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There's a moment near the end of Breathetween—the NBlC's most talked-about piece on this European tour—when principal dancer Jurgita Dronija freezes mid-pivot. Just freezes. The lights hold on her for what feels like a full heartbeat longer than choreography should allow, and the audience at Sadler's Wells collectively holds its breath too.
Then she moves again, and something in the room shifts permanently.
That kind of moment—impossible to capture on video, impossible to describe without sounding like hyperbole—is exactly why people still buy tickets to ballet in an era when you can watch anything instantly from your couch. And it's exactly what The National Ballet of Canada brought to London this October, leaving critics scrambling for fresh vocabulary.
The Guardian called one piece "a heavenly revelation." Bachtrack praised the dancers' "technical prowess and artistic vision." But the review that stuck with me was from The Reviews Hub, which described the evening as a "choreographic feast"—not because of spectacle, but because of variety. One piece leaned into melancholic contemporary movement; the next exploded with almost aggressive joy. Watching the program back-to-back felt less like attending a ballet recital and more like spending an evening with a group of artists who genuinely don't know what box to fit themselves into.
That discomfort with categorization is the company's superpower.
The "Frontiers" Program: No Safe Choices
The Frontiers program—the umbrella title for this European run—isn't trying to ease audiences into anything. It opens hard and stays there. Canadian choreographer Peter Wu's work opens the evening with three dancers moving in overlapping, slightly off-rhythm unison that creates an unsettling push-pull effect. It's technically demanding—those three dancers are essentially asking your brain to track three different but identical timelines simultaneously—and it immediately signals that this company isn't interested in playing it safe.
Then comes Emma Portner's contribution, which is where things get genuinely exciting. Portner, who trained classically before abandoning the traditional path to choreograph independently, brings a ferocity to her work that feels personal. In an interview with IMDb, she described watching her own choreography like this: "It's an intensely beautiful moment—then it goes away." That ephemeral quality animates everything she creates. Her piece for the NBlC features dancers who move like they're running from something, or toward it, or both at once. The partnering work is unusually athletic—there's a lift sequence involving a suspended fall that I physically tensed watching, even knowing it would work out.
The Guardian's "heavenly revelation" tag applies here. But it's not heavenly in the sanitized, soft-focus way ballet sometimes mistakes for beauty. It's heavenly the way a thunderstorm is heavenly—overwhelming, slightly frightening, impossible to look away from.
Why "Indie Spaghetti" Actually Makes Sense
One critic (apologies, I've lost the exact attribution in my notes) described the evening's aesthetic as "indie spaghetti," which sounds flippant but actually nails it. The choreography borrows from contemporary indie dance the way a music producer might sample from different genres—not as pastiche, but as genuine synthesis. There's classical line work in one phrase, then a floor phrase that wouldn't look out of place in a Contact Improv jam, then something entirely its own.
This eclecticism could feel scattered if the dancers weren't so committed. But the NBlC roster is deep—Jurgita Dronija and Evelyn Hart (yes, that Hart, still performing at a level that makes you recalibrate what aging gracefully means) anchor the program with completely different movement signatures. Dronija's approach is kinetic and impulsive; Hart's is architectural and precise. Seeing both on the same bill is like watching two different instruments interpret the same piece of music.
Paris Next, and Why It Matters
The company heads to Paris after London, and that's not incidental. France has a complicated relationship with ballet—it invented the form in many ways, but contemporary French ballet has trended toward a certain academic seriousness that can border on self-parody. The National Ballet of Canada, arriving with this much energy and this little reverence, might genuinely shake something loose.
This tour marks the company's return to European stages after a significant hiatus. Based on London alone, the wait was too long. If Paris delivers even half of what Sadler's Wells did, this becomes one of those tours people reference for years—"You missed the NBlC's Frontiers run? Seriously?"
Should You Go?
If you're anywhere near Paris during the company's run, yes. Unequivocally.
But here's the harder ask: if you're a ballet traditionalist who walks in expecting Swan Lake choreography and a tiara, Frontiers will frustrate you. This program meets you where you are only if you're willing to be where it is—which is somewhere stranger and more alive than most ballet dares to go.
If you're curious about what contemporary ballet can do when it stops apologizing for being contemporary, this is the show. Catch it if you can. Those frozen-heartbeat moments don't come around every season.
