I'm at Pearson Airport again, this time for my first trip to China. The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing has invited me for their World Theatre Forum, a gathering of 19 organizations from 10 countries from all over the world. It will be a long short trip, a 13-hour flight and a distance of over 10,000km for a conference of three days. From Monday to Wednesday we will discuss Management and Development of Today's Opera.

The past ten days since I returned from Europe have been busy. Luminato, our annual ten-day celebration of arts and culture, took over the city with force. As always, I've had too many things to do to really indulge in the Festival, but at least I got to see the National Ballet's stunning production of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Mixed Program with choreographies by Georges Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp (watch out for her Come Fly Away at the Four Seasons Centre this summer), Necessary Angel's Andromache and Akram Khan's Confluence.

Talking about the Four Seasons Centre, I realize that I should have dedicated a blog entry to its fifth anniversary last week. I've been a lazy blogger lately. In any case, I couldn't praise our wonderful, perfect opera house enough and again and again. Because of it we've become a different company, being able to reach out to artists and realize projects that would have been unreachable and unrealizable before. Getting it built was an incredible achievement for our community and putting art on its stage that matches the high standards set by the house remains our ultimate goal. Productions like our Orfeo this past spring and, indeed, the National Ballet's Alice have set new standards for what you should expect on our stage. I'm really looking forward to our upcoming 11/12 season with more productions of the same calibre.