Alberta Ballet's Jean Grand-Maitre is a busy man these days. Photograph by: Ted Jaco, Calgary Herald

From Elton John to Joni Mitchell, ballet director has his hands full

Alberta Ballet presents Jean Grand-Maitre's Carmen and Bolero today through May 9 at the Jubilee auditorium.

Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maitre's daytimer overfloweth with the kind of projects most choreographers can only dream about.

Fresh from setting Maurice Ravel's iconic Bolero to dance on very short notice -- the piece premieres tonight alongside the re-mount of his hit version of Carmen -- Grand-Maitre has already turned his attention to putting together the libretto and soundtrack for Elton, a recently announced ballet based on songs by pop superstar Elton John.

Grand-Maitre will meet with John in Los Angeles sometime in June to discuss the choreographic concept of the work.

Unlike the case in Grand-Maitre's successful collaboration with Canadian music legend Joni Mitchell that produced The Fiddle and the Drum ballet (the expanded final version of which premiered during Alberta Ballet's prairie tour earlier this year), John "has given me carte blanche on choice," the choreographer says.

Whereas Mitchell had the final say on the 14 songs used in The Fiddle and the Drum, Grand-Maitre will make his own decision on the estimated 20 songs to be incorporated into Elton (the British pop star's songs generally have a much shorter playing time than Mitchell's, he points out).

As far as musical choices, the choreographer has so far narrowed the field of eligible material in the piano-playing singer-songwriter's prolific output down to 42 songs.

"A lot of the songs I'm going to pick are not his most famous songs, either, because I don't want it to be a 'nostalgic' ballet," Grand-Maitre says.

"I want it to be relevant to the artist today."

Despite his generally hands-off approach to the Alberta Ballet collaboration, fabled British performer has agreed to help the choreographer with the libretto -- presently envisioned as snippets of interviews with John over the years overlaid on the soundtrack to create "little biographical moments" for each song -- and will put his extensive art collection as well as members of his own high-powered stadium-show design team at Grand-Maitre's disposal.

The resulting overall esthetic of Elton, Grand-Maitre says, "is going to be like (John) going into an abandoned theatre and remembering the high and low points of his life."

The choreographer then puts Elton aside in June and July to work in earnest on the dance portion of the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, which will be seen by countless millions worldwide.

Once he gets the Olympics show choreographically on track -- the concept details have yet to be announced -- he comes back to working on Elton, beginning on July 6.

"By October," Grand-Maitre says, "Elton (which will premiere in Calgary early next May) should already be finished."

And then it's back to the Olympics project. . . .

But wait, that's not all -- because while all this is going on, the indefatigably energetic choreographer will also have discussed with Joni Mitchell, at great length ("We're talking on the phone all the time," Grand-Maitre says), the form and shape of their next creative partnership, the results of which will be made evident during the 2010-11 Alberta Ballet season.

Currently, Mitchell is putting the final touches on her director's cut edit of the revised The Fiddle and the Drum film.

"Once that's done, we're supposed to work together again, in June or July." That project will likely draw mainly on Mitchell's Blue and/or Prairie Girl albums, Grand-Maitre says.

"She's thinking, too, a lot of her songs are portraits of people, so she's thinking of doing a series of portraits, as a love story."

All of these projects, of course, translate into an ever-higher national and international profile for Alberta Ballet, for whose flawlessly executed freshness of repertoire some critics and balletomanes have persisted in harbouring an air of condescension.

But the unbridled enthusiasm that greeted the company's performances of The Fiddle and the Drum at last summer's Luminato Festival in Toronto -- where they shared the stage with Canada's National Ballet -- may well have marked a change in such an attitude, Grand-Maitre says.

And besides, he adds, "I'd rather be 'beneath the radar' and then moving way up and surprising people, than to be part of the old establishment who believe in their old ways -- who are actually getting caught now in this economic challenge of re-defining what dance can be."

Grand-Maitre recalls being told by Karen Kain herself (artistic director of the National Ballet, which cancelled its September Canadian tour of The Sleeping Beauty for financial reasons) that "Swan Lakes and Romeo and Juliets don't sell like they used to."

"I'd rather be in the position of not being 'predictable' that be part of the old establishment who are now having to turn that huge boat around -- in heavy seas," he says.