All eyes were on Calgary last weekend for the highlight of Alberta Ballet's 40th anniversary season, the world premiere of a rare collaboration with legendary Alberta-born musician Joni Mitchell.

The highly anticipated work, based on artistic director Jean Grand-Maître's choreography, and set to Mitchell's music and visual art, comes to Edmonton this weekend (Feb 16 & 17).

The event gave Alberta's dance community reason to lay claim to a world premiere that the whole world was truly interested in seeing. Around the globe, devotees of the music and dance worlds were curious about Dancing Joni & Other Works.

However, the pre-show media frenzy revolved less around the "other works"George Balanchine's ballet Serenadeand more around Mitchell, when writers the world over clamoured to score interviews with the legendary singer.

It almost seemed as if the ballet might be swallowed up by the larger attention to its famous musician.

But the Mitchell work, titled The Fiddle and the Drum won some very positive reviews in the dance world, proving that the company could live up to the high expectations.

Kaija Pepper from The Globe and Mail wrote: "[Grand-Maître] avoided choreographing literal movements to words, and his choreographic relationship to the music was occasionally stunning. [He] created streams and eddies of constantly flowing movement, filling the stage with eye-catching dance."

"I tried to get into the composer's world, to understand her words and music," explains Grand-Maître, who talked at length with Mitchell about interpreting the nine recorded songs used in the show, including two that are new.

Mitchell then spent a week in the studio fine-tuning the choreography with Grand-Maître before the show.

She also created a visual set for The Fiddle and the Drum. Mitchell has always considered her lesser-known visual art as equally important as her music. Although she once told The Globe and Mail that she sings her sorrow and paints her joy, Grand-Maître says that she's been through some radical changes. It seems that now she paints only her sorrow.

In a bid for world peace, Mitchell decided that the theme of the show would revolve around images of war and environmental destruction. She's created a stunning video, described by Grand-Maître as a choreography in itself, that will be projected onto screens suspended above the dancers.

The images are jade green, inspired by the colours that resulted when Mitchell's old TV screen partially broke down one day, revealing distorted negative images and colours. This also inspired the colours for the costumes, which are mostly body paint with minimal clothing.

"Why not?" says Grand-Maître. "Beautiful, muscular bodies are the best costume!" And the body painting effectively gives the dancers, who represent soldiers in battle, a sense of vulnerability.

Watching the excitement in Calgary last week, it was impossible to ignore the more friendly battle for superiority that rages between Edmonton and Calgary. Even though the dance premiered in Calgary, perhaps the competition was neither won nor lost.

After all, Alberta Ballet's roots are here, and without Edmonton and Ruth Carse, who founded the company in our city 40 years ago, perhaps there never would have been a Dancing Joni and so many other works.

Peace. V