As our attention moved from Spooky to Holiday Season, Belle Spirale Dance Projects and Vancouver Chamber Choir, in partnership with Covenant House Vancouver, present David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning choral composition, The Little Match Girl.
On stage at theVancouver Playhouse on November 13 and 14, The Little Match Girl features 10 Belle Spirale dancers alongside the 16 singers of the Vancouver Chamber Choir, led by Kari Turunen, in a production uniting movement, voice, and light in a moving meditation on hope, dignity, and our shared humanity.
Guided by the much-respected choreographer Kevin O’Day 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 reinterpretation of production of Hans Christian Andersen’s original story, recommended for ages 12 and up, The Little Match Girl is an invitation to see one another more fully. 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.
“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,” saysAlexis 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.”
The partnership with Covenant House Vancouver invites audiences to visit their tables in the lobby to learn how to engage and take action to support youth experiencing homelessness, through the Covenant House life-changing front-line work and support youth in the community.
A pre-show talk with the Vancouver Chamber Choir will take place at 7pm before each performance in the upper lobby of the Vancouver Playhouse.
David Lang’s The Little Match Girl plays two shows, November 13 and 14, 2026 at Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton Street. For more information and tickets, visit bellespirale.ca