There are two major dance companies in Alberta with “ballet” in their names, making it easy to imagine a battle for audience share between them. Yet, as the new artistic directors for each company make clear, there is a case to be made to take in both.
When the new artistic director, Francesco Ventriglia, landed in Calgary in January 2024 to join Alberta Ballet (which performs an equal number of shows in Edmonton), the temperature was a bone-chilling –40C. Far from being discouraged, Ventriglia embraced the cold by mounting The Winter Gala a mere six weeks later. It was the company’s first-ever collaboration with its associated Alberta Ballet School where 100 of the school’s top-level students shared the stage with the 30 artists of Alberta Ballet for two sold-out performances.
Photo: Damiano Mongelli
“It was a crazy thing,” said Ventriglia, who relocated to Canada with his architect husband and two Italian greyhounds by his side, “but all things are possible when you believe in a project. I call the gala my diamond, and we are planning to do it now every year.”
At age 46, the Italian-born Ventriglia radiates an infectious enthusiasm for what lies ahead in a life already packed with achievement. As a dancer, he was a soloist with the ballet company of Teatro alla Scala in Milan for 20 years. There, he also began to create classical and contemporary ballets for such companies as the Bolshoi Theatre and Grand Théâtre du Genève. He has also served as artistic director of Florence’s MaggioDanza and the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
At Alberta Ballet, Ventriglia replaces Christopher Anderson, who left just one year after succeeding longtime artistic director Jean Grand-Maître. “I knew the company very well,” said Ventriglia, “because when I was 19 in Milano I danced a Jean Grand-Maître piece, so I had this connection with him and I followed his work and Alberta Ballet over the years. When I applied for the job, I was lucky that the board trusted me and liked my vision, which is very much blending tradition with innovation. It’s important to place the roots into classical ballet, but we must be equally modern. So alongside the most important classical repertoire I will, of course, commission new pieces—and, as well, we are looking to have new music, new sets, new costumes.”
Ventriglia has no plans at the moment to remount or create new portrait ballets, such as Grand-Maître’s highly successful The Fiddle and The Drum set to music by Joni Mitchell. “This is what people have known about Alberta Ballet for 20 years. We are, as well, something else. What Jean did in the portrait ballets is incredibly beautiful, but now it’s time to build on them and show the public something they’ve never seen before.”
Kirsten Wicklund, artistic director of Ballet Edmonton since May 2024, has no concerns about showing audiences something new. “We create and commission original work every season,” said the 34-year-old B.C. native. Instead, Wicklund’s immediate challenge is figuring out the logistics of life at the top of a 10-dancer company while continuing her own career as a dancer.
Photo: Nicola Wills
“Of course my first priority is leadership at Ballet Edmonton, but I believe it is quite imperative that I still dance,” said Wicklund. “I’m not sure how I will do that, maybe as a guest artist somewhere when that makes sense, but I believe being out there as a dancer will inform my leadership and the way I am able to offer our dancers inspiration and growth and knowledge.”
Wicklund’s new role grew out of a long acquaintance with Wen Wei Wang, Ballet Edmonton’s artistic director for the past six years. Nearing the end of three years at Belgium’s Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, after eight with Ballet BC, it was on her radar to make some kind of shift in her career. The nature of that shift crystallized when she arrived in Edmonton last January. Having noted her choreographic work for Ballet BC and others, “Wen Wei had invited me to create a piece for Ballet Edmonton and we got to having some conversations” while developing My instinct is that this is nearly the end, which premièred in February 2024. “He was looking to move to a different chapter in his life and was also asking me what I was looking for, and the idea just kind of sprouted up.”
Wicklund sees her new role as “a beautiful opportunity to continue the work Wen Wei began here, while allowing it to evolve with my input. His own work is extremely poetic and speaks to so many people. It deserves to continue to be seen and I certainly plan to have his work as part of our ongoing programming.” Beyond that, she will pursue new works that, “while grounded in and heavily influenced by classical ballet, stretch away from the classical and push out the boundaries of contemporary dance, produced by an extremely diverse roster of creators. I have a lot of ideas about reimagining our expectations about exactly who a creator is or can be.”
Both artistic directors believe that their companies must continue to strive to be relevant. “We need to make sure, whether it’s a tutu ballet or the most contemporary piece, that it can be understood and attractive and accessible for everyone,” said Ventriglia. “What we do, we do for the public—to give them a space to dream.”
