THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL to Open at Vancouver Playhouse

Belle Spirale Dance Projects and Vancouver Chamber Choir, in partnership with Covenant House Vancouver, will presentDavid Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning choral composition, The Little Match Girl, will be presented at the Vancouver Playhouse on November 13 and 14, 2026, featuring 10 Belle Spirale dancers alongside the 16 singers of the Vancouver Chamber Choir, led by Kari Turunen, performing live on stage in a production that unites movement, voice, and light in a deeply moving meditation on hope, dignity, and our shared humanity.

Returning to the Vancouver Playhouse following their triumphant 2025 production of UNIVERSUS, Belle Spirale Dance Projects brings an ambitious new chapter to the stage they have made their own. Choreographed by Kevin O'Day — former director of Mannheim Dance Theatre, Forsythe Company, New York City Ballet, Baryshnikov's White Oak Project alumnus, and newly appointed Artistic Director of Tanz Münster for 2027 — and featuring special guest artist and O'Day's longtime collaborator Alba Nadal — formerly with Royal Danish Ballet and Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe — the production represents a culmination of a 17-year collaborative artistic journey for Belle Spirale Dance Projects.

'Since we first collaborated with Kevin O'Day at Ballet BC in 2009 — myself as rehearsal director, Alexis Fletcher as a young dancer — Kevin has been both mentor and creative north star. His two landmark creations for Ballet BC, Face to Face and Here on End, are woven into the very fabric of our artistic DNA, and what began as a professional relationship has deepened over the years into one of the most meaningful creative friendships,' says Sylvain Senez, Belle Spirale Founding Co-Artistic Director. 'We are equally thrilled to welcome Alba Nadal: an extraordinarily skilled and deeply established performer whose artistry is matched only by her generosity of spirit. Alba brings a rare and luminous passion to everything she touches, and the opportunity to unite European and Canadian artists of this calibre in a single work feels like a genuine gift.

A family-friendly production for ages 12 and up, The Little Match Girl is an urgent and beautifully crafted invitation to see one another more fully through a reinterpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's original story. O'Day's striking choreography bridges Lang's music, including additional choral works woven into The Little Match Girl, with the reality of contemporary Canadian streets. The dancers' bodies become the site where a 19th-century European fairy tale speaks directly to 21st-century society, as audiences follow the tale of a young girl moving through an urban landscape of indifference. She reaches for warmth, recognition, and human connection in a world that too often looks away. Each match she strikes is more than a flicker of comfort; it is an act of hope, a fragment of memory, a quiet assertion of dignity. Her final match burns brightest of all – a moment of solace and reunion that transcends suffering.

“We are living through a moment of profound social fracture – rising inequality, eroding empathy, and a hunger for shared experience that feels increasingly difficult to find,” says Alexis Fletcher, Founding Co-Artistic Director of Belle Spirale. “This production is a deliberate act of counter-programming: a much-needed celebration of humanity and togetherness that brings dance audiences, choral audiences, families, youth, community members into the same space to connect and bear witness together.”

'What excites me most about this collaboration is how naturally Lang's music and O'Day's choreography speak to one another — as though they were always meant to share the same stage,' says Kari Turunen, Artistic Director of Vancouver Chamber Choir. 'Lang's work strips the familiar fairy tale to its emotional essence, leaving only what is most true and most human. O'Day honours that with every movement. After two years of finding common ground between our two art forms, this production feels like the fullest expression yet of what emerges when voice and dance speak as one.”

Against the backdrop of a set originally designed by Thomas Mika, which has been rebuilt and engineered especially for the Vancouver Playhouse by Senez, music and dance are transformed through collaboration. Movement becomes resonant, and music becomes embodied, as the Little Match Girl's story unfolds in front of 29 rolling towers that continually reposition as the story progresses. Lighting by Victoria Hunter Bell adds flames, snowflakes, and floating clouds, deepening the audience's visual immersion in the story.

The partnership with Covenant House Vancouver invites audiences to further engage in education, discourse, and learn how to take action to support youth experiencing homelessness. Educational tables will be available in the lobby so audiences can find out more about their life-changing front-line work and support youth in the community. Learn more at covenanthousebc.org