summer 2003

ORDER THIS ISSUE

by Michael Crabb

Heather Ogden and Guillaume Côté were not supposed to close the National Ballet of Canada's hometown winter season in March, but as chance - always the wild card in a dancer's career - would have it, that's what happened.

Originally, the two 21-year-old rising stars were scheduled for onlya couple of performances as the leads in Artistic Director James Kudelka's Swan Lake. Then that ravishing Odette/Odile, Jennifer Fournier, succumbed to one of those nasty seasonal bugs and Ogden and Côté were called in to replace her and bereft partner Patrick Lavoie.

Côté had danced the Swan Lake prince with Sonia Rodriguez two years earlier, making him the youngest Siegfried in National Ballet history, and had already been promoted to Þrst soloist rank. Ogden entered her Odette/Odile debut season as a second soloist but was promptly rewarded after her third, unscheduled performance by being promoted another notch. As far as their growing body of fans is concerned, it surely cannot be long before Kudelka anoints them as fully fledged principals.

Heather Ogden was born in Toronto. Her family moved to British Columbia when she was six and she trained in the first professional-level class of the Richmond Academy of Dance. Kudelka accepted her as a "Tier I" apprentice in 1998, and she was surprised when he allowed her to jump "Tier II" and hired her directly into the corps.

As a student, she had always seemed tiny, except for her long feet. Ogden's teachers wondered when her body would grow to match them. In fact, she went through a late growing spurt, which Ogden acknowledges may have prompted some of the back pain she has since endured. Now she takes Pilates to flex and strengthen her classically proportioned body. Ogden had not expected to be given such prominent roles quite so soon and credits the coaching support she gets from such senior artistic staff as Magdalena Popa and Karen Kain with helping her deal with the
pressure. "I hadn't expected it to be quite this hard," she says.

Unlike Ogden, Côté came to the company stamped with thoroughbred National Ballet School training. Boys usually have to be coaxed into ballet tights but Côté, who grew up in the rural town of Lac-à-la-Croix, about a three-hour drive north of Quebec City, had leapt into them at age four. When his lovingly protective parents finally allowed him to leave home to attend the National Ballet School he spoke hardly any English. The School's principal, Mavis Staines, remembers him as an exceptionally gifted student.

Apart from his dance studies, Côté continued his interest in music - he has studied piano, clarinet, guitar and cello - and enrolled for composition classes at the Royal Conservatory. He now composes dance scores as a sideline. After a brief flirtation with New York City Ballet, Côté joined the National Ballet of Canada in August 1999, and with help from Popa learned to overcome the lack of co-ordination that appeared to be holding him back. "He was too anxious to please and was pushing too hard," says Popa. "I needed to build his confidence." That accomplished, Côté's dancing has gone from strength to strength and his repertoire has grown accordingly.

Swan Lake was not the first time Kudelka had put Côté and Ogden together, nor the first time they unexpectedly had to fill in for ailing colleagues. In December 2001, after principal dancer Ryan Bourne was sidelined with an injury, they were paired to make their debuts in the lead roles of Kudelka's The Nutcracker. The house programmes had already been printed, however. Somehow, no one thought to tell the audience whom they were watching until the intermission, much to the delayed gratification of attendant friends and relatives.

Kudelka is careful in the way he grooms individual dancers. When you have eager young talent it must be tempting to push it quickly. Kudelka, however, knows the danger of premature burnout and the virtue of measured restraint. As you watch his casting choices over a number of years you can see him wisely strategizing his dancers' progress, testing them in different kinds of roles, slowly building their stamina and experience by judicious increments. In fact, until Bourne was felled, Kudelka had been holding off assigning Côté to the gruelling male lead in his Nutcracker.

Traditional ballet fans would love to have another Kain-and-Augustyn team to idolize, but Kudelka seems generally unconcerned about developing glamorous partnerships merely for the sake of the box office. Clearly, his priority is to cultivate artistry throughout the company and to place it at the service of interesting choreography. I suspect he would happily list his dancers in alphabetical order if he thought he could get away with it. Yet, in the case of Ogden and Côté, Kudelka appears to have acknowledged a complementary set of abilities and a particular chemistry that is worth investigating. He has put them in each other's arms enough times now to suggest as much.

Kudelka first paired them in full-length roles on tour in the fall of 2001, as the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet. According to Ogden, her proud father was virtually responsible for filling the Queen Elizabeth Theatre when she and Côté gave their Vancouver performance.

Annette Jakubowski, director of the Richmond Academy of Dance, frankly admits she was worried whether her former star pupil would have the dramatic ability to tackle Juliet. "Heather has a sweet, girlish innocence and was always incredibly hard-working and responsive," says Jakubowski, "but we had to work hard on her acting and worried whether she would be able to rise to the emotional challenge." Jakubowski's concerns were soon laid to rest. "She and Guillaume were exquisite. It was such a thrill to see her blossom emotionally."

Then came their exciting Nutcracker in Toronto that December. "It was really elating," says Kudelka. "They are a very interesting combination. Their styles bounce off each other nicely. When I see something like that I start dreaming about a new Sleeping Beauty and a new opera house."

Although Côté was mostly cast to partner other women during the balance of the 2001-2002 season, including debuts in the title lead of Balanchine's Apollo and as the Prince in The Sleeping Beauty: Act III, he and Ogden got to reprise Romeo and Juliet for delighted hometown Toronto audiences that February.

Even more challengingly, they were selected to compete for the Erik Bruhn Prize in May. The Bruhn Prize is a National Ballet of Canada invitational competition, named after one of the 20th century's greatest danseurs nobles who memorably spent the last three years of his life as the National's artistic director. The irregularly convened event brings together some of the finest young talent from leading international ballet companies. Remembering the only time when National Ballet of Canada's dancers, Jaimie Tapper and Johan Persson, had taken both the male and female Bruhn prizes, there were high hopes for Ogden and Côté as they blazed confidently through a dazzling performance of Swan Lake's Act III grand pas de deux. Ogden's placement is immaculate and she is notably strong on point and loves to turn, so Odile's technical fireworks were dispatched with ease. In the
contemporary section, they adapted effortlessly to the very different movement idiom of Dominique Dumais' CollectiveSonataForTwo, created specially for the event. But, as luck would have it, the 2002 competition was extraordinarily stiff. Ogden and Côté, among the youngest participants, were ultimately outclassed. It was a
disappointment, but thankfully not a crippling one, as clearly demonstrated by their recent Swan Lake.

Dancers, of course, spend entire careers striving to perfect both the dramatic and technical elements of this demanding ballet. What one looks for in a debutante are the seeds of promise. Ogden revealed far more than seeds. At certain points, especially in the lakeside "white" acts - Kudelka actually throws in a flotilla of black swans - Ogden positively flowered, achieving a lyric poignancy that belied her relative inexperience. Although his partnering still lacks rock-solid assurance - he's turned to partnering guru Rex Harrington
for help - Côté's overall technique is impressive. Poeticism and musicality are two of his strongest suits - witness his expressiveness in Siegfried's dreamy Act I solo - so the two dancers were as well matched in spirit as in reÞned classical looks.

"I love dancing with Guillaume," says Ogden. "We hear music the same way and we understand each other's nerves. We're similar in that we want to be really good right away." Echoes Côté, "I guess we're both over-achievers." Historically, the National Ballet of Canada's artistic directors have tended to break young dancers into the major full-length roles by pairing them with more seasoned partners. Putting Ogden and Côté together in such pressured situations was arguably a risky venture on Kudelka's part but is clearly paying off. The onstage partners - they have independent offstage romances - appeared as guest artists with Alberta Ballet in late March to dance the leads in Sleeping Beauty: Act III. Their Toronto fans will be very surprised if Kudelka does not cast them together when the National Ballet of Canada revives its full-length Nureyev staging of the same Petipa classic next season. Heather Ogden and Guillaume Côté have already become more than the sum of their individualities. In the popular mind they are already a true ballet partnership.

Natalia Dudinskaya
Remembered

John Neumeier:
Humanistic Choreographer