Sonia Rodriguez and Zdenek Konvalina in The Seagull.

TORONTO -- When it comes to grace and romance, it's hard to imagine a seagull holding its own against a swan.

But that's precisely what choreographer John Neumeier's passionately balletic adaptatiion of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull does as it stakes out its territory in a balletic world primarily dominated by Swan Lake, Giselle and the like.

Premiered by the Hamburg Ballet in 2002, The Seagull entered the repertoire of the National Ballet of Canada Friday, as dancers from Canada's premiere classical ballet company brought the full-length work to life on the stage of the Four Seasons Centre.

Of course, in adapting a story that is very much of the theatre, Neumeier has had to play fast and loose with some of Chekhov's tale, but in the end, he remains true to the passion and despair that has made the story a classic.

Where Chekhov's story was dominated by actress Irinia Nikolayevna Arakdina and her son Kostya, a young man whose exile to his uncle's country estate has done little to diminish a passion for the theatre his mother so loves, in Neumeier's world, all is dance instead. Irina (Greta Hodgkinson) is transformed into a prima ballerina, while her dreaming son (Zdenek Konvalina) yearns to be, not a playwright, but a choreographer to rival his mother's current beau, Trigorin (Aleksandar Antonijevic).

Meanwhile, young Kostya's sweetheart Nina (Sonia Rodriguez) dreams of being a dancer, rather than an actress, and once she is seduced by Trigorin, ends up dancing in the chorus in Moscow, not touring the provinces in a second-rate theatre company.

But otherwise, this is still unquestionably Chekhov's story, although it unfolds in a world Chekhov might not recognize, thanks to Neumeier, who not only choreographed the work but designed its sets, costumes and lighting as well and with an equally sure hand. The end result is a beautiful sort of hybrid world -- think Czarist Russia, updated and filtered through an austere Scandanavian prism, with just a touch of De Stijl geometrics and a soupcon of origami thrown in for good measure.

It is also a world far less claustrophobic that Chekhov's, a world that is big enough to embrace not only the country estate ruled over by Irina's ailing brother (Richard Landry) but Moscow's dance world as well, even going so far as to include an affectionate sendup of Russian classical ballet that proves to be a crowd-pleaser.

There's an equally hybrid sense to the the music of the piece -- a score driven primarily by the best of Dmitri Shostakovich, with sprinklings of Pyotr IlyichTchaikovsky, Alexander Scriabin and Evelyn Glennie interwoven throughout to powerful effect, all beautifully rendered by the NBOC Orchestra, under the increasingly assured baton of David Briskin.

From a dance perspective, Neumeier is a master at deceptive simplicity, at his most powerful in dealing with the passions that Chekhov has woven throughout the work, whether they be the touchingly unrequited passions of the schoolteacher (Noah Long) for Xiao Nan Yu's Masha, who in turn has eyes only for Kostya or the more pragmatic kind shared by Irina and her lover, those passions dominate the world Neumeier has created, demanding not only a fine dancing but fine acting as well.

Happily, the NBOC delivers on both fronts. While Konvalina, Rodriguez and Yu seem joined by a current that is rarely short of electric, Hodgkinson's diva generates her own power, and Antonijevic has rarely been better, creating a self-involved Trigorin who is a master in human puppetry. There's fine work, as well, from Piotr Stanczyk and Stephanie Hutchinson and from a corps that's capable of making the most out of even the most demanding Neumeier examination of love and art.

As ballets, they might be from different eras and driven by completely different dance sensibilities, but when it comes to memorable work, it seems The Seagull and Swan Lake are most definitely birds of a feather.
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