Guillaume Côté says farewell after three decades at the National Ballet of Canada | Canada Voices

In ballet, there’s great value in silence.

Ballerinas land their jetés with bent knees to dampen the sound of the clunky blocks in their shoes. Dancers of all genders train to erase pain and strain from their movements, making age-old choreography look effortless and fluid. And when the stage curtain falls, you’d better hope the ballet purists in the audience don’t hear a motorized pulley behind the scenes, distracting from the grace they’ve seen onstage.

Guillaume Côté knows this quiet world well. A principal dancer for the National Ballet of Canada (NBoC) since 2004, he’s mastered the art of silence.

But these days, he’s squeaking.

The culprit? His knee, damaged by an onstage ligament injury a decade ago and wrapped in a stretchy brace today. The tweak of the joint produces an almost imperceptible noise, and the resulting discomfort barely registers on his face.

But it’s there, biting at the 43-year-old’s brow. An ache. A crackle. A subtle sign that it might be time to leave this job behind.

As he practises for his farewell performances with NBoC – a mixed program aptly titled Adieu, due to play Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts from May 30 to June 5 – he literally throws himself into the work.

At the NBoC studios on Queens Quay West, Côté flings his body off a bed, then plummets to the ground. He intertwines his limbs with those of three other dancers. When the music stops, he sticks his tongue out, joking and giggling with his collaborators between sips of water – dancing at this level is hard, physical work. But it’s playful, too.

Adieu will feature a mélange of choreography – some by Côté, some by fellow Canadian choreographers Ethan Colangelo and Jennifer Archibald. Grand Mirage, a world premiere, unfolds to Peter Gabriel’s cover of the Arcade Fire song My Body Is a Cage, which thunders over the rehearsal hall’s speakers as Côté ghosts across the room.

In the track, Gabriel’s voice, brooding and husky, laments a vessel that can no longer perform as it once did. The lyrics are poignant and relevant for Côté, an athlete just weeks from the finish line of a 26-year-long career with Canada’s largest professional dance troupe. “Set my spirit free,” rasps Gabriel as Côté stalks across the studio. “Set my body free.”

Côté is ready for this next chapter – one with fewer injuries, less pain medication and more time for himself and his family. Retirement will allow him to work more with his own company, Côté Danse, as well as Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur, where he serves as artistic director.

But the transition is bittersweet.

“I want to make something true and authentic,” he explains of his imminent farewell performance. “I didn‘t want to make something that celebrated the happiness of retirement, where it’s like, ‘Oh, now onto the next thing, onto a bigger thing.’ It’s not true.

“There’s nothing better than this career, and this body doesn‘t allow us to continue it,” he elaborates. “There’s some frustration in there. I think this show is a process for me to say goodbye … there’s a huge amount of sadness.”

Côté’s story is near-legendary in Canadian dance circles: Born to arts-minded parents in Lac Saint-Jean, Que., about 200 kilometres north of Quebec City, Côté began dancing at the age of 3, leaving home to further study the craft at the National Ballet School in Toronto – where he also learned to speak English – at just 11 years old.

Côté, all alone in Canada’s biggest city, trained throughout his adolescence, returning home to Quebec only for short breaks until, at age 17, he joined the National Ballet of Canada’s adult company. He was named a principal dancer in 2004, then in 2013 took on the parallel title of choreographic associate, which allowed him time and resources within the company to create his own work alongside the large-scale classics he performed each year.

These days, Côté says his first steps into the world of dance feel far away and dreamy, especially now that he’s parenting kids of his own. (Though he and principal dancer Heather Ogden separated in 2022, the two amicably co-parent their two children, Emma and Léo.)

Known in dance circles for his relentless work ethic, Côté wishes he’d learned sooner how to roll with the punches – and how to be a little less anxious. (He wishes the same for his children.) “No matter what you do, you’ll always get criticized,” he says. “There will always be people who like you, people who hate you.

“I wish I could tell my 11-year-old self not to focus on that stuff, because it’ll destroy you,” he continues. He rarely reads reviews of his work, he adds – while he deeply appreciates the critics who have championed him, writers such as former Globe and Mail contributor Paula Citron and the Toronto Star’s Michael Crabb, he mostly avoids the fog of online gossip and reviews.

“I wish I could tell my younger self not to listen to the noise,” he says.

“The noise,” for what it’s worth, has generally been favourable toward Côté as a dancer, if less so as a choreographer. The NBoC has gotten plenty of use from a London Times quote, which in 2013 called him “one of the finest male dancers in the world,” a sentiment his former bosses and colleagues continue to echo during this time of transition.

“Guillaume always had great physical gifts right from his first days in the company,” former NBoC artistic director Karen Kain said in an e-mail. “His biggest strength is his innate physicality, his power and his dedication. He’s also a very sensitive person and that shows in his performances – he connects with audiences emotionally.”

Greta Hodgkinson, 51, remembers when Côté joined the NBoC as a young adult, and fondly recalls performing “pretty much every piece of repertoire” together over the 20-plus years they’ve been friends. As in Grand Mirage, Hodgkinson has also performed in works choreographed by Côté himself.

“We’ve had a creative partnership that’s evolved into something so wonderful,” says Hodgkinson. “He has this incredible energy – as a partner, as a choreographer. There’s a trust and intuition there that only comes with so many years of dancing and being around someone. We speak with our bodies.”

While Côté has earned praise for his classical repertoire – ballets such as Swan Lake, in which he performed as Prince Siegfried for the first time at age 19, and Manon, famous for its flirtatious “bedroom” pas de deux – it’s more contemporary ballet work, such as John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, in which Côté played the title role in 2014, that’s set him apart from his contemporaries in recent decades.

In Grand Mirage, those roles – the princes of classical repertoire as well as the more contemporary figures – come back to haunt Côté. Set in a dated hotel room, the piece follows a man retiring from dance as he wrestles with the demons of a life lived onstage, represented by younger figures who bear a strong physical resemblance to the outgoing principal dancer.

“Actors keep acting until they die,” muses Côté. “They can keep acting. But dancers are different. Once you stop dancing, you can no longer incarnate these roles you’ve lived your whole life.”

Created in collaboration with filmmaker Ben Shirinian and inspired by the work of David Lynch, Grand Mirage bids those roles adieu. A female character, played by Hodgkinson, embodies the Faustian bargain of fame, Côté says.

“She represents the mirage of this job,” he explains. “Dancers all think the next show will make us happy, the next show will be our big breakthrough. It’s kind of exhausting – it’s like being in a desert. You’re chasing a mirage that just keeps getting away from you, and that’s kind of how I felt for a lot of my career.”

Indeed, Côté’s career, while successful by most metrics, has taken its toll on his body. In 2014, Côté tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during a solo in the second act of The Nutcracker. As he hopped offstage, Kain sprinted into the wings from the audience – she knew life was about to get harder for her star dancer.

“These things happen in this art form, just like in sports, especially when you’re always pushing yourself physically,” says Kain. “But I just felt terrible for him. We cried together that day.”

The injury benched Côté for more than a year. From the sidelines, he honed his choreographic practice, creating work that didn‘t require him to dance in it – it was during that time he began work on Le Petit Prince, his full-length debut as a choreographer, which premiered in 2016.

Still, the time spent offstage, undergoing surgery and physiotherapy, cast a shadow over Côté. “To lose so much time at that point in his career was devastating,” says Kain. “But he got through it and recovered amazingly well.”

These days, Côté says his knee pain is “manageable.” He takes prescription pain pills, which allow him to dance at the expense of hurting his stomach.

“I was dancing on world stages for so long, and then the injury happened, and it changed the path of how I was dancing,” he says. “After the reconstruction, there was always an element of negotiating with my body, cutting down on certain roles.”

Côté says the classical ballet roles – or “white tight” roles, as he calls them – were the hardest to return to post-ACL tear. Those parts require dancers to show off hyper-extended legs, and according to Côté, the surgeons who reconstructed his knee placed the joint in a slight bend.

Any time he‘s performed a classical role in white tights since the injury, he‘s had to force his leg into position, resulting in swelling and spasms.

But less traditional ballets – works like Nijinsky, which explores mental illness through the prism of a title role Kain says was “made for” Côté – relieve some of that pressure, and rely as much on a dancer’s charisma as their training and technique. “You’re wearing knee pads and things,” says Côté. “It helps.”

Nijinsky was a major role for Côté, beyond giving his knee a reprieve from extended arabesques and cabrioles. Neumeier’s choreography saw Côté reach new emotional heights as the titular tortured Russian dancer and choreographer. Côté has called on those acting chops in recent roles such as Hamlet, his collaboration with theatre creator Robert Lepage, but Nijinsky was singular in capturing what makes Côté such a special performer.

“It so suited his physicality and power and his wonderful expressiveness,” says Kain. “Guillaume left everything on the stage in that role.”

Hope Muir, current artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, agrees. “Those roles always haunt you a little bit,” she says, referencing Nijinksy in particular. “Maybe that’s the advice I’d give him at this juncture – don’t let those roles haunt you.”

Muir knew when she was appointed to her position in 2022 that Côté was considering his exit strategy from the company. Together, they crafted his retirement, a process Muir says has been “very calm.”

“I don’t want it to feel tragic,” she says. “There’s never a good last show. But we’re trying to make this the best we can for him.”

As that final bow on June 5 inches closer, Côté’s getting ready for what’s next. He’s listening to a lot of music – classical, always, as well as teenage favourites like Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie. He’s making plans for Côté Danse. On the day of our interview, he’s picking up chocolate as part of his Easter Bunny-slash-dad duties.

All this to say: Côté’s taking steps to achieve balance in his life postretirement. These days, that involves having two therapists – “I’m hoping to get answers somewhere in the middle of their advice,” he jokes – and getting ready for Côté Danse’s remount of Burn Baby, Burn, which opens just a day after Adieu.

“It’s my after-party!” he exclaims, laughing. The work addresses climate change with an extreme physical vocabulary of gestures and dance moves, quite far removed from the constraints of traditional ballet.

“I loved being true to all those rules for a certain period of time,” says Côté. “But I’m done upholding some of these ridiculous – I mean, dance is dance, and ballet is just another form of dance. Ballet has such beautiful tools you can use to enhance other work – that’s what we do in Burn Baby, Burn, which has a lot of classicism within it, classical steps and forms, but it’s all remixed, and linked together by contemporary dancers.

“That would be forbidden in the classical ballet world,” he continues. “But I find it so thrilling.”

According to Muir, Côté will always be relevant at the NBoC – his legacy lives on in the relationships he built with younger dancers, the generosity with which he shared his time.

“He’s been a really good role model – his work ethic is incredible,” says Muir. “There are many different ways to become a principal dancer, and Guillaume’s route was as much about his repertoire as it was about the way he’s super well-rounded. I value all those things – he’ll remain a super example for everyone here even after he leaves.”

Some in Côté’s position might have felt they’d lost their youth to such a demanding career. Since the age of 16, the dancer hasn‘t had more than a week off at a time – apart from the pandemic, a dark period that he says encouraged him to get his mental health in check.

Côté’s career has been beautiful; it’s also been all-consuming. His body has been a means for some of the most highly regarded dance artistry in Canada; it’s also been a cage.

“I had the best youth in so many ways,” he reflects. “It came along with a lot of responsibility, but I loved growing up here. It was a really beautiful place for such a long time, and that’s why it’s hard now – this place is something else now, it’s something different. I’m like the piano in the corner of the studio, I’m like a piece of furniture.

“It’s time to go,” he says with a smile. “It’s time for a new generation.”