The National Ballet Of Canada has just announced their 2010/2011 lineup, and it includes Chroma – a ballet set to orchestrated versions of songs by The White Stripes; the production runs November 24-28, 2010. Single tickets go on sale September 27.
Chroma premiered in London, England back in 2006, and played at Washington’s Kennedy Centre Opera House in 2009. Read some rave reviews about it from both cities; apparently it’s a 30-minute abstract piece featuring a cast of 10 dancers. Sounds like the whole thing initially shocked traditional ballet goers – the music and the movements are deliberately rough - but they were eventually won over by the performance.
Here’s the press blurb from the NBOC website:
“The acclaimed British choreographer Wayne McGregor revels in the amalgamation of the unlikely – and the results are never less than enthralling. His multi-disciplinary works emerge from those experimental frontiers where the theoretical merges with the physical, and dance pushes up against and interacts with film, the visual arts, architecture, technology and science. Chroma, from 2006, is a perfect example. Set to a score of orchestrated versions of songs by the rock band The White Stripes, the work pits the angular, rough-edged music and the choreographer’s energetic, exacting style against a stark, minimalist architectural space, allowing the audience to see the nature of physical movement in an entirely new and invigorating light.”
Composer Joby Talbot is the man behind the music behind The White Stripes, and the songs are taken from an album he and Richard Russell released in 2006 as Aluminium.
Aluminium - The Hardest Button To Button
Check out additional tracks on the Aluminium myspace page here.
