Canada’s National Arts Centre launches 2024 SPHERE festival

Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) is set to open its 2024-25 season next week with multi-disciplinary festival SPHERE. The 2024 festival will bring all the NAC’s artistic disciplines together to spotlight the natural world, with participation from the NAC Orchestra, Dance, English Theatre, Indigenous Theatre, French Theatre, Popular Music and Variety, and 1 Elgin Culinary Arts.

The ecological focus of this year’s program is a continuation of SPHERE’s inaugural 2022 edition which explored ‘rivers, waterways, and watersheds’. The 2024 festival kicks off with the world premiere of UAQUE, a work fusing dance, music and visual art co-comissioned by NAC Orchestra and NAC Dance, which this season welcomes its new executive producer Caroline Ohrt.

NAC Orchestra music director Alexander Shelley said: ‘I am thrilled to begin my tenth season at the NAC with the second instalment of such a timely and ambitious festival. At the heart of SPHERE is an invitation to celebrate the intellectual and artistic inspiration that Mother Earth gives us and to explore our fragile relationship with her. We invite our audiences to journey with us as we consider the future of the natural world and its most abundant resource through song, dance, theatre, and visual art.’ 

Programming across the NAC’s stages will feature performers including Polaris Prize and JUNO Award winning pianist and vocalist Jeremy Dutcher in concert with the NAC Orchestra, Québécoise actor and playwright Christine Beaulieu and GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Renée Fleming alongside free panel discussions, live demonstrations, and a free day of music and family activities at the Canadian Museum of History.