STAGE TUBE: Sneak Peek at National Ballet of Canada's Sultry CARMEN

CARMEN. The very title conjures up images of sultry, physical passion, unleashed emotions and anguished eroticism. Davide Bombana's 2006 one-act interpretation of the Carmen story, so familiar to audiences through Bizet's opera, brought all of these qualities to the stage in an unforgettable flourish of dazzling balletic intensity.

Now the always provocative Italian choreographer has expanded his earlier version into a full-length work, allowing for further dramatic definition, greater theatrical scope and a broader platform for his dance ideas. Where the earlier adaptation acted as a distillation of the narrative and its principle themes, the full-length version gives freer play to the story and characters, while never sacrificing the unflinching carnality and essentially tragic vision that pulsate at its heart.

Set largely to Shchedrin's evocative Carmen Suite, the new version is a major ballet artist's re-visioning of both his own work and one of the great classic stories of passion and doomed love.

The National Ballet of Canada's CARMEN will run June 5-16. For tickets and more information, click here.