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Thursday, February 27, 2025
Meet Canada's other national ballet company: it's bringing classics like 'Swan Lake' and 'The Nutcracker' to audiences that might otherwise never see them live
www.thestar.com/entertainment: Call them the unsung heroes of Canadian dance.
In their home city, Toronto, they tend to go unnoticed, but talk to audiences in Glace Bay, Rimouski, Regina or Kitimat and, from their perspectives, Ballet Jörgen is effectively Canada’s national dance troupe.
2 comments:
Ava Basso
said...
I think that touring productions truly is one of the greatest things in the performance world. For too long, amazing, magical, and life-changing performances have been locked up in the biggest cities under insanely enormous fees. I love theatre so much and I would have had no idea if I wasn’t fortunate enough to have grown up in a city with a theatrical scene and the means to attend performances. Sure, many touring productions visit various cities, but there is a very large portion of these lands who do not have the means to attend and will go their entire lives without ever seeing a professional performance. The focus that Ballet Jörgen has on “audiences in smaller centres and often remote communities” and “underserved communities and underserved demographics” is a truly amazing thing. This paves the way for more and more innovation and exposure, making live performance like theatre and dance more accessible. Art was made to be shared, and everyone should get to experience it, no matter their background.
The communal reach of a ballet company isnt always something that is prioritized, but in my opinion it is the most important part. This includes the dedication to show up and put on a performance no matter what. I hope that the touring nature of these performances will never die out, and that they will contine to be brought to many across Canada and potentially America. I hope that whoever takes over the company after Jörgen also sees the benefit of traveling in order to bring shows to a wide audience. It’s clear that the company is a passion project for Jörgen and that he worries what will become of it after he leaves and how it may change from the company it is today and how its primary goals may transform over time with the increasing cost of being a traveling performance. I hope that the company knows how much it is inspiring to those it performs for.
2 comments:
I think that touring productions truly is one of the greatest things in the performance world. For too long, amazing, magical, and life-changing performances have been locked up in the biggest cities under insanely enormous fees. I love theatre so much and I would have had no idea if I wasn’t fortunate enough to have grown up in a city with a theatrical scene and the means to attend performances. Sure, many touring productions visit various cities, but there is a very large portion of these lands who do not have the means to attend and will go their entire lives without ever seeing a professional performance. The focus that Ballet Jörgen has on “audiences in smaller centres and often remote communities” and “underserved communities and underserved demographics” is a truly amazing thing. This paves the way for more and more innovation and exposure, making live performance like theatre and dance more accessible. Art was made to be shared, and everyone should get to experience it, no matter their background.
The communal reach of a ballet company isnt always something that is prioritized, but in my opinion it is the most important part. This includes the dedication to show up and put on a performance no matter what. I hope that the touring nature of these performances will never die out, and that they will contine to be brought to many across Canada and potentially America. I hope that whoever takes over the company after Jörgen also sees the benefit of traveling in order to bring shows to a wide audience. It’s clear that the company is a passion project for Jörgen and that he worries what will become of it after he leaves and how it may change from the company it is today and how its primary goals may transform over time with the increasing cost of being a traveling performance. I hope that the company knows how much it is inspiring to those it performs for.
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