Orpheus Alive
Orpheus Alive is a full-length narrative ballet with a score by Missy Mazzoli, choreographed by Robert Binet and conceived by Binet with playwright Rosamund Small, commissioned and premiered by the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto on November 15, 2019. It retells the Orpheus and Eurydice myth with the genders reversed — Orpheus is danced as a woman, Eurydice as a man — and runs roughly one hour across six musical parts, only one of which is titled in the surviving record ("Real World Conflict").
What is danced
The article gives very little detail of actual choreographic vocabulary. What can be drawn from it: the piece deploys large ensemble forces described as Furies, Apparitions and Underworld Spirits, suggesting a narrative structure built around a soloist pair (Orpheus/Eurydice) set against corps sequences representing the underworld. Michael Crabb's review notes these ensembles as 'large and energetic,' and credits the choreographer with testing 'conventional ballet boundaries,' which points to a contemporary, narrative-driven idiom rather than a strictly classical one — but the article does not describe specific steps, partnering, or technical vocabulary, so this cannot be stated as settled fact.
Because the source material stops short of describing movement in technical terms, no confident claims can be made here about pointe work, partnering vocabulary, or technique lineage (Balanchine, Cecchetti, etc.). A dancer or stager researching this work will need the choreographic notes, video documentation, or company repertory materials beyond what this article supplies.
Context
The ballet was made in 2019 for the National Ballet of Canada, a major classical-ballet company, at a moment when narrative ballet companies were actively commissioning new full-length works that reworked canonical myths through a contemporary lens, including gender-reversed casting of principal roles. Robert Binet is described in the contemporary review as a 28-year-old choreographer explicitly pushing against 'conventional ballet boundaries, gender stereotypes included,' situating the work within a broader trend of narrative ballets reconsidering myth and casting convention in the late 2010s.
Staging history
The article records only the world premiere by the National Ballet of Canada at the Four Seasons Centre, Toronto, on November 15, 2019; no revivals or other stagings of the ballet itself are mentioned. Mazzoli later extracted a standalone 15-minute concert suite from the score, Orpheus Undone, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and premiered under Riccardo Muti on March 31, 2022 — a concert-hall afterlife for the music rather than a restaging of the choreography.
How to watch it
Watch for how the choreography handles the reversed gender casting of Orpheus and Eurydice against the conventions of a classical company repertory piece, and for the contrast between the named large-ensemble sections (Furies, Apparitions, Underworld Spirits) and the intimate central duet. Mazzoli's score — noted for 'sliding brass punctuated by a mortal tick-tock of percussion' — is closely tied to the dramatic pacing, so listen for where the electronics and percussion mark shifts between the 'real world' and underworld sequences.
Credits
- composer: Missy Mazzoli