Early Days, Early Dancers

Early Days, Early Dancers documents the first decade of the National Ballet, focusing on the dancers of the 1950s, especially principal dancers Lois Smith, David Adams, Angela Leigh, Donald Mahler, and Celia Franca, herself a dancer and later the Company’s Artistic Director. With an enthusiastic foreword by Karen Kain, and a moving afterword by Veronica Tennant, the book includes pieces by twenty-two dancers, plus memorial tributes to dancers who have passed away. Contributions explore the dancer’s journey through St. Lawrence Hall, summer school, rehearsal, and life on tour, as well as life after a career in dance. Portraits includes comments by the dancers on such figures as Celia Franca, Betty Oliphant, and Kay Ambrose among others, and memorial tributes to those dance figures who have died are written by well-known writers contemporaries such as Michael Crabbe, John Fraser, Vanessa Harwood, and Veronica Tennant. These memories of the Company’s early dancers provide a unique impression of the origins of the National Ballet, and the history of dance in Canada, and highlight the way the present dances on the shoulders of those who have gone before.