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![\"MIKAELA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4174795_web1_260424-RWB-00149.JPG\")
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MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
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Former Royal Winnipeg Ballet principal ballerina Evelyn Hart (centre) rehearses with the company in advance of its season-ending triple bill.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Some things, however, don\u2019t change. She remains a ballet purist \u2014 \u201cpink tights and pointe shoes are my thing,\u201d she says \u2014 and young dancers, take heart: even Evelyn Hart gets pre-performance jitters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about performance is that every single performance is new. There\u2019s always that same anxiety, I think, or worry, or stage nerves. There\u2019s always that. You just learn how to deal with it better and better and better,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always considered difficult because I always preferred to rehearse more than less, because I always knew that once I got onstage, for me, there was so much distraction with lights and with the audience and with nerves and with the unknown. The more you can put it into a place in the back of your head that can take over, that\u2019s the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Four Seasons also includes the Winnipeg debut of Cameron Fraser-Monroe\u2019s Segatem (pronounced shAY-ga-tum), which made its world premi\u00e8re at New York City Center as part of the invitation-only Fall for Dance Festival in 2024.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n From left: choreographer James Kudelka, Hart and RWB artistic director Christopher Stowell<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Fraser-Monroe, who is an alumni of the RWB School, has had his head down in the studio focused on this week\u2019s run, but seeing the work in dress rehearsal rekindled that feeling of anticipation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was taking me back to sitting in the concert hall at New York City Center and going, \u2018Wow, yes, there\u2019s a lot in the day to day, but there is also a real history to this work and a real kind of legacy that\u2019s expanding around it. I think it\u2019s easy to forget in the day to day, because it\u2019s just what we do in rehearsal, but when it premi\u00e8red in 2024 it was really an exciting moment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u0160\u025bgat\u0259m\u2019s premi\u00e8re at Fall for Dance was the first time the RWB had performed in NYC since 1979, and the fact it was an Indigenous story told by Indigenous creators that took the company there is significant.<\/p>\n Fraser-Monroe always works with Indigenous designers and composers on his commissions, including Polaris Music Prize-winning tenor-composer Jeremy Dutcher, a member of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, who did the score for this work.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Evelyn Hart dances the role of Winter Woman in The Four Seasons.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt really just speaks to the attention that my work with the RWB is attracting, and First Nations creation and collaboration more broadly in Canada,\u201d Fraser-Monroe says. \u201cSo I really hope that the RWB will continue to work with Indigenous artists, because they\u2019ve received great benefit from working in partnership, in relation, with Indigenous artists.\u201d<\/p>\n Fraser-Monroe is thrilled that Segat\u0259m \u2014 which means \u201cto lift someone up\u201d in Ayajuthem, the language of the Tla\u2019amin Nation, of which Fraser-Monroe is a member, and is about a leader who must learn to rely on his community \u2014 is being presented as part of a triple bill in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of my favourite ways to present dance, because you\u2019re able to approach with three different perspectives on work, on ballet, on dance,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something for everyone in the evening, and there\u2019s always something to contrast. And I think the most exciting piece of a triple bill is the conversation that can occur. I love going to the theatre for many reasons, but the conversation after \u2026 is maybe my second-favourite part, and a triple bill is built for a meaty conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Choreographer Dwight Rhoden describes Odyssey as athletic and kinetic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Rounding out that conversation is the world premi\u00e8re of Odyssey by American choreographer Dwight Rhoden, co-founder of Complexions Contemporary Ballet in New York City.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an abstract articulation of what\u2019s going on in the world,\u201d he says of work, which he describes as athletic and kinetic, with lots of pas de deux.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it does have a broad view of how things in the world are sometimes in conflict, how you can see something so gorgeous and beautiful and moving and in the next breath you see something so chaotic and brutal and not so nice to see.\u201d (Anyone who has ever scrolled through social media will know that sensation well.)<\/p>\n Working with the RWB dancers was a pleasure, he says.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Odyssey features many pas de deux.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThey so embraced the work from Day 1, and they are in it, in it, in it in a great way,\u201d Rhoden says. \u201cIt was a bit of a surprise, not because I didn\u2019t think the RWB was a great company, it\u2019s just that I hadn\u2019t experienced it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe company isn\u2019t a cookie-cutter company. There are a lot of different dancers with different strengths, different bodies, different qualities. For me, that made it all the more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n For Hart, seeing the current company dancers in the studio makes her wish she could go back and do it all over again. But she\u2019s also grateful she never truly stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cI realized at one point I kept panicking, because I kept thinking, I need to do something else. I need to find another path. And then I thought, you know, I have to stop that, because I\u2019m going to be a dancer until the day I die. I may not be dancing, but I will be a dancer until the day I die.\u201d<\/p>\n winnipegfreepress.com\/jenzoratti<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t Jen Zoratti Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT<\/a>. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2013 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
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