| | Edmonton prima ballerina in Moulin Rouge
By Kristy Brownlee, Edmonton Journal, February 18, 2010
Even as a toddler, Edmonton-born and raised Vanessa Lawson knew she wanted to be a prima ballerina.
“It’s a dream I’ve been working for my whole life,” said the petite 32-year-old at rehearsal for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of Moulin Rouge on Thursday.
The former Belgravia native has reached the pinnacle of ballet as a principal dancer with the prestigious Royal Winnipeg Ballet Company. Since earning the coveted title in 2005, Lawson has danced for crowds in Mexico, Russia and across North America.
But her training began at age three at the Edmonton School of Ballet and she wouldn’t have had it any other way, Lawson said. “Edmonton has really good training ground for young dancers. There’s a lot of energy, a lot of talent, a lot of culture,” said the current Winnipeg resident.
This Friday and Saturday, Lawson is back home to play the leading character in Moulin Rouge, Nathalie, at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium.
The role is a charming young laundress living in Paris.
“I love the energy of Moulin Rouge. The music is incredible,” Lawson said.
Many of the dancers will be dressed in corsets and long skirts for the popular cabaret – difficult attire to perform in, she says.
But Lawson gets plenty of practice.
To prepare for performances, the slender 5-foot-5 ballerina trains daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Providing the audience an unforgettable experience makes the hard work worthwhile, she says.
“You have to be extremely dedicated. You really have to love it. It's a dream come true for me."
By Ashley Martin, Leader-Post, November 5, 2009
MOULIN ROUGE -- THE BALLET, 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Conexus Arts Centre
Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet is not an adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s film of the same name. Nor is it an X-rated cabaret show.
Though the Royal Winnipeg Ballet production takes place in and around the cabaret, it is still a classical ballet.
“So if they’re expecting to see topless dancers in a cabaret show, that’s not going to happen,” says choreographer Jorden Morris.
“It’s girls in pointe shoes and dresses -- it’s not anything X-rated.”
And though the ballet bears similarities to the Luhrmann movie-musical (the setting of 1890s Paris, a young couple in love, Moulin Rouge owner Zidler and artist Toulouse-Lautrec, a tragic ending), the music is a vast difference.
“(The film) was almost like a music video with all the modern music, the Madonna and Elton John,” says Morris, whose original production focuses on French composers of the era, while incorporating the Can-Can and Argentinean tango music.
“I think when people hear the classical music score and it’s a ballet, I think they come in thinking they might be missing the movie or looking for the movie, but I don’t think they leave that way,” adds scene designer Andrew Beck.
The opening show of the RWB’s 70th season required extensive research on Paris of the era when the Moulin Rouge and the Eiffel Tower were being built. Morris took all he’d learned about the art, music and fashion, and used it to set the love story of Matthew (Gael Lambiotte), an artist, and Nathalie (Vanessa Lawson), a singer.
But their story, marked by Zidler’s (Eric Nipp) jealousy of the young couple’s love, ends in tragedy.
“One thing that really struck me about Paris at that time was ... it was a very excessive kind of lifestyle, that dangerous kind of excessive, over-the-top lifestyle ... What I found intriguing was, what would it be like to throw two young, genuine, honest, loving kids into that bohemian cauldron and see what happens to them and their relationship,” Morris says.
It all takes place in the streets of Paris and in the shadows of the Moulin Rouge. Beck based his stage on photos of the bridge over the Seine and the Moulin Rouge.
Steel and a plastic called Vivak were used to make the set, which includes a tower and a staircase. A scrim -- a transparent painted fabric that shows different images depending on lighting -- of a Paris street scene serves as a backdrop.
Costumes are at once historical, traditional and vibrant, Morris says.
Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet is the highest grossing show in RWB history.
The RWB has had to add three shows and has sold out most nights.
“The audiences have just loved it,” Morris says. “We were all sort of shocked and amazed in Minneapolis (during the premiere) when during the Can-Can the audience just started clapping ... It seems like every show we’ve done, they just start to go nuts at that point.”
And the ballet company has earned the praise of the Moulin Rouge in Paris itself.
The RWB, through months of negotiating, is the first dance company in the world given the rights to use the Moulin Rouge name in its production.
A representative from the infamous cabaret attended the premiere to see what it was all about.
Her reaction?
“ ‘It was fantastic. We didn’t know how you were going to make a ballet out of this but we love it,’ so that was a huge relief for me to get the OK from the actual people there,” says Morris.
© Copyright (c) The Regina Leader-Post Moulin Rouge performance a delight
By Grania Litwin, Times Colonist February 10, 2010
REVIEW
What: Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Moulin Rouge
Where: Royal Theatre
When: 7:30 p.m. tonight and Thursday
Rating: **** (out of five)
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is the first company in the world to be granted permission by the notorious Moulin Rouge cabaret to use the name. And ooh la la,
its reputation is safe in the hands of this great Canadian company.
The Royal Theatre performance Tuesday night was a delight and the remaining two shows are sold out.
In this version of the familiar tale, heroine Nathalie, danced by a willowy and lyrical Vanessa Lawson, is a laundress who becomes a cabaret entertainer and falls for a struggling painter called Matthew, performed by a handsome and graceful Gael Lambiotte on Tuesday night.
Also present is Toulouse-Lautrec, danced by a virile Yosuke Mino, and cabaret owner Zidler, performed by Eric Nipp, whose leaps and energy seem to increase as the evening progresses.
More elegant than lewd, more provocative than rude, the ballet captures the bohemian flavour and belle époque glamour of the period through its evocative bridge, the Parisian scrim scenes, sparkling Eiffel Tower and of course, the red windmill.
The story of their young love and the tyrant Zidler’s jealous interference is touchingly told amid stupendous lifts and swirling, ruffled skirts.
Memorable scenes include a stunning pas de deux where Lawson and Lambiotte dance on a bridge in front of the Eiffel Tower to the music of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. The choreography is simple and clean and the pair gorgeously romantic.
I could have done with a little less dancing with easels, but in one segue choreographer Jordan Morris displays his comic turn as the hero is transformed from street garb into evening dress, and is literally dropped into his paints. Lautrec and a team of bobbing tailors undress him down to his boxers and have him back in a tuxedo in about 11⁄2 minutes. It’s brilliant choreography, and hilarious, as they spin him on a modeling dais.
Another show stopper is Nathalie’s introduction to the cabaret’s denizens and her slutty co-workers. Jo-Ann Sundermeier is brilliant as La Goulue during a rehearsal in the smoky underground with its forbidden atmosphere and look of a Lautrec painting. The two are wonderfully competitive in a can-can cat fight.
And then the can-can chorus line entertains with long skirts, frilly underthings, high kicks accompanied by cymbal clashes, hops in a circle with legs in the air and risqué splits — all to the sound of squeals, screams and shrieks.
The female dancers rise en point despite the added weight of heavy costumes and of tight corsets, while the men spin like cyclones.
Morris, who bought us the hit show Peter Pan last year, has combined the music of Chopin and Debussy, with the tango tempos of Piazzola and Quarteto Gelato, and Offenbach and Strauss for a spectacular recreation of the bohemian, sensual world of this beau monde.
Note: Due to deadline considerations, the reviewer left before the concert concluded.
© Copyright The Victoria Times Colonist
Thursday, March 5, 2009,
The Winnipeg Free Press
By Alison Mayes
Ooh, la la! The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will launch its 70th anniversary season with Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet, a love story set in and around the Paris cabaret famous for gaudy can-can girls and bohemian nightlife.
The new ballet for the full 26-dancer company will have its world premiere in Minneapolis on Oct. 17, then run at the Centennial Concert Hall Oct. 21-25.
It will also tour to 14 Canadian cities in 2009-10, including Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Halifax.
The ballet's budget is $500,000. The choreographer is the local Jorden Morris, a former RWB dancer who scored a hit with his first full-length ballet, Peter Pan.
The story, which is original and not based on Baz Luhrmann's 2001 movie Moulin Rouge!, is set in the 1880s. It will follow a laundress named Sandrine who becomes a can-can star, and depict her romance with a painter named Matthew.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the artist famous for his posters of the Moulin Rouge demi-monde, will play a significant supporting role, as the story will be told through his eyes, Morris said.
"The art and the fashion of the time were a great inspiration for me," Morris said Wednesday at the news conference to unveil the 2009-10 season. "And there was so much dance involved. That's when the quadrille and the can-can were created."
As he did for Peter Pan, Morris is weaving the score for Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet(a working title, subject to change) from works by a number of composers, mostly French, including Debussy (with a pas de deux set to the popular Clair de Lune), Ravel, Offenbach and Massenet. There will also be tango music by Astor Piazzolla and selections with an accordion-laced street flavour by the Canadian group Quartetto Gelato.
"I would like (audiences) to experience the amazing energy that was Paris at that time -- the freedom, the expression of art, and that very creative atmosphere," Morris said. "The wonderful love story is intertwined through the greatness of the can-can shows, to the seedier side of the city with the underground tango, the gypsy cafes...."
In one scene, Matthew will have visions after drinking absinthe, the potent green liquor favoured by bohemian poets and painters.
The ingenious set designed by Andrew Beck will include a large moulin (windmill), the Eiffel Tower, a bridge, a tower with a staircase inside it and other elements to depict both the Montmartre exteriors and the cabaret interior. The set pieces will be transparent to allow for dramatic lighting effects.
About 100 costumes will be created by designers Shannon Lovelace and Anne Armit. Not surprisingly, corsets, ruffles, bloomers, stockings and other sexy touches are already on the drawing board.
The three other ballets to be presented in the 70th anniversary season are popular works from the company's repertoire.
December 19-23, the holiday favourite Nutcracker returns.
March 10-14, 2010, the company will perform its opulent version of the Tchaikovsky-scored classic Swan Lake.
And April 28 to May 2, 2010, will see the return of Val Caniparoli's A Cinderella Story, the updated fairy tale set to Ron Paley's jazz arrangements of Richard Rodgers tunes.
Current subscribers have until May 15 to renew their seats. Subscriptions go on sale to the general public on May 19 at 956-2792. Tickets for individual shows go on sale Sept. 8.
The company is currently preparing to perform Romeo and Juliet, March 11-15 at the Centennial Concert Hall.
By: Alison Mayes, Winnipeg Free Press 6/10/2009 1:00 AM
Let’s make one thing clear, mes chers amis:
Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet has nothing to do with the 2001 movie musical starring Nicole Kidman.
The soon-to-open production by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet has its own plot, its own characters and a French classical score, not a pop soundtrack.
The only thing it has in common with the movie is its setting in the legendary Paris cabaret topped by a red moulin (windmill).
The club, which is still in operation, was made famous by the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and by its gaudy entertainers, particularly saucy cancan girls. Both RWB and the moviemakers had to obtain permission to use the closely guarded Moulin Rouge trademark.
The ballet, choreographed by Winnipeg’s Jorden Morris, will have its world premiere in Minneapolis on Oct. 17, then come high-kicking into the Centennial Concert Hall, Oct. 21-25.
It’s been created on a frugal $500,000 budget that pales in comparison to the movie’s estimated $52-million price tag.
The local set and costume designers who have been immersed in the project for months know the visually spectacular movie will influence audience expectations.
“It’s a little bit inevitable,” says set designer Andrew Beck. But he and costume co-designers Anne Armit and Shannon Lovelace say the ballet, set in the 1890s, will have a stronger feel of historical authenticity. That, with the use of classical music, will “clear their minds of the movie pretty quickly,” Beck predicts.
The designers may have a baguette budget, but they’ve shown éclair ingenuity. When authentic beaver-fur top hats priced out at an impossible $600 to $900 each, Armit bought theatrical ones and covered them with stretch velvet to achieve the same look at $180 each.
To dress up cabaret chairs and tables with “wrought iron” curlicues, Beck bought cheap rubber doormats that are made to look like wrought iron, cut them up and glued them to the furniture pieces.
Beck has many years’ experience as a scenic painter. He was co-designer on RWB’s Peter Pan, but this is only his second project as solo designer.
Because RWB tours so widely, he says, the $160,000 worth of sets and props must be compact, durable, easy to set up for a small crew, and adaptable to theatres much smaller than the concert hall. Not all the set elements will be used in small halls.
Beck got the key idea for Moulin Rouge’s sets from working on the Aboriginal Achievement Awards’ set seven years ago. It used large, lightweight set components made of Vivak, a plastic that can be heated and “vaccuformed” into three-dimensional shapes.
Most of the architectural pieces for Moulin Rouge, including a bridge, the 26-foot windmill and a tower with a spiral staircase inside it, have been constructed from Vivak “stonework” on bent-steel frames. The plastic is clear, like Plexiglas but lighter, and safer because it’s less prone to shatter.
The “stonework” has been painted in watercolour-like hues. It can be lit so it glows with colour, or appears transparent.
When the opening curtain goes up, we’ll see a huge, 26 x 60-foot scrim painted with a street scene centred on the cabaret. Currently laid out on the floor of the RWB shop, the scrim looks solid but is actually full of tiny holes. Lighting will make it seem to dissolve, creating a cinematic effect as we “enter” the scene. It will then “fly” out, and later reappear.
A key challenge of creating the show’s 70 costumes, on a budget of $135,000, is that true-to-life 1890s-style garments are too heavy and restrictive for ballet. As the RWB’s longtime head of wardrobe, Armit sees how dancers today are pulling off far more strenuous feats than in the past.
“It gets harder and harder to get the costumes to work with the demands of the choreography,” she says.
Armit had to alter one costume for La Goulue, who is based on the real-life Moulin Rouge star, by inserting pieces of Spandex into the sides of her corset to give the dancer more breathing room.
The female dancers were surprised to discover that Armit and Lovelace weren’t using a shortcut to avoid lace-up corsets. Although the ultra-slim gals won’t need “knee in the back” lace-tightening, the boned corsets really do have to be tightened and tied.
As of last week, it was still being discussed whether the cancan dancers can wear black stockings, garters and pointe shoes, or whether it’s not feasible because quick-changing to and from that look would take too long.
Citing the fact that RWB’s Romeo and Juliet costumes have been used for 28 years, Armit says certain fabrics, like netting, had to be ruled out because they wouldn’t last.
She says she’s not dirtying or distressing any fabrics to simulate the grittiness of the era or the poverty of some characters.
“Give us a few years on the road!” she jokes.
alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca
The sets for RWB’s Moulin Rouge were built by five carpenters who worked for four months, plus five painters for two and a half months. The welding and grinding of the steel framing went on for eight hours a day for four months.
Twenty-six people have been working since July to cut, stitch, hand-dye, paint, bead, trim and fit 70 costumes, from sexy tango dresses and lavish gowns to lacy laundrettes’ bloomers and brocade waiters’ vests. Some of the men’s costumes are being expertly tailored at the Stratford Festival.
The designers say the greatest challenge has been the layered taffeta skirts for the six cancan girls. The ruffled hems used a total of 3,850 metres of fabric. The designers worked out a mathematical plan “like a sudoku” to ensure that the same colour of ruffle never appears at the same level on any two skirts.
By: Paula Citron, Globe & Mail, From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 12:00AM EDT Last updated on Monday, Oct. 26, 2009 3:17AM EDT
Did you know that in fin-de-siècle Paris, most cancan girls were former launderettes? That they danced in gypsy tango clubs to get noticed? And when they finally did hit it big, the outrageous dancers were known as the Diamond Dogs?
So Jorden Morris discovered while researching Moulin Rouge - The Ballet. Commissioned to kick off the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s 70th anniversary season, it’s the first time the notorious cabaret has given a licensing agreement to a ballet company to use its name.
The infamous Paris cabaret had an obvious draw for the RWB - “It represents the quintessence of the bohemian lifestyle,” says Morris, “risqué and saucy, excessive and reckless” - but turning it into a season opener was another matter.
It took three months for Morris and dramaturge Rick Skene to come up with an original story for the ballet. With the Moulin Rouge as the backdrop, their two star-crossed lovers are Nathalie, a launderette who becomes a cancan girl, and her beau, the young painter Matthew. “I see Nathalie and Matthew,” says Morris, “as two honest characters thrown into the dangerous cauldron that is Paris. We watch them take a journey of many possibilities.”
Morris has obvious cred with RWB. He went to RWB’s school, became a principal dancer with the company, and he is now associate director of the school. He also choreographed 2006’s Peter Pan, the most successful ballet in company history.
Still, to prepare for his new show, he and Skene read books on Parisian history and watched Moulin Rouge films - John Huston’s 1952 film and Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 musical - along with Jean Renoir’s classic 1955 French Cancan.
“It was fun doing the homework,” quips Morris.
Several real-life characters appear in the ballet. Toulouse-Lautrec is a mentor to Matthew, while Moulin Rouge owner Charles Zidler becomes obsessed with Nathalie and tries to hinder her romance with Matthew.
And then there are two of the most famous Moulin Rouge dancers - La Môme Fromage and La Goulue - who both get their own solos.
Morris begins his choreographic process by first finding the music. Moulin2
For this ballet, he listened to more than 1,000 pieces - and was bitterly disappointed when, after a six-month search, the sheet music could not be found for excerpts from the famous scores for the Huston and Renoir films.
“It took one-and-a-half painstaking years to pull together the music,” he explains, “taking into consideration such things as finishing on the same key as the next piece, and making sure the music flows. Then just two weeks away from beginning the choreography, I had to find replacement pieces.”
In the end, 31 musical selections made the cut. French composers Debussy, Chabrier, Offenbach, Massenet and Ravel dominate, but there is a good measure of Johann Strauss Jr., with contributions from Shostakovich and Lehar. For the Winnipeg performances, the popular classical ensemble Quartetto Gelato will also be playing live on stage during the gypsy club scenes.
“Once the soundtrack is done,” says Morris, “I listen to the music to get the flavour of the choreography. The living room of my house has no furniture, so it functions as a dance studio. It’s where I work out my preliminary ideas. When I meet with the dancers, I have a good vocabulary of four or five things to try out. I’m dictated by how the dancers gravitate to the movement.”
There are strong visuals in the ballet. For example, Matthew and Toulouse-Lautrec have a paint-off. “By covering the canvases with wet silk, their wet brushes touching the surface reveal the colours beneath the silk,” says Morris. “It actually looks like they’re painting.”
The colourful costumes are designed by Anne Armit and Shannon Lovelace and, gilding the lily, is the contribution of ballet sponsor MAC Cosmetics. In addition to supplying about $10,000 in makeup, MAC senior artist Melissa Gibson created the makeup designs for all the characters, and taught the RWB dancers their application.
“The girls have to look fantastic, if we are to believe that they are transformed launderettes,” says Morris.
As for the dancing, Morris has choreographed the cancan on pointe shoes instead of the usual boot, which took a lot of experimenting on the part of the dancers. “We literally had to invent the movement,” says Morris.
Moulin Rouge - The Ballet opens in Winnipeg tonight and runs to Sunday. The ballet then tours to Brandon (Nov. 9), Regina (Nov, 10), Saskatoon (Nov. 13 and 14), Kelowna (Nov. 16) and Vancouver, (Nov. 19 to 22).
Holly Harris, Uptown Winnipeg
Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet is launching its celebratory 70th anniversary with garters and gaiety by barrelling into its new season with the highly anticipated premiere of Jorden Morris’ Moulin Rouge: The Ballet.
The new work is inspired by the flamboyant Paris cabaret that gave birth to the raucous Can-Can and celebrated its 120th anniversary earlier this month.
It’s also the first time that a ballet company has been sanctioned to use the Moulin Rouge’s iconic name and windmill (‘moulin’) imagery. The RWB has been granted a three-year license, and the Paris cabaret’s CEO and marketing personnel are flying in for the show’s Minneapolis world premiere on Oct. 17.
“The Moulin Rouge has been very, very supportive,” says Jeff Herd, RWB’s chief executive officer. “They’re excited about seeing the ballet.”
The RWB’s status as a world-renowned ballet company helped seal the deal that was in negotiations over several years.
“They knew of the RWB; they knew our reputation; they had told us that some of their dancers, at one point, had been students of ours,” Herd says proudly.
With its half-a-million-dollar budget and the eyes of the ballet world firmly set on its feathered frippery, there’s a lot riding on the show. So far, however, tickets have been selling like hotcakes and the company recently added a sixth show to its local run to meet the unprecedented response.
“The volume has been unbelievable,” Herd says. “It’s a wonderful problem to have.”
Set in the late 1890s, the full-length ballet tells the story of lovers Nathalie and Matthew, who tempt the fates while seeking their destiny in the world’s most famous music hall. The colourful cast of characters includes historical figures Toulouse Lautrec, La Goulue and cabaret mastermind Charles Zidler, who also falls in love with the fictitious young heroine amidst a backdrop of reckless Bohemian society.
“I hope audiences get a sense of all those beautiful, wonderful, crazy, bizarre things going on at that time, and really go through the journey of these two characters falling in love,” says choreographer Morris.
Morris, 42, has also crafted an hour-and-a-half musical score that draws heavily on composers such as Ravel, Massenet, Debussy and Offenbach. He was listening to period music up to eight hours a day to find the perfect balance.
“My true inspiration really comes from finding the right music,” says Morris, who describes it as the “soul of the work.
“The connection with the composers who were writing at that time is very important for me.”
Another key element was the story’s script. Morris worked closely with dramaturge Rick Skene, a fixture on Winnipeg’s film and theatre scene, to develop the ballet’s narrative arc and flesh out its characters.
The two first met when the Banff-raised choreographer came to study at the RWB School’s Professional Division in 1981. Skene was teaching drama during the program’s summer session, and remembers Morris as an extremely focused 13-year-old, already dedicated to building a career in the ballet world.
“Jorden was one of those absolutely, cheerfully committed, hardworking students,” Skene enthuses. “It was always about the work.”
Morris also took acting classes with Skene - whom he describes as his theatrical mentor - at the University of Winnipeg Collegiate after his dance training at the RWB School had finished for the day. Their creative relationship has flourished over the years, with Morris eventually becoming a principal dancer with the RWB in 1992 and associate director of the RWB School’s Professional Division a decade later.
Skene has continued to work off and on with the company as a fight choreographer, his last major gig was coaching the lofty swordplay scenes in Morris’ high-flying hit, Peter Pan.
“He’s almost that little brother,” Skene says, “and that’s kind of a miracle. That long relationship and trust that we have really made frank discussions possible during this process.”
Some of those talks included figuring out how to interpret the iconic Can-Can using classical ballet vocabulary. The boisterous dance - typically filled with racy splits, high kicks and pinwheels - is challenging enough to perform in traditional character shoes. Morris has opted for a balletic version performed entirely en pointe - a technical feat that boggles the mind.
Almost 30 years since that first class together, Skene is proud of his protégé. “Jorden walked into the RWB School as a 13-year-old kid and came up honestly through the ranks,” he says. “And now he’s steering the boat.”
The production also boasts spectacular costumes by Anne Armit and Shannon Lovelace, sets/properties by Andrew Beck and lighting design by Pierre Lavoie. The RWB will take the show on the road for a 10-city tour throughout the season.
MOULIN ROUGE: THE BALLET
Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Oct. 21-24, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 25, 2 p.m., Centennial Concert Hall
Going Rouge
RWB brings out the ooh-la-la with Moulin
By: Lindsey Ward, Winnipeg Sun, Last Updated: 15th October 2009, 1:57am
Corsets laced breathtakingly tight, lingerie-revealing can-can kicks, burlesque-inspired routines that ooze ooh-la-la -- it’s no wonder Royal Winnipeg Ballet principal dancer Vanessa Lawson is feeling a little exposed in new work Moulin Rouge -- The Ballet.
“We normally wear underwear under our dresses -- just not frilly ones,” laughs Lawson, who will debut romantic heroine Nathalie in the company’s 70th anniversary season-opener, inspired by the infamous 1890s Paris cabaret built by impressario Joseph Oller.
“We lift up our skirts at the back quite a bit, so you’ll see our bums for sure,” she teases. “But it’s very traditional to what they used to do.”
The choreography -- created by Jordan Morris, who also made the RWB’s Peter Pan -- includes, of course, the seductive French can-can, copious other sky-high kicks and a painful move where the dancers slide into the splits a la the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
“We have tried to find a way to make it look like we’re doing (those splits) without injuring ourselves,” Lawson says. “It’s very difficult.”
But the bigger challenges of the new product, 12-year company member Lawson says, are developing a fresh ballet that still captures the atmosphere of the red windmill club in 1898 -- and doing so while looking flawless in some of the heaviest costumes she’s ever worn.
“It’s been a little bit difficult because my character, Nathalie, doesn’t exist in history,” she says, adding real-life Moulin Rouge dwellers Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and La Goulue are characters in the ballet. “So there’s been quite a bit of research and quite a bit of discussion of character and how we’re going to tell the story. We spend hours and hours talking about how we’re going to relate to each other on stage, because as dancers, we’re not really taught how to act at all. In this ballet, we are real human beings and so the action and the drama have to be very natural and very clear. Pretty much the whole ballet, we have a dialogue going through our heads.”
Said dialogue -- not to be confused with the plots of the 1952 John Huston or 2001 Baz Luhrmann movies -- tells the story of 18-year-old Parisian street worker Nathalie (Lawson,or her alternate Maureya Lebowitz), who falls for painter Matthew (principal dancers Gael Lambiotte and Reyneris Reyes). Soon after, the lovebirds learn their relationship is forbidden as Moulin Rouge manager Zidler (principal Jaime Vargas and corps de ballet member Eric Nipp) essentially owns her. Along the way, Nathalie meets cabaret dancer La Goulue (second soloists Jo-Ann Sundermeier and Amanda Green) and Matthew gets hopped up on absinthe with boozy post-impressionist painter Toulouse (soloists Yosuke Mino and Dmitri Dovgoselets).
“It’s a fun scene,” says Lawson, who’s unsure whether or not her partner Lambiotte tested out the potent alcoholic bevvie for research purposes. “He has all of these hallucinations and he sees images of people, and there are three green fairies that sort of direct his hallucinations and manipulate him.”
Drug-fuelled fantasies aside, the RWB creative team has saved its most vibrant scenes for inside the cabaret, where the dancers are dolled up in frilly can-can skirts with matching corsets -- probably two of the most uncomfortable garments to dance in. Ever.
“The weight of the skirts is the big problem because I’m required to do fouettes -- which are repeated turns on pointe -- quite a bit,” Lawson says. “Wearing a tutu, you don’t feel the weight, but the skirt, because it’s so long, it can completely throw off your turn. The wardrobe department has tried to keep the skirts as light as possible, so I know that’s been a challenge for them.”
Costume designer Anne Armit can attest to that.
“I think what makes them tricky is the colour combos we had to deal with,” Armit says of stitching the ruffled skirts, which run at $2,750 a pop and have to sustain at least 200 productions of Moulin Rouge, which will play in 11 other cities this fall and winter.
“They have to be moveable, they have to be durable, they have to be alterable, and they have to look fabulous.”
Lawson says the can-can getups are indeed “amazing,” despite being on the hefty side. And -- when accompanied by a cabaret set by designer Andrew Beck and a live score of French compositions performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Toronto’s Quartetto Gelato -- they’re also tres sexy.
“That was the purpose of it -- you’re lifting your skirt and showing your legs. That’s the reason why people would watch it back then.”lindsey.ward@sunmedia.ca
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MOULIN ROUGE: THE BALLET
WHERE
Centennial Concert Hall
WHEN
Oct. 21 - 25
TICKETS
$23.50 - $86.50 @ Ticketmaster | |
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