Royal Winnipeg Ballet

It won England's first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987 and was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award and the 1987 Prometheus Award, which is specifically for the best science fiction or fantasy fiction promoting individual freedom and human rights or critiquing tyranny, slavery, war, and other abuses in of Government Power.

The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a 2013 ballet produced by Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and a 2017 television series, and I'm sure much, much more, including all kinds of visual art that has been created as inspired by that book.

The book's sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and has also been adapted as a television series that aired in April of this year.

Yeah, and I know there's also a graphic novel, so plenty of public discourse happening around this book.

I haven't seen that one, yeah.

But you know, I don't know if you know that, like, The Winnipeg Ballet had a ballet version of Dracula, and they were like, hey, Guy Maddin, why don't you film our ballet? Make a film version of our ballet.

And he made it a Guy Maddin movie that has almost no ballet in it

at all.

That was my, like, those were my people.

And, um, And an actor from that school said to us both why don't you just start your own thing and we thought what i'm 12 what are we supposed to do here, I had trained at the Royal Winnipeg ballet been taking private lessons and so on, so it wasn't like green at that point but.

My mom like found a homeschool book fair we made up some flyers.

And I sold like fruit shakes, cookies, and passed out ballet flyers at this homeschool book fair.

It won England's first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987 and was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award and the 1987 Prometheus Award, which is specifically for the best science fiction or fantasy fiction promoting individual freedom and human rights or critiquing tyranny, slavery, war, and other abuses of government power.

The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a 2013 ballet produced by Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and a 2017 television series, and in 2019, a graphic novel with illustrations by Renée Nault.

I'm sure there's more, and in fact, I know there's more because there's many, many more artists that have also been very much inspired by the book as well.

Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and has also been adapted as a television series that aired in April of this year.

Can you tell us how much creative content he's produced since you and him founded the company? And tell us a little bit about what's unique about him.

My wife tries to explain the difference, you know, between, say, I don't know, the Winnipeg Ballet and the stuff that he does.

Maybe you can help lay people understand what's his approach when he's developing this ballet content.

Well, what he does, and I saw an early work of his, which really, from the dance school that he was teaching at, and the only professional in it was his wife, Yulia.

What about Atlantic Canadians? Have you had any dancers from New Brunswick or elsewhere in Atlantic Canada over the years?

Well, very few dancers.

students from this end of the country go to the National Ballet School or the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.

I don't know what the number of graduates would be from Atlantic Canada, but it would be sparse relative to the total graduating base on any given year.

She was 18 years old.

She went on to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and then decades later, she became a founder and the first president of Ballet BC.

If you've ever seen dance in the city, you are standing on ground she helped to clear.

Beside her is Joshua Beamish, who started his own company at 17, has made work for the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada, who choreographed The Merry Widow for us here at Vancouver Opera.

And in 2000, Pool Rooters adapted it into an opera that traveled from Copenhagen to London in Canada.

There was even a 2013 interpretation by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Which is brilliant because ballet relies on physical expression, perfectly communicating the physical subjugation without needing dialogue.

But it wasn't until a streaming service got hold of it that Gilead truly invaded modern pop culture.

I did another full evening Justin Peck work at the Australian Ballet.

From here, I'm going to Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and that'll be a different work as well.

And then I finished the year out in Hamburg Ballet.

So nothing to it.

I'm doing my second staging for Alexei starting on Tuesday.

And I was grateful that Royal Winnipeg Ballet is letting me go.

This was another hurdle like, okay, well, what if Michael can't make it back for the premiere? That wouldn't be good.

but um but winnipeg is letting me leave to go to the premiere and then i come back to winnipeg for four weeks after um but i'm so excited for the dancers