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The principal dancer plans her final bow.

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Ballet lovers helped celebrate the re-opening of Prada’s “Mink Mile” boutique earlier this month with a shopping event that saw 10% of sales diverted to the National Ballet of Canada’s Dancer Health and Wellness Program. According to program chair and host Lynda Prince, “the performances you see come at a cost.” Dancers routinely push their […]

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See the Mad Hot Ballet: Dangerous Love photos »

On Wednesday night, Canada’s best ballet dancers and their most glamorous fans filled the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts to bask in the sultry Spanish glow of Mat Hot Ballet: Dangerous Love. The National Ballet of Canada’s annual benefit gala took its theme from the current production of Carmen, showcasing a few highlights within a dazzling gala performance. Featuring four showy snippets from various pieces, it included Summer Pas de Deux, an excerpt from The Four Seasons, Enketi, choreographed by principal dancer Guillaume Côté and the astoundingly fouette-filled Grand Pas de Deux from Don Quixote performed by Piotr Stanczyk and guest artist Svetlana Lunkina.

Nothing says Calgary like its signature Smithbilt white hat, so in a fitting tribute to the city’s 100^th Stampede, Calgary native Paul Hardy has been commissioned with creating a commemorative topper. The $900 hat, which is entirely made of soft white rabbit fur and adorned with a hand-woven Italian leather belt, will be presented to 40 famous Canadians, including Steve Nash, Rick Mercer, George Stroumboulopoulos and Karen Kain.

Here’s a little history lesson for those of you not familiar with Calgary’s long history of white hats: after the first-ever Calgary white hat was created in 1946 by Smithbilt Hats’ artisan Morris Shumiatcher, a Calgary mayor began presenting the hats to notables who came to the city, beginning a now 60-year-long tradition of “white hatting.” Essentially, it’s Calgary’s equivalent to presenting keys of the city.

View the party photos »

The National Ballet of Canada must be feeling quite royal this year because it’s celebrating a diamond anniversary (that being 60 years) of pliés, and toasted as such at last night’s glittering Diamond Gala. The special edition of the company’s annual Mad Hot gala featured five performance works, including premieres of two spellbinding works, Polar Night (choreographed by Robert Binet and danced by real-life couple Heather Ogden and Guillaume Côté) and Silence Screams Venom (choreographed by Côté and danced by Greta Hodgkinson alongside Giorgio Galli, Keiichi Hirano, Patrick Lavoie and Christopher Stalzer) and finishing off with the most glittering of all: an excerpt from George Balanchine’s Diamonds, complete with the entire company decked out in jewel-encrusted costumes.

After the performances, the full house, including the ballet’s artistic director Karen Kain, Rufus Wainwright and Jorn Weisbrödt and the fabulously feathered Lynda Prince (who was overheard giving Kain posing directions) mingled all around the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The designer-clad doyennes, Victoria Webster, Trinity Jackman, Cleophee Eaton and Amy Burstyn-Fritz, made Katrantzou/Erdem/McQueen sightings seem as simple as it could be with vodka cocktails and rock candy stir sticks in hand.

Go behind the scenes with Evan »

When I danced as a guest at the Paris Opera and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées during couture season in Paris this year, and my fashionable friends were getting ready for their own ventures—Dita Von Teese for her lingerie debut and Diane Pernet for more of her signature style-spotting—I was struck by how similar our worlds are. Fashion shows and ballet performances get the culture crowds revved up with the beauty, body and details of a show. And it’s all over in a flash.

Wonderland was unleashed upon the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (and its surrounding area) last night for The National Ballet of Canada’s annual Mad Hot fundraising gala. This year, the Ballet took its theme from the wildly popular premiere of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. After a gala performance—including selections from the work as well as Passacaglia, No. 24 and The Dying Swan, danced by principal dancer Greta Hodgkinson, who is celebrating her 20th year with the company—guests including Karen Kain, Galen Weston Jr., Alexandra Weston and actress Lisa Ray wined, hors d’œuvre’d and wandered the transformed building, which housed an extra-long mirrored dining table filled to the brim with traditional tea fare, a hookah-smoking caterpillar, and multiple bars serving “White Rabbit” cocktails in teacups. Across the street on the Osgoode lawn, six Alices played croquet with flamingos.