Production adds more songs from popular singer

Alberta Ballet previews the extended version of The Fiddle and the Drum at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Eric Harvie Theatre, Banff Centre. Tickets: Call 1-800-413-8368.

If the acclaimed original version of The Fiddle and the Drum attracted widespread attention at Toronto's high-powered Luminato Festival this past summer, imagine what an extended version of the Joni Mitchell-Alberta Ballet collaboration could do.

At least that's the thinking behind adding four of Mitchell's songs to the production of The Fiddle and the Drum, in the hope of creating even more of a good thing to attract presenters for the company's planned tour of the work in 2009 to major American centres. So says Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maitre, who worked closely with the legendary Canadian singer/songwriter for his choreography of both versions of the ballet.

Since its Calgary premiere in February 2007, The Fiddle and the Drum has enjoyed a sold-out screening in New York (in its Mitchell-supervised Bravo! video incarnation), as well as nine performances at the aforementioned Luminato event, where Alberta Ballet shared the stage for the first time with the National Ballet of Canada.

In the beginning, Grand-Maitre says he envisioned a full evening of choreographed Mitchell songs, with the singer herself heavily involved in the look of the show.

But since the projected ballet was to be part of a mixed bill that also included George Balanchine's Serenade, Grand-Maitre decided to create a shorter work with Mitchell, and then, if she was happy with the result -- and she was -- to "tease her with the idea of adding songs and making a full-length (and thereby, presenter-friendly) evening out of it."

During the initial collaboration, Grand-Maitre says, with characteristic lively humour, "We had so many songs we wanted to put in that ballet that we had to edit about 15 of them out -- otherwise, it would have been a two- or three-hour Ben Hur of a ballet."

Once he sensed how each of the Toronto performances of the 45-minute work "seemed to go by in a flash," Grand-Maitre says he knew the work could be lengthened, "without losing its impact."

The new version -- the original parts of The Fiddle and the Drum, with its nine Mitchell songs and rousing encore of Big Yellow Taxi, remain unchanged -- has a running time of about 92 minutes.

The added songs finding their way into the show include The Reoccurring Dream, Ethiopia, Woodstock and Shine -- whose incisive, humanist lyrics are "almost like a synthesis, in one song, of what the whole ballet is about," Grand-Maitre says.

The almost-finished final version of The Fiddle and the Drum -- "It'll be about 95 per cent ready, but there will still be some rough spots," the choreographer points out -- will be unveiled Friday in a single preview performance at the Eric Harvie Theatre, concluding a week-long, mostly tech-oriented residency at the Banff Centre.

The world premiere of the longer work will take place on Jan. 16 in Medicine Hat, at the start of a Prairie Tour that will, in turn, precede the planned American tour. Calgary will get the show in late February.