KD Lang to collaborate with Alberta Ballet for new production
KD Lang is to collaborate with the Alberta Ballet in Canada, for a new production called Balletlujah!
Lang, a native of Alberta, will be “guest muse” for Balletlujah!, a brand-new ballet by artistic director Jean Grand-Maitre, set to premier in May 2013.
The news was announced at the season launch on Thursday. The renowned singer follows in the footsteps of three previous Grand-Maitre collaborators: Joni Mitchell, Sir Elton John and, last season, Sarah McLachlan.
Grand-Maitre, speaking about their plans to work together, said that Lang’s performance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics opening ceremonies – which he choreographed – was spectacular: “KD waltzed in that morning and blew the roof off the stadium, because she’s just that extraordinary.”
After sending Lang’s manager the media and video kits for the ballet productions of The Fiddle & The Drum, Love Lies Bleeding and Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Grand-Maitre flew down to Los Angeles to meet with Lang and discuss the collaboration.
“We talked a lot about how her artistic and spiritual vision of life and how it was very much inspired by the Canadian prairies – about how her music and her voice seem to have been shaped by the landscape here. She agreed with that – and so I decided to set the ballet in the Prairies.”
The work is taking shape as a series of “probably surrealistic plays and sketches – some funny, and some, I hope, emotionally beautiful and romantic.”
