Dancing on the edge in Face 2 Face: 15 performances, 7 choreographers.1...

Dance Producer Cathy Levy is delighted to welcome you to the NAC's first-ever Face 2 Face mini festival, which explodes on the Ottawa dance scene from February 5-9, 2013. These are provocative, innovative works, a potent mix of exciting duets by seven choreographers -- from five countries…

Metamorphoses, Part 3: The Costumes

NAC Orchestra visits Kingston

Since my first orchestral experience – a young witness to the NAC Orchestra performing Handel’s Messiah twenty years ago – to my first internship in Marketing at the NAC, I have been rather smitten with this orchestra. As an Associate Marketing Officer, I used to sneak into the top balcony…

Scuba Gear Comes in Handy

A historic moment for the NAC

On your next visit to the National Arts Centre you will notice a beautiful burgundy and gold plaque on the wall outside the Box Office. The plaque designates the NAC building as a National Historic Site. It reads: “Constructed to designs by Fred Lebensold, the National Arts Centre (NAC)…

The little meerkats

This past week, French Theatre was presenting Édredon (Eiderdown) by Les Imcomplètes for very young audiences (6 months to 5 years). They were quite spectacular: always being on the look-out, they didn't miss a thing!

Discovering Music That Surrounds Us

Betty Riddell: Touching the lives of many people for years to come

Independent… alert… well-read… warm… determined… feisty… Colonel Michel Drapeau, barrister and solicitor, uses all these words to describe his dear friend and client, Betty Riddell.  And he uses two others as well, extremely generous. Up to the day of her passing at age 96, Betty was a…

A radical departure from the everyday

Romeo and Juliet by The National Ballet of Canada (January 31-February 2, 2013)

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was one of the first works of literature to inspire ballet choreographers because its drama, romance and tragedy are so perfectly suited to dance. Since the 1930s, choreographers have also been fortunate to have Prokofiev’s grand, magisterial score — including…

Nurturing Artistic Process

Creation spaces. Sometimes they exist as part of a well managed, state-of-the-art performing arts facility. A lot of the time, however, they don’t. They’re tucked in an old warehouse in the wrong part of town, or in a church basement with terrible light. There might be a noisy nightclub…

Metamorphoses, Part 2: The Pool

West Side Story with the NAC Orchestra

Musical Snapshots of the North

In this edition of the NACOcast Maclean's columnist Paul Wells speaks with composer Alexina Louie about her composition Take The Dog Sled which was performed by the NAC Orchestra as part of the 2012 Northern Canada tour. Alexina talks about the daunting process of composing an orchestral…

Metamorphoses : Part 1 Construction