About the Ballets

24 Preludes by Chopin

Marie Chouinard’s elusive, enigmatic and inimitable 24 Preludes by Chopin returns to enthrall audiences with its blend of startling physicality, surprising delicacy and oblique humour.

Playing the formal demands of balletic structure off against a free-form emotional and imaginative suggestiveness, much as Chopin did in musical terms with his Preludes, Ms. Chouinard’s work shows her to be without question one of the most exhilaratingly daring choreographers of her time.

Ms. Chouinard made her debut with The National Ballet of Canada in 2008, setting her celebrated 1999 work, 24 Preludes by Chopin, on the company.

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A Suite of Dances
Company Premiere

Originally created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1994, Jerome Robbins’ A Suite of Dances is a wonderful example of the choreographer’s ability to express volumes through the simplest of means.

A work for a solo dancer set to excerpts from Bach’s starkly magisterial cello suites, the piece glides through a variety of moods, from the carefree to the pensive to the ecstatic, addressing both the audience and the baroque sensuousness of Bach’s music with the same studied abandon.

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The Four Seasons

Set to Antonio Vivaldi’s renowned sequence of baroque concerti, James Kudelka’s intensely moving and intimately involving The Four Seasons is a powerful exploration in dance and music of the seasons of a man’s life.

From the innocence and exuberance of Spring and Summer to the melancholy reflectiveness of Autumn to the death-haunted spectre of Winter, the work employs virtuosic solo and ensemble parts to brilliant effect. One of the most popular works in the company’s repertoire, The Four Seasons is nothing less than a modern masterpiece.

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