Evening of the National Ballet of Canada. The "Context. Diana Vishneva" Festival
Credits
Cast to be announced
PERFORMERS: Soloists and artists of the National Ballet of Canada The Mariinsky Orchestra Conductor: David Briskin
For the first time in its history, the National Ballet of Canada will tour to Moscow and St. Petersburg to perform at Diana Vishneva's Context festival. The company will present a mixed programme of Paz de la Jolla by Justin Peck, Being and Nothingness by Guillaume Côté and Crystal Pite’s Emergence.
One of the top international ballet companies, The National Ballet of Canada was founded in 1951 by Celia Franca. A company of 70 dancers with its own orchestra, the National Ballet has been led by Artistic Director Karen Kain, one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation, since 2005. Renowned for its diverse repertoire, the company performs traditional full-length classics, embraces contemporary work and encourages the creation of new ballets as well as the development of Canadian choreographers. The company’s repertoire includes works by Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, John Cranko, Rudolf Nureyev, John Neumeier, William Forsythe, James Kudelka, Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky, Crystal Pite, Christopher Wheeldon, Aszure Barton, Guillaume Côté and Robert Binet.
The National Ballet has toured in Canada, and internationally with appearances in Paris, London, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with upcoming tours to San Francisco, and Hamburg.
Programme
Paz de la Jolla
Being and Nothingness
Emergence
Paz de la Jolla
In his 2013 work Paz de la Jolla, New York City Ballet dancer and Resident Choreographer Justin Peck has created a heartfelt and sun-washed homage to his southern California upbringing. Set to Martinů’s Sinfonietta la Jolla, the ballet is a gorgeously conceived, sweet-natured billet-doux to beach life and young love, the choreography both brisk and languid, salty and sensual, rich in emotional undercurrents and evocative of the pleasures and fears of youth and coming of age.
Being and Nothingness
National Ballet Principal Dancer Guillaume Côté has always brought to the many roles he has performed an unstinting spirit of passionate exploration and emotional honesty. As a Choreographic Associate with the company, those same principles apply. In Being and Nothingness from 2015, he finds in his source material, Jean-Paul Sartre's landmark philosophical work of the same name, questions of freedom, the nature of selfhood and the meaning of existence and illuminates those abstract ideas in his highly expressive, richly physical choreographic style.
Emergence
Crystal Pite's Emergence was the sensation of the season when it premiered with the National Ballet in 2009. Subsequent stagings have shown it has lost none of its power to provoke, startle and intrigue. The work posits the instinct for social organization found in the insect realm as a precise metaphor for human interaction and purpose, with swarms and waves of dancers recreating in a dimly-lit, subterranean hive the intricate forms and patterns of life that seem to unite both the natural and human-made worlds.
Mariinsky Theatre: 
Mariinsky-2 (New Theatre): 
Mariinsky Concert Hall: 