Movement's new muse

The latest instalment in a series of portraits of music’s living legends is painted not with brush strokes, but with the pirouettes and fouettés of 31 ballet dancers.

Following the emotive portraits of icons Joni Mitchell and Elton John, choreographer Jean Grand-Maître has collaborated with his latest muse, singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan, to piece together a ballet that celebrates femininity and navigates the twists and turns in the road through womanhood. Alberta Ballet will bring the soulful Canadian songstress’s melodies to life this May, using her anthology as a vehicle to break down the walls that guard the audience’s innermost sentiments, delving into the valves of vulnerability that are often clogged with repressed emotion. This “emotional cholesterol,” as Grand-Maître puts it, is what he and his troupe of dancers aim to scrape away with their world premiere ballet, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.

“There’s something about Sarah McLachlan’s art that helps clear the emotional cholesterol that blocks those valves,” says Grand-Maître, with the articulation of a seasoned orator. “There is something soothing about it. I’m hoping we can touch people — help them slow down and meditate a bit.”

The esteemed dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Alberta Ballet has hand-selected 14 men and 17 women to bring the ballet to fruition, six of whom portray the title character at different stages in her life — the oldest being 55 years old and the youngest, only 11. Under the mutual direction of Grand-Maître and McLachlan, the dancers have all lived and breathed the lyrics of the Juno, Grammy, and Gemini award-winning singer for the past eight months. No matter their ages, the ballet has made the dancers dig deep inside themselves with Grand-Maître and the soundtrack (woven together by Claude Lemelin) as their guides, chiselling out the meanings of songs like “Good Enough,” “Into the Fire” and the production’s namesake, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.”

“They’re the generation of Sarah,” says the Hull, Que., native, his words gilded with an eloquent French accent. “The women are taking the ballet very much to heart. They have to take the emotionality and subtleties of Sarah’s music and capture them with their bodies.”

Each of the instalments in the portraits series takes a magnifying glass to the music of legendary singer-songwriters, drawing out the themes of each song and putting them in motion onstage. Like the songs themselves, the ballets are not exact biographical representations of each musician, but play on specific lyrics or the feelings they conjure up. From Joni Mitchell to Elton John to Sarah McLachlan, the ballets each touch on different — but equally poignant — facets of life expressed through, as McLachlan put it herself, “physical poetry.”

“With each of them, it’s a completely different esthetic,” says Grand-Maître, reminiscing for a moment about Love Lies Bleeding, the evocative production about a superstar’s life on the edge. “With Elton John, it was about using his life to educate. With Sarah, it’s about women in a modern world.”

McLachlan was brought to tears after seeing her portrait come to life through what Grand-Maître dubs “a sort of series of tableaus.” The first tableau, or segment of the ballet, depicts a young girl living in a fairytale-like dreamland, then growing into adolescence, discovering love and sisterhood, experiencing betrayal and ultimately learning to accept life and death. McLachlan has been there to oversee the artistic process, taking the time out of her tour schedule to open up to the dancers and crew and share her insights. Grand-Maître says that part of what makes the ballets so raw is this one-on-one contact with their inspiration, adding, “We’re trying to capture a portrait of these singer-songwriters, and it’s the intimacy and close contact that allows us to capture that portrait. Sarah has been, on all accounts, a dream to work with. It has been a beautiful voyage.”

Grand-Maître’s theatrical style has whisked him from company to company, performing with Theatre Ballet of Canada in the late 1980s and Ballet British Columbia in the early 1990s, and transitioning into choreography with his career-defining Frames of Mind for the National Ballet of Canada in 1993. He was hired by Alberta Ballet in 2002 and has directed both the traditional productions, like Cinderella and Carmen, and the original portrait series. Although combining ballet and pop music is nothing new, exploring the worlds of different pop icons he admires has been quite the experience for Grand-Maître, a breath of fresh, melodic air from the usual Mozart and Beethoven classics he uses.

“I have always listened to Sarah McLachlan,” he continues. “Her lyrics are deeply human and her melodies are very danceable. She represents women with dignity in this age of dressing down.”

Two months before opening night, Grand-Maître says the ballet is about 75 per cent choreographed, and the month leading up to opening night will focus on tweaking the production to perfection, from the tips of dancers’ gracefully extended fingers right down to every pointed toe.  

“I’ve still got a lot of work to do,” says Grand-Maître. “Ballet is a refined art, and you just keep polishing and polishing.”

When the ballet premieres in Calgary on May 5, it will face the ultimate test: McLachlan’s approval. Though Grand-Maître is nervous to sit beside her in the front row on opening night, he says he is excited to hear what both McLachlan and the audience think of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. He hopes the underlying themes and his inspiration’s music will allow audiences to get lost in the whimsical, poetic world of Sarah McLachlan.

“We’re all fumbling towards grace,” says Grand-Maître. “It’s really a depiction of our human existence. It’s a struggle to find the grace in life — we fall sometimes, and other times we soar.” •

Alberta Ballet’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy will run in Calgary from May 5 to 7 and Edmonton on May 13 and 14.

Photo by Darren Makowichuk (top)