Guillaume Côté keeps his fire alive with Burn Baby, Burn

After Guillaume Côté gives his final performance with the National Ballet of Canada this Thursday, he'll be spending his first day of retirement in a seemingly unlikely place: right back in a theatre.

Only this time, it won't be Côté who's performing.

"On June 5, I retire from the National Ballet of Canada," explains the soon-to-be former principal dancer. "On June 6, I launch my company's run at the Bluma Appel Theatre. For me, that is the most symbolic thing that could happen."

Côté is wasting no time in taking the next steps of his career after nearly three decades as one of Canada's most renowned ballet dancers. From June 6-8, his eponymous company Côté Danse is partnering with TOLive and Show One Productions to present Burn Baby, Burn, an evening-length work choreographed by Côté to be timely yet innovative in its movement, music, and message.

While the curtain may be drawing on the Québec-born artist's time on stage, yielding that stage to a new generation of Canadian dancers is perhaps what excites him most about this new chapter.

"I'm so proud to use [my] name and to use my company to elevate other young artists," says Côté. "I'm extremely ready to be in that mentorship mode."

Next Chapters in a Storied Career

Côté – who grew up in Québec's rural Lac Saint-Jean region – began choreographing in his mid-twenties at the height of his dance career. He was appointed as the National Ballet of Canada's choreographic associate in 2013, allowing him to create repertory works there while pursuing independent projects with artists including Robert Lepage and Thomas Payette.

But Côté was motivated to form his own company during the COVID-19 pandemic, which he recognized as having a substantial impact on working dancers.

"When the pandemic hit, I wanted to shift my career more towards choreography, but I also wanted to shift to the Toronto dance community," he says. "I wanted to start giving back. And the thing that amazed me is the amount of incredible talent that there is in Toronto."

Since Côté Danse was created in 2021 alongside executive director Etienne Lavigne and associate producer Anisa Tejpar, the choreographer and artistic director's work has been directly influenced by the Toronto dance talent he's gathered.

"He's quite open," says Carleen Zouboules, a dancer from Red Deer, Alta. who's worked with Côté since the company's beginnings. "When he gives you a movement and you do it slightly differently, you feel safe to do so, which is great."

With a choreographic approach that follows his dancers' lead rather than strictly dictating their movement, Côté has been able to expand beyond his ballet background to form a unique contemporary movement vocabulary, one he says is on full display in Burn Baby, Burn.

"This production was a way for me to develop an aesthetic that's between the classical dance I'm from – with its form and shape and patterns – and one that gathers dancers from all these different backgrounds, puts them all in a room together, and starts to meet between our worlds," he says.

Dancing in a World on Fire

The result of that gathering process is a piece with dynamic physicality that showcases each performer's specific technical competencies, while emphasizing their cohesion through long durations of unison ensemble work. For Côtê, the piece has great personal significance, as well.

"It all started because my son has major climate anxiety. We go on a walk one day, and he turned to me and was like, 'Dad, what do you do for climate change? Why aren't you doing something with your art?' And I said, 'Well, that's very true; I haven't done anything with my art.'"

This close-to-home conversation was indeed the spark for Burn Baby, Burn. However, Côté was conscious not to choreograph with a moralizing intent to "change the world with this show." Rather, he was inspired by traditions and metaphors of dancing as an act of escapism. In Burn Baby, Burn, that dancing comes at the expense of ignoring the reality of global warming.

"I love the idea of the disco inferno; where the world's on fire, but we keep dancing," says Côté. "People can expect to see a show that's about the denial of climate change, but essentially it's a big, burning disco party to their death."

With that party being scored by composer Amos Ben-Tal and decked out in costumes by Yso South, Côté ultimately aims for Burn Baby, Burn to entertain with a cruel twist of irony.  

Igniting New Flames

The opportunity to present work like Burn Baby, Burn, along with the collaborative approach taken to create it, has been among the most rewarding aspects of Côté's next steps as a dance artist.

"I lived in the ballet world, where the form is very strict, and the way of working is very strict. So to transition to having my own company in the contemporary world has been absolutely liberating."

There have also been aspects of Côté's transition that have been more sobering, such as learning and navigating the financial realities of running a dance company in 2025.

"The National Ballet of Canada has a huge following, and that's a really beautiful thing that they've built over 70 years of history," he says. "So to go from being at that world class international organization with everything at your fingertips to putting our own money on the line to do something because we really love it…that's the challenge."

Yet despite those barriers, Côté is enthused by the goodwill and momentum that he's carrying from the National Ballet of Canada to "a coming out of his company that's on fire." With ultimate dreams of giving dancers full-year contracts and to support other choreographic talent, Côté is working to ensure that the adieu to his career as a dancer is instead the prelude to a bigger next chapter: not only for him, but for other dancers he's driven to support.

Burn Baby, Burn runs June 6-8 at the Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front St. E.) in Toronto.