Ballet Kelowna is bringing Macbeth back to the stage.
The piece, choreographed by Alysa Pires, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play.
Pires said she started brainstorming for the piece in 2018 and was finally able to bring it to a live audience in 2022 when pandemic restrictions loosened.
Back by popular demand, Ballet Kelowna is set to wow audiences with a new and improved Macbeth at the Kelowna Community Theatre on May 3 and 4.
“With the adaptation of Macbeth, the first question we asked was ‘Why tell this story through dance?’”
Pires said it couldn’t be a scene-by-scene recreation of the play. “It would be a watered-down version of what you can already see through the stage versions or the film versions.
“What dance does really well as an art form is action, high-stakes emotion, and depicting the psychological inner world of the characters. Macbeth is rife with those things.”
In looking at the original text, Pires said she found a lot of action takes place off-stage. In the ballet adaptation, she decided to bring that action to the forefront.
When Macbeth first took to the stage, Pires was the first Canadian female choreographer to be commissioned to complete a full-length work for a Canadian ballet company.
Tickets for the show are available through the Kelowna Community Theatre’s website and box office.
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