Ballet Jörgen brings the romantic spirt of Anne Shirley to Toronto in its ‘Anne of Green Gables’ ballet

Anne Shirley, the freckled, rambunctious redhead from Avonlea, is finally coming to town.

After a two-year postponement — the pandemic, of course — Canada’s Ballet Jörgen is presenting the Toronto premiere of its colourful, family-friendly, all-dancing adaptation of “Anne of Green Gables” on the capacious stage of the Bluma Appel Theatre.

Founded in 1987, the company has carved itself an important place in the dance ecology of North America by touring compact productions of full-length classics as well as original story ballets and shorter contemporary works to communities often deprived of exposure to live performing arts.

In a regular season, Ballet Jörgen travels as many as 50,000 kilometres coast to coast and into the United States. Along the way, it builds valuable relationships with local studios by frequently integrating young dance students into its productions. Jörgen has a strong personal commitment to make the company’s work as accessible as possible, especially to disadvantaged and underserved communities.

At a cost of a million dollars, “Anne of Green Gables — The Ballet” is the company’s most expensive and ambitious production to date. At full complement the production requires a cast of 30 — the company routinely engages a permanent company of 18 — and even then requires multiple casting and endless costume changes to accommodate all the characters and wild creatures depicted.

Swedish-born Bengt Jörgen, the company’s CEO, artistic director and principal choreographer, likes to give his productions a Canadian twist. His charming version of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” is set in pioneering northern Ontario and has Group of Seven-inspired designs. Given her iconic status among Canadian literary heroines, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne Shirley had long been in Jörgen’s sights.

“I had been thinking about doing it for at least a decade,” Jörgen said, “but when we were ready to move, it took three years to get everyone on side and to secure the rights. They needed convincing that we’d really do justice to it.”

When Montgomery’s heirs gave permission in the mid-1960s for the creation of a stage musical version they made a commitment that they would not authorize any other musical adaptation so long as the 1965 Norman Campbell-Don Harron version was still running.

That production, the longest running in Canadian theatre history, is still the centrepiece of Prince Edward Island’s annual tourist magnet, the Charlottetown Festival. This meant that Jörgen was obliged to use the Campbell score rather than commission original music.

“Actually, it turned out to be great for us because it established a clear path and we were able just to get on with it.”

The score, written to accompany songs, required adjustment to make it suitable for dance. This task fell to Russian-born composer Alexander Levkovich, whose arrangement and symphonic-scale orchestration provides sufficient music at suitable tempos to support a two-hour ballet.

For practical as well as financial reasons, Ballet Jörgen mostly performs to recorded music, which in the case of the new production meant everything that would affect timing had to be locked down two months in advance of the Sept. 28, 2019 world premiere. Ironically, given Russia’s ruthless belligerence, the ballet score is performed by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the embattled country where Levkovich spent his formative years.

Montgomery’s 1908 novel also needed careful attention to bring visual life to what had been so well described in writing, particularly to capture Anne Shirley’s romantic spirit and dazzling flights of imagination. Here Jörgen turned for help to stage director Heinar Piller and his frequent design collaborator, Sue LePage. The process is well documented in the film “This Is Ballet: Dancing Anne of Green Gables,” freely available for online streaming on Plex and Tubi.

The ballet generated so much interest that long before its Halifax opening, graced by the surprise attendance of then National Ballet of Canada artistic director Karen Kain, Ballet Jörgen had a full touring calendar.

“We did about half the country but got stuck in Saskatchewan,” said Jörgen in reference to the pandemic lockdowns that began in March 2020. “We still have to cover the West and fulfil our U.S. dates.”

Fortunately, with much ingenuity and the loyal support of donors, the company emerged virtually intact from a difficult initial two-month lockdown and was able to keep operating. As a result, all the principals from the original cast, led by Hannah Mae Cruddas as Anne, Daniel Da Silva as Gilbert, Hiroto Saito as Matthew and Clea Iveson as Marilla, are here to reprise the roles they created.

“Anne of Green Gables — The Ballet” is in such demand that, beyond its currently scheduled tour, Jörgen expects to revive it frequently over the next several years, but he’s already thinking about his next project.

Jörgen is drawn to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and would also like to explore making a ballet about the celebrated Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis. All that depends on raising the necessary funds. For all its success, Ballet Jörgen is always sailing close to the wind financially.

“It’s a struggle, but we’re still here,” said Jörgen. “We’re still doing great work, and we’re still making a difference and reaching a lot of people.”

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