Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB) offers a perfect option for the Arts lover on your gift list. The renowned Ballet company will bring its highly anticipated Winter 2026 BC Tour in Vancouver, this coming January & February. The tour presents a thrilling program featuring RWB’s signature performance of the modern classic Carmina Burana, alongside the West Coast premiere of rising choreographer Cameron Fraser-Monroe’s 
. Other than their annual Nutcracker performances, this will be the first time in a decade that BC audiences will have the opportunity to see Canada’s longest-running ballet company perform other works from its repertoire.
“We are delighted to be returning to Vancouver as part of our Winter 2026 BC Tour, and are very excited to bring audiences two of RWB’s most lauded contemporary ballet works – Carmina Burana, a perennially popular favourite over the past 20 years, and 
, RWB’s most recently commissioned work, which received enthusiastic praise from critics and audiences alike, upon its world premiere in 2024,” says Christopher Stowell, RWB Artistic Director. “A testament to RWB’s immense versatility and virtuosity, we are privileged to bring this compelling double bill to Powell River audiences for an unforgettable evening of visually stunning and breathtakingly daring choreography.”
The athletically-charged and sensual production of RWB’s trademark presentation of Carmina Burana opens the evening’s double bill, featuring German composer Carl Orff’s pounding, evocative score and Argentine choreographer Mauricio Wainrot’s bold, corporeal choreography. Performed in a series of five vignettes, the “highly visceral ballet…highlights the vitality of the company” (Winnipeg Free Press), moving from gravity-defying leaps and spins to primal urgency to romantic tenderness, aligned with the cantata’s texts celebrating all of life’s sensual pleasures. Originally commissioned by Belgium’s Royal Ballet of Flanders in 1998, RWB presented the work’s Canadian premiere in 2002, which has since become a popular audience favourite over the past two decades.
The evening performance will conclude with the West Coast premiere of the contemporary, Indigenous-led work , choreographed by BC’s own Cameron Fraser-Monroe, a member of the Tla’amin Nation and an alumnus of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. Hailed as “a powerful fusion of Indigenous storytelling, contemporary ballet, and classical music—rooted in tradition and elevated for the stage” (The Globe and Mail), T’?l: The Wild Man of the Woods is a powerful retelling of the traditional oral tale of a young woman who ventures into the unknown to save her sister from the sinister T’?l, a dark figure who steals children under the cover of night. A gripping, heroic tale, the ballet is based on the oral history of Tla’amin Elder Elsie Paul, who narrates in both her native Ayajuthem and English. The fully Indigenous-led creative team also features an original score by JUNO-nominated, two-spirit composer Cris Derksen, and stunning costumes by New York-based Navajo designer Asa Benally.
“For thousands of years this story has been used to entertain, to connect, and to protect our children, and I am so excited to continue that tradition by opening the tour of this ballet in the Tla’amin Territory,” says Fraser-Monroe. “No matter where you go there is ‘someone in the woods,’ and it feels amazing to share this story throughout BC.”
Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s BC Tour of on Tour featuring Carmina Burana wraps February 9 & 10, 2026 at The Centre Vancouver, 777 Homer Street, Vancouver.
Ahead of the Vancouver performances, the RWB 2026 BC Tour visits Powell River, Chilliwack, Vernon, Salt Spring Island, Courtenay, and Nanaimo,
For full details and to purchase tickets, visit rwb.org