Risky business: Le Petit Prince is 'make or break' for dancer-turned-choreographer Guillaume Côté
Nigel Hunt | CBC News | Posted: June 2, 2016 9:00 PM | Last Updated: June 2, 2016
New $2M production is National Ballet's 1st full-length work created by a Canadian in a decade
Among the National Ballet's most acclaimed dancers, Guillaume Côté is laying his reputation on the line with his latest role: creator of the company's new ballet Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince).
Although Côté has staged short dance pieces before, Le Petit Prince's world premiere on Saturday marks his full-length ballet debut as a choreographer.
Carrying a hefty $2-million price tag (covered by a single private donor), it's also the first new full-length production by a Canadian choreographer that the National Ballet has staged in a decade.
"It's one of those things where they say be careful what you wish for," an admittedly nervous Côté told CBC News early in the rehearsal process.
"I wished for this for so long and then realized I've never done this before ... This is a make or break opportunity for a choreographer like me."
A bold new chapter
If Petit Prince becomes a hit, it could launch a whole new chapter in Côté's life — something he hopes for dearly.
Now 34, the celebrated artist is well aware of the relative brevity of a dancer's career. Few perform into their 40s. What's more, he tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) while dancing The Nutcracker in December 2014, an injury from which it took a year for him to recover. The injury added to the need to kickstart his new career as a choreographer.
"I love it so much! I feel like it's my calling," he said.
"I will always choreograph, I will always do it, but whether or not I do it at a scale like this forever, it's up for debate after the premiere of Little Prince, for sure."
"If this doesn't do well, it may be tough for me to recover, not only personally, but I think also internationally. It's gonna gather a lot of attention, so hopefully it's as good as I hope it can be."
National Ballet artistic director Karen Kain has had success with the company's recent co-productions of Romeo and Juliet, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but both were created by well-known foreign choreographers.
"We have the highest hopes for [Le Petit Prince] to be spectacular and a lasting production," she said, "something that will serve the company for decades to come."
Still, she understands the dangers of creating new work.
"Every time you take a risk like this you have no guarantees. You can take the most talented people and put them together and they do either their best work or not."
Top collaborators
To create a new adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's much loved 1943 novella for children, Côté surrounded himself with some other top Canadian artists.
Canadian composer Kevin Lau had never written for the ballet before, but said he couldn't pass up this opportunity. His melodic score went through changes during the early rehearsal process, something that was a new experience for him.
"I'm used to determining the structure of a piece, even a piece that lasts two hours," he said.
"And so, when I would write a piece and it would either not be used or would be moved to a place I hadn't expected, my initial reaction was: 'What's happening? What's going on? Why is it moving here?'"
Michael Levine, Le Petit Prince's set and costume designer, has worked at the top opera houses in the world, including La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and London's Royal Opera House. He got involved early on during a series of workshops to figure out how to make this production a success.
During a costume fitting in February, Levine said he felt energized by the challenge of designing for the ballet, but admitted "whenever you do something new it's going to be risky."
Over time, he also came to a realization about the particular challenges of designing for ballet.
"Dance just needs space. You have to have this area where people can dance. As a designer, that's a bit strange because you want to put stuff onstage, but in fact you can't because the dancers are there," Levine said.
"You can bring things on, but then you just have to bring them off again so the dancers can do their job and make beautiful dance, which is what people have come to the theatre for."
He solved some of those issues by having dancers move some of the set pieces, representing various small planets and asteroids, during the show.
'Really ambitious'
Even the National Ballet's former construction supervisor Gord Graham, who recently retired after 19 years but returned as a consultant for the new show, was impressed by its grand scale during a visit to the production workshop in April.
"This is really ambitious because of the size of all the walls," he said, as huge aluminum pieces were being fitted together to construct the walls and planets for Levine's set.
"It's a huge production. It compares in size, I would say, to The Nutcracker."
Days before the premiere, Côté looked tired and his fingernails had been well chewed, but he remained upbeat about how the show was coming together.
"I'm feeling a lot more excited at this point ... I feel like we have something good, a really good production," he said.
"There's another side of me that's not sleeping and I never really stop thinking at this point," the budding choreographer confessed.
"I feel that there are too many things that are still to fix. But now at least I know where I'm aiming. I have a distinct vision of what it should look like in the end, so I think that's very inspiring."
With the load in of the sets and the co-ordination between dance, design, music and movement still to be fine-tuned onstage at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, Côté recognized the gruelling long hours still ahead.
But fuelled by his dedication and the passion of his fellow dancers and collaborators, he took a moment to wax philosophical — not unlike the Little Prince himself.
"There's two different fields: there's entertainment and there's art, and I feel our responsibility as artists is to take risks and to touch people inward, as opposed to just give people eye candy," Côté said.
"I hope people can see I'm trying to balance the idea of an event and spectacle with the idea of substance ... I hope I'm seen as someone who will take risks."
Le Petit Prince runs at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto June 4-12.