When the National Ballet of Canada opens its mixed program on May 30, a farewell to Guillaume Côté entitled Adieu, the company can expect record-breaking box office numbers. Such has been the effect of a rebrand that coincided with the 2022 appointment of Hope Muir as the Joan and Jerry Lozinski artistic director of the company.

A lot of development has occurred under her tenure, both for the company and for an expanding and diverse audience that has been invited to engage and challenge the dancers and choreographers.

On a chilly April morning, Muir, dressed for a long working day in casual clothes and no-nonsense running shoes, offers some background. After a career that has made her the most fully rounded artistic leader the company has ever seen, Muir has lost no time in re-shaping the company to ensure it can thrive and engage its audience as it approaches its 75^th anniversary.

Changes she has introduced have been swift and effective. Following the pandemic, Muir had the opportunity to recruit dancers who have been with her from the beginning of her tenure. (“There was a lot of natural attrition and some key retirements.”) Today the average age of the performers is around 25, with an age range appropriate for a big classical company.

Developing new repertoire and reviving works such as next season’s Pinocchio, balancing the contemporary with the classical “legacy” ballets such as Swan Lake, has been at the forefront of what Muir sees as her mandate: to be a company that keeps the art form relevant and shows others the way forward.

The path to artistic directorship of a major ballet company has been quite intentional. Born in Toronto, Muir danced from a young age. Her formal training began at 15, when her mother’s work took her to London in the late 1980s. She was one of 10 out of 400 applicants accepted into the London Festival Ballet School. She first danced with the English National Ballet. Over her 17 years as a performer, Muir developed expertise in both classical and contemporary dance, performing with Rambert Dance Company and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

After retiring from dancing in 2006, she took on the job of rehearsal director and assistant artistic director for the Scottish Ballet, and in 2017 took over as artistic director of Charlotte Ballet, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Throughout this time, Muir worked with a range of choreographers and companies, including the National Ballet of Canada, where she staged Christopher Bruce’s Rooster in 2008 and assisting in the mounting of Crystal Pite’s Emergence in 2009.

Muir is well equipped to strike a balance between the classical and the contemporary and to find what excites both dancers and audiences. “What is interesting to me is the way classical and contemporary ballet support each other.” Both afford dancers an avenue to innovation. Dancers become part of the creative process in any given season, along the way developing new skills.  “If you make smart choices within a season, you’re giving dancers a chance to access the work. It’s quite visceral and the dancers are really engaged. That balance [between classical and contemporary] is what is giving us this momentum.”

Director of Marketing and Communications Belinda Bale has been working closely with Muir on the rebranding of the National Ballet. In 2022 the company hired Bruce Mau Design to conduct a process that was as much about attitude as about giving the company a new look. In consultation with all the stakeholders, from dancers to audience members to those with little awareness of professional dance, some key elements emerged. “The word ‘bold’ kept coming up,” Bale says. “And that’s very much Hope. She is bold and she is brave.”

Box office numbers tell the tale: with Muir’s first season in 2022-2023, the ticket sales returned to pre-pandemic levels, at $13.4 million. For the 2024-25 season, sales are on track to reach $16.4 million.

Since 2022, the company has performed a host of works that are either new or new for the National Ballet. Traditionally the mixed program has been a bit of a hard sell, but with the Winter mixed program this past February/March, a buzz of  excitement arose from what seemed like a packed house for a North American premiere of David Dawson’s The Four Seasons, a world premiere of Marco Goecke’s Morpheus’ Dream set to the music of Keith Jarrett and Lady Gaga, and a dynamic new staging of Antony Tudor’s The Leaves are Fading.

Muir herself says it’s an exciting moment to be at the helm of the National Ballet in the approach to the company’s 75^th anniversary season in 2026-27. David Dawson, the Ballet’s resident choreographer for the next five years, will create a full-length work for the season, in what promises to be a very forward-looking celebration.

“It’s not just about acquisition,” says Muir of the works coming into the repertoire. “It’s about the creation as well. You’re giving the dancers a chance to access the work. What style, how much improv and how much acting: all of these things feed one another.”

As one of her bolder moves, Muir has introduced Sharing the Stage, a program to bring in prominent dancer/choreographers from outside the company to perform with them at the Four Seasons Centre. Tickets to the show on June 17 are only $20. Nova Dance will perform works by José Navas and Nova Bhattacharya and the National Ballet will present excerpts from Swan Lake and Jennifer Archibald’s new work, King’s Fall.

In the meantime, we have Adieu, a celebration of principal dancer and choreographic associate Guillaume Côté, who departs the company to work full-time with Côté Danse. From May 30 to June 5 he’ll perform in two of his own works, Grand Mirage and Bolero and company members will introduce Toronto-born Ethan Colango’s new work, Reverence, inspired by the Hieronymus Bosch painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. 

Photo of Hope Muir by Karolina Kuras