The season will include world premieres of GRIMM, Don Quioxte

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Alberta Ballet to offer two world premieres in its 2024/2025 season, including new artistic director Francesco Ventriglia’s reinvention of Don Quixote to end the season.

This is the first season programmed by Ventriglia, who joined the company in January. It will include seven productions, including four that are new to Alberta Ballet. It’s an ambitious year for the company, which hopes to go from 30 to 32 dancers this season.

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“There is an effort to further strengthen Alberta Ballet for the future and create an artistic journey for the audience that provides a wide range of possibilities, from classical ballet to contemporary creations and, of course, from our beloved Nutcracker to the Gala of winter. , even family shows. We have two world premieres. “It promises to be a great season with many new things for audiences and titles never before performed by Alberta Ballet and sometimes never performed in Canada.”

The season begins in September with La Sylphide, considered a pioneering classic of romantic white tutu ballets and was the first ballet in which an artist danced in pointe shoes. It tells the story of a Scottish farmer who becomes enchanted by a beautiful spirit and was first performed in 1832, but has never been performed by the Alberta Ballet.

The company will offer the world premiere of GRIMM in October, a HalloBallet in two acts with a youth theme commissioned by Alberta Ballet. It was created by choreographer Stefania Ballone of Milan’s Teatro La Scala, whom Ventriglia calls a rising star. The ballet will highlight the dark side of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and will feature a new score by Japanese composer Takedo Gohara.

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“So we have (new) sets, costumes, lighting, music and choreography done by Alberta Ballet,” Ventriglia says. “I am very proud of this project. It is a contemporary creation but a long-lasting ballet. It is two acts and more than one fairy tale, but in one story.”

In December, Alberta Ballet will present its annual production of Edmund Stripe’s The Nutcracker. The Winter Gala will be presented in January, featuring 100 artists from Alberta Ballet and emerging talent from the Alberta Ballet School. Ventriglia first presented the inaugural Winter Gala in January of this year and it will become an annual tradition for the company.

The Dance Theater of Harlem will be the guest of Alberta Ballet in February with a performance that mixes classics with neoclassical works by George Balanchine and artistic director Robert Garland. The production will feature music by James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Radiohead.

The season will end with two Ventriglia pieces. That will include the Canadian premiere of his version of The Wizard of Oz in March, which Ventriglia created in Florence in 2012. The season will end in May with his reimagined version of Don Quixote, which will feature sets designed by Alberta Ballet that will be built in-house . This will be another world premiere.

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“We finish the season in May with big fireworks, a world premiere of Don Quixote,” he says. “This will be my first creation for the company. It is a ballet in three acts. The sets and costumes will be new. Everything will be new. Don Quixote, of course Miguel de Cervantes’ novel is fun. It’s a really funny story. It’s a love story with many characters and many complexities in the story and the music is fantastic. When a company does Don Quixote, it means ‘OK, here we are, we can compare ourselves to all the other companies in the world.’ It is positioning the company globally at a certain level. This is important for me. We are the Alberta Ballet, but we must also expose ourselves internationally, we must represent this country. My dream would be to tour, go on tour in the future.”

For more information about the 2024/2025 season, visit albertaballet.com

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