Ballet Kelowna Closes 2024/25 Season with Breathtaking Triple Bill: ‘Vividus’
Ballet Kelowna’s 2024/25 season culminates with the powerful mixed program, Vividus: Full of Life, on May 2 + 3, 2025, at 7:30pm, at the Kelowna Community Theatre.
The dynamic program showcases vibrant works from three of Canada’s most illustrious choreographers. Ballet Kelowna’s own Artistic Director and CEO Simone Orlando returns with her powerfully raw exploration of liberation in Rite of Spring; Vancouver-based choreographer Lesley Telford makes her company debut with her work, An Instant, a mesmerizing study of physical risk, originally created for Ballet BC; and Guillaume Côté, Principal Dancer and Choreographic Associate with The National Ballet of Canada, presents his first Ballet Kelowna commission with an electrifying ensemble piece, Le Carnaval des Animaux, inspired by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’ playful musical suite.
“We are excited to close out our 2024/25 season with an energizing mixed program bursting with vitality and super-charged physicality,” says Simone Orlando, Ballet Kelowna’s Artistic Director and CEO. “We are thrilled to stage our first commissioned work by Guillaume Côté, whose work Bolero has become an audience favourite, as well as introduce Kelowna to the virtuosic Lesley Telford, who has created boundary-pushing works for some of the top dance companies in Canada. Vividus promises to be an exhilarating evening of dance that will keep audiences on the edge of their seats from beginning to end.”
Vividus will open with Simone Orlando’s contemporary response to Igor Stravinsky’s famed composition, The Rite of Spring, widely considered to be one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Orlando’s dissonant depiction of a world under autocratic rule turns Stravinsky’s sensational classic on its head. Influenced by the score’s avant-garde approach to rhythm and metre, Orlando’s fervent choreography rebels against the status quo, ultimately freeing the protagonist from her oppressors in this raw exploration of liberation. This work returns to the Ballet Kelowna stage for the first time since its premiere in May 2019.
Lesley Telford will make her Ballet Kelowna debut with the arresting work An Instant, set to the suspenseful and unpredictable rhythms of composer Michael Gordon’s Weather One, and inspired by the words of Wislawa Szymborska’s poem, “Could Have.” Through adrenaline-fueled movement and a charged atmosphere of anticipation, Telford’s work investigates the potential for danger and the idea that one’s life could suddenly be thrown into chaos at any moment. Described as “strange, haunting, and thought-provoking… Telford pushes the dancers off axis, bends them over backwards, and sends them leaping in reverse” (The Georgia Straight).
A choreographer and the Artistic Director of Inverso Productions, Telford began her training in Vancouver before finishing her studies in Montréal and joining Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. She later went on to dance with Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid and Nederlands Dans Theater 1 in The Hague, before returning home to Vancouver. As a choreographer, she has created several works for Ballet BC, as well as Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Nederlands Dans Theater 1, Hubbard Street Dance Company 2, Compañia Nacional de Danza, and Ballet Vorpommern, among others.
Described by The New York Times as “one of the finest male dancers in the world,” Guillaume Côté will bring his fresh, artistic vision to the Kelowna stage with a jovial rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Le Carnaval des Animaux, regarded as one of the French composer’s best-known works. Full of whimsical ornamentation, this highly anticipated world premiere will push the limits of contemporary ballet in Côté’s first-ever Ballet Kelowna commission. Following the success of Côté’s inimitable Bolero, which has toured extensively across Canada in many of Ballet Kelowna’s mixed programs, Le Carnaval des Animaux promises to delight audiences with its exuberant energy of frolicking and fun.
Côté has danced with The National Ballet of Canada for nearly three decades, from 1998 to 2025, and will retire later this spring. He has served as Artistic Director of Quebec’s Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur – Canada’s largest dance festival – since 2015, and launched his eponymous dance company, Côté Danse, in 2021. He gained critical acclaim in 2024 for his choreography of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in partnership with Canadian director Robert Lepage.
Ballet Kelowna’s season finale will include the new Encore Club, giving all patrons the opportunity to watch the performance on both evenings, with 50 percent off tickets to the second night. Patrons can access this offer by calling the Kelowna Community Theatre Box Office at 250-469-8940.
Tickets and information at balletkelowna.ca
Ballet Kelowna’s 2024/2025 season is presented by the Thomas Alan Budd Foundation.
