“It’s for charity. It will never hang on my wall.”

“You know what memories you’ll take home when you see "Giselle": alabaster ballerinas, blowing mist, silent acting, love, life, death, afterlife, this, that, and a whole lot more. It’s a classic, the Hamlet of ballet. "Giselle" first premiered in Paris at the Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique on June 28th, 1841. Quite an artistic enterprise keeping a ballet alive for 163 years! The players who first graced the stage (Carlotta Grisi as Giselle and Lucien Petipa as Albrecht) have long been forgotten. The music rarely receives air play. Indeed, even classical music aficionados wrinkle their foreheads, stumped at the mere mention of the ballet’s composer, Adolphe Adam. The writer responsible for the fabled theme of the Wilis, Heinrich Heine, is only known in his homeland of Germany.”

“As if...there was any doubt that Heather Ogden was H-O-Double-T HOTT, the Mad Hot Gala II program featured this ballerina hottie blonde bombshell all ablaze-A fireball engulfing the cover from her pointe shoes! The above fiery image was also featured on the southwest corner of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts courtesy of some lovestruck sidewalk chalk artist. Too bad Mother Nature will eventually wash away his artwork homage to the priceless beauty of Heather Ogden.

Never before had I climbed to the dizzying heights of Ring 5, and yet, somehow, I made it to my seat sans oxygen mask and hiking boots. The Mönch like climb to my balletic Mount Eiger was well worth it to feast tired orbs upon this hot Jungfrau! Fortunately, I didn’t forget my opera glasses, suffer any nose bleeds, and found my way to the special post-performance reception to quaff down cocktails and gobble up hors d’oeuvres without the aid of a Saint Bernard! How I suffer for my art! Okay, I had a Frasier Crane moment.”

“The price levels are too high for a lot of our audience.”

"You have to stay so focused and driven," says Goh about the life she is about to leave. She kept quiet about a car accident in Vancouver in recent years that left her with injuries that kept her off the stage. "I didn't want it to be a crutch," she says, and kept working behind the scenes until ready to return to pointe shoes. Now she can leave at the height of her acting and dancing ability, which, sadly, comes to ballet dancers when their bodies tell them there are only so many spectacular jumps left in them.