FRANKENSTEIN
Where: The Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Oct. 4-5, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $18.50-$100 from the Royal McPherson box office at 250-386-6121 or rmts.bc.ca
Paul Destrooper joined Ballet Victoria as artistic director in 2007, and has been dedicated in the time since to steadily improving the product. His efforts paid off in a big way last year, the busiest season to date for the company that was founded in 2002.
After branching out artistically in 2023-24, and touring Vancouver Island in a precedent-setting fashion, Destrooper and his company head into their 2024-25 season with considerable momentum. The season opens tonight with the first of two performances of Frankenstein, which Destroper wrote and choreographed and will stage with a full cast at the Royal Theatre.
Ballet Victoria will stage all of its Victoria performances at the Royal Theatre for the first time ever during its coming season, with The Gift of the Nutcracker (Dec. 28-30), Carmina Burana (March 21-23), and A Midsummer’s Night Dream (May 16-17) joining Frankenstein (Oct. 4-5) on the calendar. In the past, Ballet Victoria events were held at either the Royal Theatre, Kirk Hall in St. Andrew’s Cathedral, or McPherson Playhouse. Destrooper said he’s eagerly anticipating the new season and new home, given how things went for the company last year.
“I’m excited for it,” he said. “It means what we do is actually relevant to people, and the community sees Ballet Victoria as a valuable artistic and community contributor. In a city like Victoria, where the arts scene is so strong, it takes a long time to build these relationships but it validates the importance of our work.”
Ballet Victoria will head back out on the road in the coming season, with extended tours into other communities, Salt Spring Island, Nanaimo, Port Hardy, Denman Island and Courtenay, in addition to several stops on the Mainland. Destrooper likes the busy schedule as it gives his artists maximum opportunities to perform.
Frankenstein will feature the largest number of dancers ever for a Ballet Victoria production, with 14 company members and four emerging artists participating.
“We’ve always invested in the dancers, who are part of their community,” he said. “They live here. We’re not just bringing in [people], we create and build everything in Victoria. To me, that’s very important as it helps the art ecology and art economy in Victoria. I call it the art-eco movement, where all of what we create is based in Victoria, with artists, designer, projectionists — everything — homemade.”
Destrooper has upped his creative offerings in tandem with the company’s expanded schedule.
For Frankenstein, he blended author Mary Shelley’s classic horror tale and paired it with another certified classic, the quintessential ballet Giselle. He tried to avoid making his hybrid production an unabashed downer, as both Frankenstein and Giselle end in death. But Destrooper saw some parallels between the two pieces.
“Frankenstein, the creature, was looking for a connection, for someone to love. He’s a monster, so no one will accept him. So I looked for something a little different. I gave him a love interest.” That is where Giselle, a romantic ballet, proved valuable, he added. The story takes the monster to a forest inhabited by a group of Wilis, the ghostly spirits of maidens betrayed by their lovers in Giselle.
“In the first act [of Frankenstein], the helpers that harvest body parts from the cemetery to build the monster actually harvest the heart of Giselle, and that is put in the creature.”
Destrooper has the last several years re-imagining classic repertoire for Ballet Victoria, by giving its a new-school twist. “I look at the story and I look at the archetypes which exist in every culture. When I combine two works that seem drastically different, it might seem sacrilegious to some people but I’m not changing the stories. The archetypes and the schematics are the same. I can marry them fairly easily.”
Destrooper choreographed another bold creation in 2023, classical and contemporary ballet with hip-hop and rock in Amadeus, which told the story of Mozart to the music of Freddie Mercury and Queen.
“People say, ‘How do you think of this stuff?’ But in the classical genre, Mozart is the only composer who wrote in every style that existed. If he were alive today, he probably would be doing Hollywood movies, anime, contemporary — he would do everything, 100 per cent.”
He doesn’t shy away from poignancy: In Amadeus, both Mozart and Mercury die. He pulled back slightly in Frankenstein, and inserted humour into the proceedings. “I try to create work that is accessible, but not specifically for one type of audience. Diversity is important. Even in traditional classical ballet.”
