FASHION Magazine

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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.

Chroma, the mind-blowingly different ballet, is back for the National Ballet of Canada’s summer season and we seriously can’t get enough. We just don’t know quite how to describe how fantastic the ballet is, but we’ll just say this: The White Stripes are used on the soundtrack. Also, the amount of undulating body rolls and hip juts throughout the set are far too many to count. To capture some of the ballet’s uniqueness, we sent Lewis Mirrett to shoot the dancers as they rehearsed for the showing.

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See the tutus! »

To mark the National Ballet of Canada’s 60^th anniversary, Canadian artists, designers and community groups have come together to pay a very fitting homage to the company’s milestone with an exhibit of 60 unique tutus.

View the photo shoot »

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.

Who says ballet is just about the costumes? Toronto Life gives us a look at an incredible video of (nearly naked) the National Ballet of Canada’s mega-stud ballerino Guillaume Côté, part of a collaboration between BravoFACT and the Côté. Read more on Toronto Life »

The post The National Ballets of Canada’s Guillaume Côté makes us forget about the imortance of costumes in his nearly nude dance video appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

This week we’re taking a look back at the year that was by highlighting some of the best (and worst) moments. First up, we’re turning to you, our dear readers, by re-blogging the top 10 original posts, as clicked by you! We count down your favourites:

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.

Watch as fashion designer Denis Gagnon debuts his sophisticated approach to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland while costume designer Bob Crowley talks inspiration for The National Ballet of Canada’s latest production.

The post Alice on fire: Watch our video on Luminato’s twofold ode to the classic character appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

In the spirit of the National Ballet of Canada’s much anticipated upcoming production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the company is hosting a Mad Hatter Workshop at the Walter Carsen Centre (470 Queens Quay West) tomorrow, May 31^st at 6:30 p.m.

Channel your inner Mad Hatter by decorating your own hat or headpiece in the style of the crazy character with the help of the Ballet’s wardrobe whizzes. Sure to express the atypical beauty that permeates the modern take on the classic tale, you are then invited to wear your creation to the Ballet’s Mad Hot Wonderland Gala on June 21^st. The best hat of the night will nab two gala dinner tickets to join VIP guests and dancers of the Ballet on stage for dinner and dancing after the cocktail reception. Forget those dancing shoes… bring your dancing hat!

For more information about Mad Hot Wonderland, visit national.ballet.ca.

Blame Kanye’s short film Runaway, which put the spotlight squarely on a flock of ballerinas in black tutus, or Natalie Portman’s much-hyped turn as a scarily focused prima ballerina in Black Swan, but we’re currently obsessed with all things ballet-related.