The Fiddle and the Drum

There is something about the politically infused, socially conscious singer-songwriters who grew to prominence in the 1960s that seems in perfect kinship with modern dance: both art forms prize the individual, both revolve around the creator-practitioner duality, both have been wielded as tools of protest.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's fierce, stirring 2002 solo "Once," set to the 1963 album Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2, springs immediately to mind. (So too, less happily, does Twyla Tharp's ill-conceived Bob Dylan jukebox musical, The Times They Are A-Changin'.).

Ballet would seem a far less likely partner. But it was a ballet choreographer, Jean Grande-Maître, the artistic director of the Alberta Ballet, who dreamed up the idea of a dance set to Joni Mitchell's music. The result, which also features the Canadian-born artist's green-toned, evocative visual designs, is The Fiddle and the Drum. It is set to 10 Mitchell songs, a few of them quite recent and most others from the 1980s and '90s.

Grande-Maître first had in mind the idea of a jukebox musical-luckily, Mitchell talked him out of the "Dancing Joni" concept. Her mind was on grander, less appealing subjects, such as war and environmental degradation. Writing about the production, she recounts how she (correctly) predicted that the company would lose its sponsors .

She also reveals, amusingly, that she found Grande-Maître's original poster concept, with its attractive, scantily clad dancers "a little fluffy for the times"; yet the ballet itself - even more amusingly - is full of attractive, scantily clad dancers. And the choreography, like Mitchell's songs, is lush and lyrical, responding to the music both structurally and in mood. There are illustrative touches, such as when the men, surrounded by rushing flags, don helmets during "The Beat of Black Wings." But much of the ballet is expressionistic in tone, reflecting the innocence and utopian hopes suggested by Mitchell's music, even as her lyrics point to darker themes.