Elton John goes to the dance with Alberta Ballet

"Listen! He's grinding his voice into the asphalt there. Boom!"

The emphasis on sharp movements of the hips, elbows and chin is all part of Jean Grand-Maître's plan to use dance to tell the story of pop star Elton John's life in "Love Lies Bleeding," a contemporary ballet about the singer, set to premiere in Canada in May.

Grand-Maître, the Quebec-born artistic director of Alberta Ballet -- who also just choreographed the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympic Games -- has been working for a year as the mastermind of the John ballet, having put together the soundtrack, written the libretto and amassed the design team in addition to doing the choreography.

"It's a visual abstract of my life," John said, phoning during a break from recording in an L.A. studio, in his first interview about the ballet. "It's about the dark side of my life as well as the bright side of my life."

It all begin when Grand-Maître picked up his phone and was shocked to hear who was on the line. "It was a call from one of the biggest pop stars in history -- at first I thought it was a joke," he said.

John approached Alberta Ballet because of the singer's ties to Joni Mitchell, the Alberta-born singer whose music and paintings formed the basis for Grand-Maître's critically acclaimed "Joni Mitchell's The Fiddle and the Drum" (which the company will perform this week in Irvine and at UCLA). Mitchell's enthusiastic reviews of the company's treatment of her own music caused John to request the video and to meet with Grand-Maître and six dancers when John performed in Calgary in September 2008.

After that meeting, Grand-Maître didn't think any further connection was possible because the company's performing schedule was full. But in what Grand-Maître calls a case of "extraordinary serendipity," the company's touring schedule was changed to accommodate "The Fiddle and the Drum's" performances at Vancouver's Cultural Olympiad (and consequently, this month's L.A. dates). This opened a slot for Grand-Maître to create a new ballet for May, when the company usually tours.

"I was very flattered at what [Grand-Maître] proposed," the singer said, recalling when the two met in Las Vegas last February. "I'd given him free rein to do whatever he wanted. . . . He's a remarkable choreographer."

In several conversations about the ballet, Grand-Maître emphasized the narrative story line more than the dancing, saying: "The ballet is the story of a young child from a neighborhood outside of London who was never meant to be a superstar."

The "Bennie and the Jets" number, for instance -- which features dancers in sequined baseball uniforms and a spinning record that serves as a revolving stage for the lead dancer -- opens the ballet as an ode to John's 1975 mega-concert at Dodger Stadium, which Grand-Maître called "the coming-of-age of a mega-superstar."