In honour of the TIFF screening of Mao's Last Dancer, an Australian film about the life of Li Cunxin, who risked his family and country for the freedom to dance the Western style of ballet he loved, the National Ballet of Canada took to the Young-Dundas stage to perform a snippet of a show from their upcoming season. It is very rare for an audience to be able to get so close to a ballet company of that calibre.

Whereas a night at the ballet is usually a dignified, classic affair, the performance was very intimate, with performers warming up, laughing and joking on-stage before their curtain call and performing their number in matching American Apparel sweats.

And, yet again, although I've beaten this point to near-death, this performance was completely free. Amazing.

After the spectacle, which was just beautiful to watch, a pleasant blend between classic ballet lifts and a strange, jerky movement style that looked strobe-light-induced, I headed backstage to speak with the show's choreographer, Aszure Barton, a former dancer who is pretty much "it" in North American choreography right now, about the upcoming premiere of the work just previewed, and about the movies.

She said that her show, which will have its world premiere at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in November, is about community. Working with forty dancers, often all on-stage, far more than is typical for a ballet production, especially since each is given at least a minute of showcase or solo dance, she wanted to explore the possibilities for group creation.

"What I'm really interested in is building a work with a collective of people" she explained.

"The most important thing for me is creating a safe and positive, creative atmosphere that's inspiring for everyone. Participating in it, on this path, together. So the work then becomes moments of creative process, but ultimately it is hopefully going to take the audience on a journey to a completely different universe. These dancers have created a world that has boundaries, without boundaries. You have a structure on stage that is four walls and brings our focus in... But it really is about the community, about the dancers, and this journey that they take you on, from their own personal experience to the power of the group."

As far as previewing her work at TIFF goes, Barton said that she has always been very cinematographic in her choreography, and insists that film and dance are more similar than people think. She hopes that the release of a film like Mao's Last Dancer and last night's showcase will bring a whole new audience out to the Four Seasons when their season starts later this fall.

"It's really important that we do things like this to make work more accessible," she said.

"Not just to people who can afford to go to the ballet, or would be interested in going to the ballet. So it's really good to open people's eyes up to different forms of art, to dance. People ask me 'what choreographers inspire you?' And for me it's really what directors and what films [inspire me.] I'm really, really excited about movies and about film. I would love to direct film, ultimately, one day. So my work is cinematic in that way...the individual artists are actors. They're themselves, but at the same time they're method actors. I hope to bring a film audience into the Four Seasons."

Mao's Last Dancer will screen for the public on Saturday, Sept. 19 at Scotiabank Theatre at 12:45 am. Photos of yesterday's performance and choreographer Aszure Barton on-stage by Michelle O.