Two longtime collaborators on why Guillaume Côté might be the best of Canadian ballet

CBC

15 hours ago

After 26 years dancing with the National Ballet of Canada, Guillaume Côté will take his final bow tonight.
The Quebec-born ballet dancer and choreographer has been lauded over his long career for his unique blend of technical perfection and artistry, and how his charismatic presence shines through even on a stage full of incredibly talented dancers.
From portraying Romeo in Romeo and Juliet to Prince Charming in Cinderella and Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, he has made some of the most iconic roles feel fresh.
Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks with two of his longtime collaborators, dancer Greta Hodgkinson and choreographer Anisa Tejpar, about his legacy and why he just might be the greatest of all time in Canadian ballet.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: Greta, you were 11 years old when you moved to Canada to attend the National Ballet school. That's the same age that Guillaume moved here from Lac-Saint-Jean. You both grew up to become principal dancers with the National Ballet, so you logged a lot of hours together. Tell me, what's he like to dance with? What's the thing that sets him apart?
Greta: I would say he's an extremely generous partner. His partnering skills are amazing. But he's also got so much energy. He gives so much onstage, and he gives so much to his partners. It's really wonderful. And you could sort of feed off each other. There's a lot of trust there, obviously, dancing for so many years, but yeah. He's very, very generous.
Elamin: What I really enjoyed watching there is the way that both of you are nodding at the same moments. We were talking about this just before we went live, because Anisa finished a sentence with just hand gestures and Greta was like, "Yeah, totally understand what that means." For those of us who have not danced, let alone danced with Guillaume, when you say "fantastic partnering skills," what does that mean to you, Greta?
Greta: Well, he understands where the ballerina's weight needs to be. He's strong in lifting. That sort of innate ability to partner is hard to teach. I mean, you can teach the technique, but the feel, if you will, of where the dancer needs to be off balance, on balance — he's very talented in that way.
Elamin: Let's talk about the other part of his career for a moment, Anisa, because he's been a choreographer for a while. And he did not start choreography as a transitional step out of dance. He started at the peak of his career, more than a decade ago. When you think about Guillaume as a choreographer, what's the thing that he's trying to do with choreography?
Anisa: That's a great question because I think when you've been an interpreter like he has for so many years — he's done the canon of choreography, you know, the Swan Lake s, the Giselle s, the Sleeping Beauty s that have lasted way longer than our lifetimes — he's done them all. Every major choreographer has worked with him around the world. When you are the vessel for someone else's ideas, when you are the interpreter of someone else's concepts, vibes, a weird brain pattern — at some point you think to yourself, what if it was my ideas? What if it was coming from me? What if I was the source of what we were making, and then I had these wonderful artists in front of me interpreting me?
Now, the way I put it I think maybe sounds egotistical, but it's not because ultimately the more you interpret, the better you get at creating. And with Guillaume, because he has been able to achieve such milestones in his career as a performer, it felt so logical for those of us who knew him. It was not a surprise when he started creating work. His mind is fast-moving, always inspired; this man doesn't stop…. And it only felt natural for him to, like, put pen to paper, to explode onto other people, and to show what he has. It's vulnerable. It's courageous. It's hard to make work. But I think because of the type of person that he is, the experience that he's had, the wealth of knowledge he has in the medium, he's the ideal candidate to make.