space, it has nowhere to go but our bodies and it beckons me to move, dance and express myself.”

Galway and the entire company are focused on the long awaited intheatre reunion that Angels’ Atlas will bring. “I’m so excited to share this beautiful piece with the audience we’ve been missing so deeply.”

Produced and commissioned by The National Ballet of Canada.

A co-production of The National Ballet of Canada and Ballett Zürich.

Philanthropic support for Angels’ Atlas is generously provided by An Anonymous Donor, Rosamond Ivey, Ira Gluskin & Maxine Granovsky Gluskin, The Producers’ Circle, The Volunteer Committee of The National Ballet of Canada and The Gail Hutchison Fund.