Winnipeg ballet tours with Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge The Ballet, the new work created by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, will tour Ontario and Quebec in 2011.

The ballet, created by Jorden Morris, debuted to mixed reviews in October 2009 in Winnipeg and has since toured toMinneapolis and Western Canada.

The story ballet features a romance between a young dancer at a cabaret in Paris of the 1890s and a young painter under the tutelage of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Some critics enjoyed the colourful spectacle of life inside a cabaret; others thought it was out of keeping with traditional ballet.

MoulinRougeheads for eight cities in Eastern Canada in February and April 2011.

• Feb. 10-12: Toronto, Sony Centre for the Performing Arts.
• Feb. 13: Hamilton, Ont., Hamilton Place.
• Feb. 14: Mississauga, Ont., Living Arts Centre.
• Feb. 15: Kitchener, Ont., Centre in the Square.
• Feb. 16: London, Ont., RBC Theatre at the John Labatt Centre.
• April 14-16: Montreal, Place des Arts.
• April 18: Quebec City,Grand Theatre of Quebec.

Next week, the RWB heads to Israel for performances in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem of Carmina Burana. This is its first overseas tour in seven years.

The RWB plans another new work, choreographed by Shawn Hounsell, in its 2010-11 season. Wonderland, a mature retelling of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, debuts in Winnipeg on March 9, 2011,and will tour Western Canada.

Wonderland will also be featured in Prairie Scene, a festival of the best in Canadian work from the prairie region in Ottawa in April 2011.