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Dance in Canada Magazine Number 6, Fall 1975

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Dance in Canada Magazine Number 6, Fall 1975

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One copy of Dance in Canada Magazine Number 6, Fall 1975

Contains the following articles:
- Editorial by Susan Cohen
- We Are Magicians by Anna Blewcamp
- In Search of Women in Dance History by Selma Landen Odom
- Profile: Ann Southam by Ulle Colgrass
- Anna Wyman: Not for the Uncommitted by Elizabeth Zimmer
- Review by Penelope Doob
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'$ # '·"'~-M' :\ \ ~>t 1975: The Creative Woman: ~trlcia Beatty, An , 'fJttSoutHam Editorial Susan Cohen Editor / Redactrice S1 one de Beauvoir's oft quoted remark that "it is in t re th at women have best succeeded in asserting :"'e e lves" is especially true in dance and particularly Ca nadian dance in 1975, International Women's s Sel ma Odom, a professor of dance history at J iversi ty , puts it in her article, "it is almost - ·· to f ind the number of their accomplishments .... : e f iel d. The Canadian women who have made i ons to dance are many. As teachers, organizers 3. :: ::e...,ormers, they have genuinely shaped the dance :- • -·e:'"'at we kn ow . In the list we find the three founders ....,a;or ballet companies , Gweneth Lloyd , Celia = a- :a a~ udmi lla Chiriaeff, Betty Oliphant, principal of a: -ial Ba llet Schoo l, Monique Michaud, first dance e Can ada Council, not to mention performers i h, Karen Kain and Veronica Tennant. What ecade off from the preceding is the growing - --:e· ::i' omen involved on the creative side - as :.,: =-;;·a::'lers, d esi gners and composers in dance. In s:-e celebrat ing women's accomplishments for -·,:;•-c· 'la Wom en's Year, t hose are the talented :: • =-as pon wh om we have concen t rated . Selma ~-aces for us t he woman 's image in t he Western ·ical t ra d ition while Pene lope Doob , a =·:·,:;:::· - English at Glendon College , introduces a -= ·ea·_ ·e n he mag az ine, Review, with a consideration e..., "l lS ba llets. Anna Blewchamp , a To ronto --:·e:;;·a "er. talks to and about Patricia Beatty, co: ·e-:•:· - '· e - oronto Dance Theatre. Beatty's frequent :::: a::::·a,-· comp oser Ann Southam , is profiled by C-•-a ist Ull e Colgrass. Finall y, Vancouver ·=-='°--;;::a ce w rite r, Elizabeth Zimmer, introduces us - er s de ma nding, reserved choreographer, •, . .,.,a., _T'le li st of women writing and being written a:: - - :::a ce n Can ada is by no means exhaustive. Nor :cussed all th e activities taking place d uring · - ;. ea.· - •on o's Festival of Women and the Arts, the ibition of women 's artistic accomp lish: is y ear, wi ll be the subject of a piece in a B he fact that we have had to deliberately ces is in itself a sign of how healthy the any wo men are participating in it t oday. CL. :· =-· =: see inances still p reclude our returning to -gua form at. I n t he meantime, translat ions of ~ - - 2.- : e ,;,.n, ::ieing made in m imeographed fo rm and ::c ::r•:: -·: Me oag es of the printed magazine. We hope ·?. ·==:: e • emporary, compromise between lack _--~ 2. ,:: comm itment to bilingualism . We regret =- ce to our readers . • =- =- La remarque familiere de Simone de Beauvoir a l'effet qu e " c'est dans le monde culture! que la femme a le mieu reussi a s'affirmer" s'avere particulierement vraie dans le domaine de la danse et surtout sur la scene canadienne . en 1975, an nee internationale de la femme. Pour emprunter quelques mots de !'article de Selma Odom , professe ur d'histoire de la danse a l'Universite York , " ii est presqu e etourdissant" de constater la latitude qu'on a accordee a la femme aujourd 'hui et l'ampleur de ses realisations dans ce domaine. On ne compte plus les canadiennes qui ont c ontribue a la danse, leur nombre est trop imposant. Comme professeurs, organisatrices et artistes , elles ont laisse leur marque; elles ont en fait fa<;:onne l'art de la danse que nous connaissons . Parmi ces femmes , nous t rouvons des Gweneth Lloyd, fondatrice du Ballet Roya l de Winnipeg , Celia Franca , fondatrice du Ballet National, Ludmilla Chiriaeff, fondatrice des Grands Ballets , Betty Oliphant, directrice de l'Academie du Ballet National, Monique Michaud , premiere representante de la danse au Conseil des Arts du Canada , sans oublier les artistes du calibre des Lois Smith, Karen Kain et Veronica Tennant. Et la I iste est encore longue. Mais ce qui caracterise la derniere decennie, c'est le nombre accru d e femmes qu i c ontribuent au cote createur de notre monde. C'est aces femmes que nous c o nsacrons ce numero. Selma Odom nous esquisse !'i mage de la femme dans la t radition historique de la danse occidentale tand is que Penelope D oob , professeu r d'anglais au College Glendon , apporte un nouve l element a la revue dans notre section intitulee " Review" qui examine quatre ballets feministes . Anna Blewchamp, choregraphe torontoise, observe les travau x de T rish Beatty, co-d irectrice du Toronto Dance T heatre. N ous retrouvons aussi la compositrice Ann Southam dont U lle Col grass, journaliste du monde musical, nous trace le profil. Finalement , Elizabeth Zimmer de Vancouver nous - offre quelques notes biographiques sur une choregraphe severe et pleine de reserve: Anna Wyman . Notre repertoire de femmes, cell es qui ecrivent aussi b ien que celles sur lesquelles o n ecrit dans la Revue , n'est nullement epuise. Au contraire, nous nous sommes contraints a une selection arbitraire, mais c'est la l'indice de l'abondance d u c hoi x et de !'importance du nombre de femmes qu i c ollaboren t aujourd 'hui . Un dernier point. Comme vous le verrez , l'etat de nos f inances no us oblige a retourne r au x mesures plus strictes en ce qui concerne l'aspect bilingue de la revu e. D 'ici ace q ue tout aille mieu x , les traductions des articles seront photocopiees et i nserees entre les pages de la revue. Nous osons croire q ue vous ve rrez la u n com p romis c onvenable, sinon temporaire , entre le manque de fonds et notre politique de bil inguisme. Nous regrettons tout inconvenient cause a nos lecteu rs. • FALL 1975 AUTOMNE Editor/Redactrice: Susan Cohen We Are Magicians Design/ Dessinateur: Page Publications In Search of Women in Dance History Anna Blewchamp Selma Landen Odom Profile: Ann Southam Translator/ Traduction: Louise Meilleur Ulle Colgrass Advertising Representative: Gitta Levi Photos: Elaine Bowman Andrew Oxenham Peter Sloman Toronto Dance Theatre Anna Wyman Dance Theatre Rod Gillingham John Mahler Anthony Crickmay Tony van Muyden Royal Winnipeg Ballet Les Grands Ballets National Ballet Entre-Six David Davis BMI Special Thanks to / Sinceres remerciements The Ontario Arts Council The Canada Council Gloria Cohen Jackie Malden Jim Plaxton Lawrence Haskett a: Anna Wyman: Not for the Uncommitted Elizabeth Zimmer Review Penelope Doob Noticeboard Cover/ Couverture: Photograph by Elaine Bowman of Patricia Beatty in her own piece Rhapsody in the late Afternoon. Dance in Canada is published quarterly by Dance in Canada Association. The views expressed in the articles in this publication are not necessarily those of Dance in Canada. The publication is not responsible for the return of unsolicited material unless accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. Subscription: $6.50 per year. Single copy $2.00. The publication Dance in Canada is included with membership in Dance in Canada Association. Danse au Canada est publiee trimestriellement par !'Association de la Danse au Canada. Les opinions exprimees dans !es articles de cette publication ne sont pas obligatoirement celles de Danse au Canada. Le redaction n'assume aucune responsabilite quant au renvoi de materiel non solicite, a mains que celui-ci ne soil accompagne d'une enveloppe-reponse affranchie et adressee. Abonnement: $6.50 par an. Prix du numero $2.00. Les membres de !'Association de la Danse au Canada recevront d'office la revue Danse au Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the individual contributor and the Dance in Canada magazine. Taus drois reserves. 11 est defendu de reproduire toute partie de cette publication sans avoir prealablement obtenu le consentement ecrit de tout auteur et de la revue Danse au Canada. Dance in Canada: 314 Jarvis Street, Suite 103, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2C5 . ISSN 0317-9737. We Are Magicians Patricia Beatty's philosophy reflected in her work .....__ _ _ _ Anna Blewchamp,-----~ On being a choreographer/performer/teacher/ artistic director at Toronto Dance Theatre: _ __ The problems are small in comparison with the joys and rewards. I must dance my own dances, especially the new ones, rather in the same way that I must live my own love affairs and give my own interviews. In choreographing or dancing a work, the puzzle is mine. I love it and I must follow it through. I must find the solutions and experience the results. For me, there is only one problem. I can 't do and see at the same time. I can 't be the outsider and insider simultaneously. I am getting closer to it but can 't yet manage it all. As a choreographer, I would like to watch my works from the house - but, to use a slightly shaky image, I must stay close to the stove and the market place in order to keep cooking. I love to teach, to direct rehearsals and to study and receive direction and insights from others, and in a company structured as ours is, with three choreographers and a small group of dancers, this is possible. Dancers too must tap all areas of their being. I suffer anguish and disillusionment when some dancers don 't realize the challenge and the opportunity, when they seem to want movement and 'steps,' and balk at too much direction. This is a tender area; it is made of a very delicate balance. I know this well because I am a dancer myself. I think that we work in fertile ground at the Toronto Dance Theatre, though at the moment we do need more trained dancers who want to put their lives on the line on the stage, who do not want to dance about dancing, but about the poetry of their experience and of ours, their choreographers'. Study for a Song in the Distance One of Trish Beatty's wittiest pieces, particularly so because there is not a single movement or relationship explored between the dancers that could be expressed in words. It is movement logic at its very best, removed from narrative strictures, defined by its own necessity. There are three dancers, alone and separate in the vastness of the theatrical space . The work begins as if a flow of breath, or thought, is passing between them, but without recognition of it, without contact. The dance is arranged in parts that blend into each other unexpectedly; the dancers reflect movements, pass movements back and forth , respond unaware of another's actions, but never in the specific context of action-response, more as if they are all ' being' simultaneously. A logic develops out of the contrasts, the coincidences, the unisons. It seems as if a funny conversation is happening, an overheard confusion of half-sentences, disjointed phrases, that interweave and connect with ironic appropriateness. It is pure activity following - its own rules - elegant, precise, intriguing . Every time I see the work, I notice more and more connections - how a gesture here is balanced by another somewhere else; how a confrontation is created between two of the dancers, and the third , seemingly uninvolved , accidentally comments on their activity. It is rather like sitting in a restaurant and suddenly focusing on all the conversations happening at other tables: there is a multitude of cross-references, of zany connections. The actual dancing is delicate and spare: nothing jars, nothing is inappropriate. It is organized , complete in its perfect visual simplicity and immensely enjoyable for its wit. On choreography: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ __ To choreograph is a magnificent opportunity to say things that can 't be said. A new piece is presently brewing in me, criss-crossing in my mind, coming in and out of focus. My dances seem to take anywhere from three to six months before the actual six weeks of work in the studio can begin. Dances are not made from the body alone - the full force of the mind, the soul and the body must come into play. In other words, the choreographer is called upon to use each of these to his fullest. This is also true of the dancers whose task it is to make the dances live, to make them actual reality. Against Sleep A work that incorporates all the elements that contribute to dynamic theatre , a statement that drives home with Photo: Elaine Bowman . The temptation of suicide: what happens next time? 3 great force the meaning of con temporary dance as catharsis, d rama, symbol ic action . The theme is the temptation of suicide and, in discussing the creating of the work, Beatty felt that she had to find an image that would instantly force recognition of he r statement on the audience. She created a duet between a male guest and the woman who entertains him and is tempted by his offers, offers that lead to death . After the completion of the work, she realized that the image itse lf, an erotic conf lict, replete with violence, attraction and repulsion, physical and spiritual antagonism , was too close to our vulnerable , emotional fears regarding sexuality. The image is so powerful , in fact , that most audiences lose sight of the bas ic idea of the fear of cap itulating to the temptati on of suicide. The dancers tantalize each other, play an intensely erotic power struggle; the man seduces and uses force, and as the woman realizes what he is demanding of her, she begins to succumb to the luxury of the idea. But the acceptance is brief. She teases him , seduces him and strangles him after capturing him in a lover's embrace. The work begins with the two dancers suspended in space, in abstractions of beds which almost resemble cocoons, a stage set designed by Ursula Hanes with one bed above the othe r, both connected by a slender pole. The interesting feature that occurred to me in the resolution of the piece, the triumphant victory of the woman over death and the resurrection of her own life force, was that the dancers reverse their original positions. The dance begins with the man awake, looking outward and the woman lying asleep beneath him ; it ends with him wrapped up or covered by a shroud , dead or perhaps asleep, at the base of the pole as the woman climbs to the top and sits , contemplating the space ahead I felt that this cycle would inevitably begin again , the dancers alternating as guest and sleeper, with no final resolution possible . I think it is this abeyance that gives t he work its power. Not the conquest, but the sense that "this time I won , but next time? And next time? What t hen?" About her own works: _ _ _ __ _ _ _ __ _ I'm fascinated by reality and surreality, with different states of consciousness and with how to make these visible and beautiful physically. I'm fascinated with the profoundness and clarity of visual symbolism and the unquestionable powers of magic found when equal amounts of formality and vulnerability are called upon, from ~he_ dance and the dancers themselves. First Music Trish Beatty's aesthet ic could be described as the expression of a sustained attempt to render all phenomena , life, death, man with his infinite possibilities and experiences, as aspects of one timeless event , something that has to do with the nature of 'being .' Her works are essentially statements of affirmation , a personal manifesto that speaks of man as both temporal and eternal. First Music is possibly the clearest example of this belief. The dance contains not more than perhaps 30 movements and travels spatially in one simply sustained diagonal, with each dance gesture united by stillness . It has been danced by other members of the Toronto Dance Theatre but I think it is Beatty herself who imbues the work w ith an intense sense of wonder. The Toronto Telegram described her stillness as "more eloquent than another dancer's frenzy." It is this stillness that connects each vibrantly immediate movement and imparts to the spectator the shape of energy , of Iife, that went before and continues after. Her individual choice of movement, the sustained , open extensions, the plunging, yielding A bove and left, studies of Trish Beatty by Elain e Bowman. We 're m agic ians, creating visions contractions and the continuity and flow of motion, are apt ured in timeless space. It is as if we have caught a glimpse of a wonderful creature and in turning to see it ag ain, the sense of its existence remains, but not its actual resence. It has a lot to do with immediacy and 'being' and is almost impossible to define in words. She has taken a ew movements and made them eternal, etched them in ou r minds. All we can do is look and see that it exists, c aught in the moment, still resonating, still speaking to us, still vibrant. On the meaning of dance: _ _ __ _ _ _ __ M odern dance has something to do with excellence, with getting as close to the truth as you can. to different worlds, inspiration to turn you on, to make your blood flow with hopes, flights, ideas, life. What interests me in dancing is a profound sensuality and a profound innocence. It is the deepest philosophy made physical. It is great, ultimate lyricism - the lyricism of muscles framed by the knowledge of bones.' When I speak of innocence, I mean an earned, sought-for innocence, one that is willing to live fully against all the erosive powers of cynicism and indifference. We're magicians, creating visions to transport you Photo: Elaine Bowman Movement logic at its very best In Search of Women in Dance History ""1111-----------------selma Landen Odom,__ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __, Trying to learn about the life of an ordinary woman in Elizabethan times, Virginia Woolf observed , " One is held up by the scarcity of facts . One knows nothing detailed, nothing perfectly true and substantial about her. History scarcely mentions her." That statement was published in 1929, in A Room of One 's Own, a brillian1 pioneering study of women and the art of fiction. Since then many efforts have been made to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about women. Revisionists, no doubt encouraged by the women 's liberation movement, are now actively at wo rk in traditionally male-oriented fields such as social and intellectual history and history of art. What about women in dance? Surveying what has been written thus far, the reader is at first relieved to find that western dance history has not neglected women altogether. Women are at least there: Elizabeth I dancing La Volta, and countless other women, named and nameless, dancing the minuets, waltzes, and Charlestons of their respective eras. We have glimpses of ladies of the French court joining in the elaborate figures of the primarily male ballet de cour; Mlle de la Fontaine first gaining recognition as a profess ional dancer~ Marie Camargo shortening her skirts to show her intricate footwork; bevies of young women giving shape to the lightness and whiteness of the Romantic ballet; Isadora Duncan "seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit"; Celia Franca com ing from England to found and direct what wou ld become t he National Ballet of Canada. The problem in dance history is not the absence of women, but the way in which they are present. Like the proverbial good children, they are seen but not heard . Paintings, prints, and photographs show us some of their individual qualities, but, until the twentieth century, the written sources of dance history are almost exclusively the province of men - Arbeau , Beaujoyeu lx, Menestrier, Feuil let, Weaver, Noverre, Blasis, Bournonville, Gautier, to name the obvious examples. Except for a handfu l of letters and diaries, we know early women dancers largely through the filter of a man's perceptions. Renaissance Arbeau's dancing manual Orchesography (1589) provides an acute view of the place of women in French society of its time, even though the dialogue occu rs ent irely between two men : the seasoned Arbeau shares his experience of dance and music w ith the young, enthusiast ic Caprio!, who wants to learn to dance in order to " please the damsels." Arbeau acknowledges near the outset that "some temperate exercise" can dispel the ill-humou rs to which g irls are subject in thei r sedentary lives "intent on knitting, embroidery and needlework." Capriol ch imes in, "Dancing is a very suitable exercise for them since they are · not free to take walks, or go here, there and everywhere about the town as we may without reprehension. In fact, we need to dance less than they ... ." 6 The only image of a woman in A r beau From reading Arbeau , we gain an image of how the ideal woman should appear in the dignified pavanes and basse dances: she ought to have "demure mien" and "eyes lowered save to cast an occasional glance of virginal modesty at the onlookers ." For Arbeau we could substitute Toulouze, Domenico, Cornazano, Guglielmo, Caroso, or Negri , all men who wrote manuals on dancing in the Renaissance, or we could turn to Sir John Davies' Orchestra (1594), which sings the praises of Queen Elizabeth and her ordered world. But we would inevitably come back to the problem posed by Virginia Woolf about the elusive sixteenth-century woman: how did she feel? What were her experiences and thoughts? As Woolf put it, "All the conditions of her life, all her own instincts, were hostile to the state of mind which is needed to set free whatever is in the brain." One can only hope she found some freedom and joy in dancing . Just as women did not write poetry in the Renaissance, so too they did not leave words to tell us about t heir dances. These predecessors remain ultimately unknown and indistinct. Eighteenth Century Coming to profess ional dancers such as Marie Salle (1707-1756), Marie Camargo (1710-1770) , and Henriette Hendel (1772-1849), we real ize at once that we are dealing with singularly gifted human beings- artists who are also women. We see them dancing in their portraits; we know some facts about their lives, the movement vocabulary available to them, and the response to their dance. Camargo's technique was highly regarded by Voltaire, for example, who noted that she was "the first to dance like a man," a compliment since ballet had been until then mainly developed by and for males to perform. Salle and Hendel were among the first women to distinguish th emselves in choreography, and though they did not leave us the quantities of libretti nor the reasoned statements on dance of a Noverre, we are able to discern a certain sense of what they believed possible in their art. We can tell, for instance, that Salle's work toward an integrated dance drama anticipated Noverre's, but unfortunately she did not, probably she could not, write a book. By Salle there is only one remaining letter, which according to Parmenia Mi gel is "a pathetic jumble of nongrammar and naive spelling." (The Ballerinas: From the Court of Louis XIV to Pavlova, New York: Macmillan, 1970. p. 15.) Simone de Beauvoir would identify Salle and Camargo, and the many who followed them, in the category of actresses, singers, and dancers, who for three centuries " have been almost the only women to maintain a concrete independence in the midst of society." Prior to the twentieth century, the stage provided women the o pportunity to have a profession, a nearly unique path to achievement and recognition, power and money. In the t heatre a woman could succeed with the public, gain the su pport of patrons, and rise to prominence regardless of her social and economic background. But again, we do not really know many women dancers, famous or obscure, through their own thoughts o r those of other w omen. What does the great ballet master, Noverre, say about wo men? Very little, specifically. He granted that Salle's dancing "was full of feeling" and that Camargo "had i ntelligence and she made use of it in choosing a style w hich was lively and quick and never gave the spectators im e to examine her and observe the shortcomings of her fig ure." Most of his Letters on Dancing and Ballets (1760) speaks of the dancer without regard to sex, though l anguage of course renders this person a "he," and overre assumes that it would be a young man who might asp ire to become a ma'ftre de ballet. In his discusion of ph ysique, he wrote, "Nature has not spared the fair sex fro m the imperfections which I have mentioned to you, but arti fice and the fashion of petticoats have happily come to th e aid of our danseuses. The panier conceals a multitude of defects, and the curious glance of the critics cannot rise hi gh enough to pass judgment." He goes on to explain that w omen beat on ly with the lower part of the leg, creating a more brill iant effect, whereas men, "concealing noth ing fro m the spectator, are obliged to beat theirs with stretched muscles and to make them come chiefly from the hip." Are we to conclude that only the men understood how to beat correctly by our standards? But see how he fi nishes the point: "Besides, Sir, a pretty face, beautiful eyes, an elegant form and voluptuous arms, are the inevitable rocks on which criticism founders , and powerful claims to the indulgence of the spectator, whose imagination substitutes for the pleasure which he has not rec eived, that pleasure which he might possess off the stage." Pleasure off the stage - the female dancer may be "in telligent" and skillful in her art (though perhaps faulty in her technique), but she must seem beautful, and it is u nderstood that she will engage in the extra-curricular act ivities associated with those in her profession. ineteenth Century n An Elementary Treatise Upon the Theory and Practice of the Art of Dancing (1820), Carlo Blasis generously addresses his instructions to "you young people who are about to take up dancing as a career." The majority of the drawings of ideal positions and movements present a handsome, curly-haired man, nude but for his highwaisted trunks. However, men and women are shown together to illustrate his discussion of serious, demicaractere, and comic types, and indeed these women appear to be equal to their partners in technique. Gone are the restricting costumes and heeled shoes of the eighteenth century. Blasis' women have strong arches and a considerable freedom in space. Yet one detects in his rare mention of women the continuing assumption that they must be feminine according to convention: "A man's manner of dancing should differ from that of a woman. The pas de vigueur and bold majestic execution of the former is not for the latter, who should shine in graceful supple movements, charming terre-a-terre steps and a becoming voluptuousness and abandon in her poses." The word "voluptuous" wou ld be fairly unl ikely in dance writing today, even in George ("ballet is woman") Balanchine's Vogue meditation on his ballerinas and their perfumes. Femininity according to convention in B/asis When we seek the greater and lesser dancers of the Romantic period, the favored source is of course the prolific art critic and poetTheophile Gautier (1811-1872), who himself contributed the libretto of the archetypal Romantic ballet, Giselle (1841). Gautier and his contemporaries witnessed the shift in emphasis in ballet from men to women , who now filled the stage with their delicate light shapes, mysterious and supernatural characters, and the poetry of pointe work. Through Gautier's attentive eyes, we perceive visions of spiritual, unattainable women as well as vivacious, real personalities. His verbal portraits of women who danced are so many and varied, so full of observed detail, so authentically individual, that no single example can do them justice. Yet Gautier's is overwhelmingly the appreciation of a male connoisseur. His aesthetics led him to savour phys ical attributes and sensuous beauty, and 7 his gift of language served well to preserve the living form of the ballet in the pages of his reviews. The problem is that the reader is often tempted to stop with the words of Gautier and his fellow critics. Who can forget how he saw Lucile Grahn (1819-1907) in her debut? "Mlle Grahn, the Danish dancer, is tall, slender, smalljointed, and well-made, and would be prettier still if she did not wear such an obstinate smile; a smile should hover about a dancer's lips like a bird flutters about a rose . . .. A beautiful woman should keep her features almost motionless; the play of the eyes is sufficient to animate and brighten them." This same delectable creature worked as ballet mistress of the Leipzig State Opera and the Munich Opera, staged an early version of the dance in Wagner's Tannhauser at Bayreuth, and is said to have left nearly a million marks to the city of Munich. As Selma Jeanne Cohen sums it up, "Few ballet fans are aware that Grahn was ever a choreographer, although all know of her as one of the idyllic sylphs that haunted the woodland scenes of the Romantic period. The image of woman in dance remained primarily that of the dancer: pretty, obedient, thoughtless." (See Cohen's "Woman as Artistic Innovator: The Case of the Choreographer," in A Sampler of Women's Studies, ed. Dorothy Gies McGuigan, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Center for Continuing Education of Women, 1973, p. 9.). How refreshing it is, after reading dozens of impressions of Romantic ballerinas written by men, to come across Lady Blessington! She does see things differently. She is excited by movement straight away, skipping over the ritual of cataloguing a dancer's physical characteristics. Amalia Brugno li, she wr_ote in 1839, "advances rapidly across the stage on the extreme point of her toes, without for a moment losing her aplomb, cuts into the air, and alights again on the point of her feet, as if she were no heavier than gossamer. " Lady Blessington also saw Marie Taglioni in 1827: "Went to the Opera last night, when I saw the debut of the new danseuse Taglioni. Hers is a totally new style of dancing; graceful beyond all comparison, wonderful lightness, an absence of all violent effort, or at least the appearance of it, and a modesty as new as it is del ightfu l to witness in her art. She seems to float and bound like a sylph across t he stage, never 8 executing those tours de force that we know to be difficult and wish were impossible, being always performed at the expense of decorum and grace, and requiring only activity for the ir achievement." Here we have a woman 's perspective of a particular ballerina's work, and it is indeed direct: "There is a sentiment in the dancing of this charming votary of Terpsichore that elevates it far beyond the licentious style generally adopted by the ladies of her profession, and which bids fair to accomplish a reformation in it." Twentieth Century It is almost giddying to find how totally everything changes after 1900. Women gain suffrage , education , improved health, the chance to realize themseves in many new and different ways. We find a whole new world in the modern dance movement ushered in by Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and after them Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Mary Wigman, and their many successors. Comparatively large populations of young girls begin to study dance, in neighbourhood studios or at school; women who dance become socially acceptable and in fact respected in most circles; they hail from a great variety of fami ly and class backgrounds . There are evergrowing numbers of women who concentrate on performance, but women also take on new challenges and responsibilities in direction of companies, choreography, design, notation, teaching, history, and criticism. Women lead in creating new areas for dance in therapy, in anthropology and other social sciences, in film and television. One hesitates to name even the most prominent of these women, the list would be unwieldy. Men are by no means displaced in dance, though in many situations women now outnumber them. But who could ever find a more fruitful choreographer than Ashton, or a more wise and humane critic than Edwin Denby? The point is simply that their fields are equally open to women with talent. Historians looking back on our time will not have to search thanklessly for the lone voice of a Lady Blessington. Women today are present in many ways, making dance and responding to it. Their views have become articulate, and the pattern of their lives and work, distinct. Ann Southam: A debt to dance repaid in sensitivity Profile: Ann Southam ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -... u11e Colgrass------------------" A choreographer was looking tor ways to avoid the high cost of using instrumental music for her pieces - no burning interest in electronic music there. A young composer was looking for an audience to keep her ·n spiration alive - a dance audience was not uppermost ·n her mind. This was in 1967. Since then, 30 dance pieces /Jav e evolved at Toronto Dance Theatre, and a arvel/ously creative partnership has grown between choreographer Patricia Beatty and composer Ann So utham. " Without Toronto Dance Theatre I might not have ~on tinued composing _ the whole thing might have •izzled out!" A nn Southam, the foremost electronic composer in Canadian dance, is refreshingly frank about the debt she nwes dance. But it is a debt repaid in her obvious ensitivity to choreography in such works as Reprieve, gainst Sleep and Encounter, created during nearly a dec ade of collaboration. What started as a marriage of convenience has turned t o Jove. The music that was expected to "make do " became a major inspirational force to Toronto Dance Theatre. Southam 's career is unusual, not just because she has worked exclusively in the dance world, but also because she has developed quite on her own, without a mentor or close association with group trends in her field. In any art, that bespeaks an indomitable talent. It also speaks for the creative spark that is generated when dancers commission composers. Ann Southam began with piano and became interested in composition at the University of Toronto. Her teacher there, Sam Dolin, fascinated by electronic music, steered his students through his own discoveries. AS: Right away I loved the sound - it just blew my mind! I worked for a year in the electronic studio in the Faculty of Music; it was fascinating, and I easily gave up the twelvetone and serial music that I had worked on before. UC:You are really a pioneer in electronic music in Canada. 9 AS: Vaguely doing it then. I suppose there weren't many composers UC: There still aren't. Why do you think that is? AS: It is difficult to get your hands on the equipment. A lot of young -people would just love to work with electronic sound, but most of the studios are tied up at universities. The Conservatory here offers a two-year course, and unless you repeat the course there is no further access to the studio. In the Faculty of Music you can only use the facilities if you are fairly advanced - an undergraduate or postgraduate. UC: Do you find it easier to compose electronically? AS: Yes, because I really adore the sound - it's like making great big mud-pies of sound. And you hear the sound the moment you make it. You have the sound right there. I like that. Ann Southam has set up her own studio in her living room - the only electronic studio I have seen with wall-towall carpets and a terrace overlooking downtown rhythm. Later I write around it. UC: Do you prefer to make the music first? AS: It depends. I don't ever try to match what the dancers do. With Trish the scenario comes first and we each do the music and choreography minutes at a time. UC: Is there more freedom for you in writing the music first, rather than being presented with the choreography and asked to paint the background, so to speak? AS: Both ways are cha IIeng i ng to me; so far I have not felt hemmed in. UC: Electronic music is obviously ideally suited to dance. What other art forms do you envision it used in? AS: Well, when I was in England this summer I visited the cathedrals. Th.ey have to be the most theatrical, dramatic spaces in the ·entire world! Listening to what happened with organ music in that kind of space, I thought how fabulous it would be to have - not necessarily a cathedral, but an equally dramatic space for electronic music - to have sounds happen in and through and around, with certain lighting effects. I would just love to do something like that. Another place that really excites me is the Cinesphere at Ontario Place ... just an enormous space with a great number of speakers. If they had some sort of fantasy movie, a completely new visual world, I would like to do electronic music for that. UC: Do you think electronic music should be combined with the visual, or does it stand well on its own? AS: Oh, gosh, I don't enjoy listening to music in the conventional way . Electronic music is to me a very spatial thing and I prefer to work in a big theatre space with other expressions of art. UC: Have you ever been to a concert with a tape-player on stage and nothing else in sight for an entire piece? AS: Yes, and that is not where it is at. And that shows part of the problem: what are we going to do with this fabulous sound? Peter Randazzo's Encounter to music by Southam Toronto. There are three tape recorders for mixing and recording, a synthesizer and a mixer in a set-up that is small and compact. The sound it produces, though, is potent. AS: As far as I am concerned this is ideal. I like all the hacking and hewing of tapes and would not like to simplify that. I could use some more sound sources like oscillators, maybe another synthesizer and additional odd devices, but that's all gravy. UC: What does it cost to set up your own studio? AS: Well, this is expensive equipment. It could be done for less, maybe as little as $4,000 - $5,000. UC: Do you ever go to a choreographer and say, "Hey, I have this idea, what do you think of it?" AS: No, so far it has been the .other way around. They come to me with the idea. UC: And you do the score first? AS: That depends on whom I work with . In the case of Peter Randazzo, I discuss the scenario with him first and then watch the choreography to get a feel for the style and 10 UC: It is fine for film and theatre. I know of someone in New York who was commissioned to write electronic music for elevators in a skyscraper. AS: Oh, that is beautiful. UC: How about electronic music combined with one or several instruments? AS: I think that is terrific, but a very difficult thing to do. UC: It has been done successfully, though; by Mario Davidovsky, for example. AS: Yes, and Berio does it extremely well - it's magical. UC: Have you attempted anything like that? AS: Yes. It has always been a miserable failure, but I will keep trying . It is terribly hard just matching the timbres and sliding across that borderline to the electronic sounds. UC: It takes so long to write a piece - about 3 months? It must be impossible to make a living composing for dance companies. How do you manage? Do you teach? AS: Yes, for a time at the Conservatory, and now in Toronto. I have electronic workshops for the North York Board of Education. They have set up a nice small studio, and I find that the kids are great. It is also quite a challenge, because most of their previous knowledge comes from rock groups, and I try to open them up t o all the possibilities of electronic sound. UC: Is there much potential talent? AS: Yes, definitely so, and a great interest. The students combine the music with other art forms and put on their own performances. UC: What is ·the ideal background for an electronic composer? AS: That depends upon the individual. Sometimes a r eally heavy, straight academic background can lock_a_ oerson into certain attitudes toward musical values that are hard to break free of. On the other hand, you meet kids ith no experience whatsoever - this is their beginning, an d that can work very well. U C: I am asking, because in hearing your music it is apparent -to me that you have a very solid background 'TIU Sically - the way it's structured. It feels free, but I sense your background. Of all of the arts music is the most abstract, and electronic music, I suppose, most of all. · , hat I love is its volatility and dimensions - it may seem ery distant, and a moment later it's right up against you. h at is an effect you never get with conventional music. Do the choreographers have an idea about the kind of sou nd they want for a given piece? where the publisher literally marched into the pit and took the music off the stands! Why do you think dancers have this lack of propriety? AS: Really, I don't know. Dancerstendtothinkthatdance is the art, and that everybody owes them this. UC: Of course, there is usually very litte money. Do you think that people in dance feel their art is a stepchild , not given the proper attention and financial support? AS: Well, I think that it has not been given the proper attention. To many people it lacks a certain vitality and reality. Financially, I think that dance has been very shortchanged by the funding agencies . UC: Have you received grants? AS: Yes, I have been commissioned to do several dance scores for Toronto Dance Theatre. UC: Do dancers react differently to electronic sound than they do to instrumental music? AS: Well, ve ry often dancers don't listen to the music - AS: Not specifically the kind of sound, just the quality of e piece. They leave it largely up to me. U C: Do you observe them working with the ch oreography, and do you get involved in that process? AS: I do go to rehearsals and see how it matches up; I like o f ollow a piece from the beginning. U C: Do you ever disagree with the choreographer? A S: Yes , and I let my opinion be known , but I don't know riow much good it does. Disagreements happen rarely, l"lough; if something doesn't work , they are very good abo ut trying again and again. U C: What do you think about the way your music is received in concert - is enough attention being paid to '."le music at a dance event? S: I do get a certain amount of feedback from the a. d ience. It's a different story with the critics . Somebody :old me that if they don't have enough space for writing a ·eview , the first thing that goes is the music. They will en tion the costumes and the lighting, but the music ;;oes. I don't know whether this is true or not. UC: Did you ever have your music pirated and performed y a dance company without your permission? S: That hasn't happened yet. UC: Do you have recordings out? S: Just one. U C: That is when it starts to happen. S: Yes , I know that music is often just lifted off records , ;;;. d I wonder how composers feel about that. .. UC: I have seen composers in that situation, so I could tell ::>u. If dancers played their cards well, they would ask ::erm ission before starting a piece. Then the composer is a • fr iendlier than he is when he finds his music has been .... ed . There is also the real possibility of facing the E vyers of big-time publishers and the fines to pay - it's a. su ch a waste. There was a case with the Jeffrey Ballet Trish Beatty's Against Sleep to music by Southam they are so busy dancing .... UC: Some find it more difficult to follow because they can 't count the bars. AS: Right, so they stop listening! Whereas they should listen all the harder. UC: Your works have all gone to Toronto Dance Theatre. Do you think there is enough growth for you in working with the same company? AS: I would like to do pieces for other dance companies and for ballet as well. Maybe the answer is to send tapes around and do a little P.R. work , but I am not very good at promoting myself. It is a surprise that Ann Southam has not been wooed by all of the performing arts, not even by film and television. Measured by any international yardstick, her work is fine and often surpasses that of well known electronic composers south of the border. Perhaps Southam's career proves that modern dance is still an isolated phenomenon, too well hidden yet from the general public. 11 Anna Wyman, an enigmatic personality and deliberate composure Anna Wyman 's flashing eyes, trim figure and deep tan belie the incredible fact that she is a grandmother. This Austrian-born choreographer has now invested seven years in British Columbia in the painstaking training of dancers, the development of elegant choreographies and the fielding of a full-fledged company. background . She began her performing career with the Graz Opera Ballet in Austria and toured Europe as a soloist. Before emigrating to Canada in 1967, she had a performing group in London where she studied and taught. She's also taken contemporary classes with Wigman and Laban. A former national junior ski champion , she refers to herself as a "mountain goat" and enjoys the wild natural settings which abound in West Vancouver where she lives in a rented house near the ocean. "I can look out on the sea and think of new pieces . I can relax there. I like B.C . If I can live here and keep going away , that's good; otherwise I go stale." A few years ago, she took over the school formerly run by Norbert Vesak in a converted church which provides one of the loveliest studio spaces in greater Vancouver. She has spent the past three Augusts teaching intensive dance workshops on Vancouver Island and somehow finds time to sit on the Arts Advisory Panel of the Canada Council and on the British Columbia Interim Arts Board . "It fascinated me, but didn 't satisfy me. I thought there wasn't much technique to it. I was a snob . After a few years I found out there was another kind of technique. I developed my own contemporary feeling - though nothing is ever your own in dance." Her professional kin , she feels, are men like Neumeier and Cranko; she's also fond of the work of Nikolais and Bejart. Her compositions reflect her cosmopolitan 12 An enigmatic personality , she takes some getting used to. Generally she is inaccessible and protected by her company members. One senses that, like certain wild animals, she's more afraid of you than you are of her. Her composure seems deliberate rather than natural, as though she feels a polished exterior will protect her from the internal pressures and increasing responsibilities that come along with her new prominence . She is also a perfectionist, driven by her vision of · echnical excellence and driving her dancers in turn. Her group is no place for the fragile or the uncommitted; signing on with Anna Wyman means long, irregular hours, riu nishing classes and rehearsals, constant weightwatching, gruelling tours. She is always on the watch for d edicated dancers who want to come and work with her, people with developed skills in ballet and contemporary ovement ("except maybe Graham," a style she finds ncongenial). Her technique is balletic , gymnastic, similar to the iko lais-Louis style, which also derives from Wigman. A 1975 tour took the company across Canada, displaying er spare, controlled work in centres from Salmon Arms to H alifax. Reaction was mixed . Some critics said her ch oreography lacks emotion , that the dancers seem to be performing in a vacuum. Actually , her group is in a state of ransition, from a basically homegrown ensemble who grew up under her rigorous training to a hand-picked ro upe of the best-equipped dancers she can find and entice to move to B.C. The change is a significant one. Some of the vacuity people may have observed can perhaps be attributed to the original company's youth and general lack of life experience. Unti l now, the company's repertoire has consisted entirely of work by Wyman herself, some of it developed improvisationally in collaboration with the dancers, and all of her works developed very slowly. Here at the Eye of the Hurricane , composed to a sound score by Stockhausen, won a Young Choreographers' Compet ition at Cologne, Germany in 1973. It is a dance of stillness and procession, of whirling centred energies and great mystery. The dancers enter and leave in formal clusters , experimenting with balance, wearing an assortment of brightly coloured body-altering costumes: yel low 'pods,' red diagonal stripes, exotic wigs with smooth buns on top. A lighter but equally powerful work is the bicycle section of Dance is . ... Wyman has raided an antique cycle museum and sends a silent pa rade of cycles in silhouette across the stage, followed by the yellow-clad dancers' H ere at the Ey e of th e Hurricane, a dan c e of great energies and grea t mys teries. lyrical interpretation of whee l motion. The effect is kal eidoscopic, balanced, symmetrical, centred; the piece generates its own accompaniment, provoking gasps of delight from the audience. Her most recent wo rk s, Number One , Undercurrents and Klee Wyck , are more ambitious and varied , departures to some extent from the formal simplicity of the earlier pieces . The first is a comic collage of associative imagery, from crazed rock-concert audiences through a speedy satire on ballet swans to a surrealist display of threedimensional silver geometric figu res, dancing trippingly. Undercurrents, to a score by R. Murray Schaffer, is her most "emotional" work so far, hinting at the struggle and dislocation in Canada's north, displaying passion and excitement between couples . Klee Wyck, an 18-minute dance, a tribute to West Coast painter Emily Carr, choreographed under a $25,000 grant from the Secretary of State's program for International Women 's Year, is perhaps the least successful of her recent works . Nestled in among the slide projections, painted teepee-tree and the fine lighting, bathed in an improvisati onal score by Ann Mortifee, clothed in lots of hand-painted costumes, Anna Wyman 's choreography almost seems to disappear. She has given us some ingenious personifications of myste ry and dream: a golden spirit emerges ponderously from a sty lized tree Klee W y ck in rehearsal trunk, lit from within by a golden light; anonymous figures. exceedingly tall and moving with religious solemnity, starkly garbed and lit in greyish gold , loom through the woods and then vanish. The main trouble with the dance is that its series of impressions lack a central, structura l theme . One senses an uncertainty, a lack of confidence, in her approach to the works, perhaps because the project is a commissioned work, albeit a lucrative, prestigious one. But it is not something that took possession of the art ist and demanded expression . The piece seems insubstantial, lacks the clarity and strength of vision that characterize Emily Carr's best work, and Anna Wyman 's. These are nevertheless good times for Anna Wyma n. Her company is acquiring a national reputation, generous grants such as the IWY one indicate growing recognitio n. the calendar is marked with commitments to perform around this country and abroad. This year her top dancers are taking home $115 a week and got a paid holiday. Th e envious remark of a Halifax dance student remains in my memory: "What are they doing, being Canadian and so professional?" s the expression of feminist concerns in dance a viable ~roposition? And if it is, are dance writers ready to es pond with objectivity? Such questions are inevitably ·a sed by last year's London dance season, which was -a rked by a number of ballets especially interesting to ·eminists: ballets about the role of women (and, by ;: ension of men) in contemporary society, ballets made : women about women and their relationships with :· ers, the stereotypes that limit them, the difficulties of ng within the conventional definitions of womanhood. - ese ballets are flawed ( aren't most ballets?), but several :' hem were received with undue hostility and total lack :• comprehension by the (predominately male) critical es ablishment. I'd like to look briefly at four ballets by • men - Margo Sappington's Juice, Judith Marcuse's baby, and Jennifer Muller's An American Beauty Rose and Strangers - to consider their feminist content, their merits as dance, and some reasons for the critical responses they evoked. Sappington's and Marcuse's works are the most conventional in movement, content, and attitude towards women, and perhaps because of this they were received favourably but patronisingly. Juice (1975), offered by Nederlands Dans Theater in their June season at Sadler's Wells, is a hip, vivacious ballet in the jazz idiom natural to an American choreographer with a Broadway-Joffrey background. An updated but lesser Dances at a Gathering, it shows the interplay of four men, two women, and a hammock. Although Sappington seems to have no 15 overt feminist preoccupations, analyses of sex roles add considerable seriousness to an otherwise lightweight but engaging ballet. In one sequence Roslyn Anderson and Jan Benoit share a violent pas de deux leaving Anderson sullen and dejected, deserted by Benoit. Then follow two simultaneous duets. In one, Jeanne Solan woos Anderson with tenderness and delicate persistence, finally earning a trustful embrace. The implications are both sexual and sisterly; when hurt, women turn to other women to find comfort and sympathy. The two men, on the other hand, are far more antagonistic ; the erotic aspect of the dance is undercut by rivalry .as they strike arm-wrestling and boxing poses. If solace is needed, another man cannot provide it. The joy and mutual protectiveness of the women's pas de deux are wholly lacking. Juice succeeds as unpretentious entertainment, and for me its serious centre lies in the dances for the women, in their creation of a warm sisterhood that can be disrupted but not destroyed by male intrusions. Sappington shows us both women's strength and their constraining need to play habitual flirtatious roles with men, and her ballet is all the more moving for the contrast between its occasional profundity and its youthful exuberance. But Sappington's submerged feminist message seems to have been missed by most critics; I wonder whether her reviews would have been as moderately favourable as they were had she made her point more obviously. Marcuse, a Canadian dancer with Bal let Rambert, makes a far more explicitly feminist ballet in baby (1975), but she pulls her punches so much that the piece becomes static, non-threatening, and rather superficial. The work is framed by a prologue and epilogue in which segregated groups of men and women in unisex leotards confront each other. There is a basic antagonism between the sexes but also a common need to unite, to pair off. At the end of each section, the groups are separated by a whitefaced man with bowler hat and umbrel la - probably representing Society, in any case, a disruptive and alien force who init iates both the role-playing that constitutes the middle of the ballet and the pathetic ending. Marcuse seems to blame soc iety for the difficulties of man-woman relationships. The three intervening "performances" (the term is as significant as Marcuse's choosing to set her t itle in lower case) also state the most obvious problems of being a woman , avoiding assessment of individual responsibility. Each "performance" illustrates a stereotypic view of woman - playthings when young , sex objects and nurturers when older. And in each section, women are abused by men, react with strong emotions , and finally score very minor victories over their persecutors. For examp le, in the first section two litt le g irls with Shirley Temple curls , pinafores, and spanking white underpants skip on and play gleefully until two men hanging out in an on-stage bar molest them . The men manipulate the girls' arms and legs, they force the girls' heads down repeatedly as if they were balls; faced with male strength and size, the girls are reduced to poppetpuppets until they dare to push the men's heads down and run off in triumph. I find both aesthetic and conceptual problems with baby. As critics have been quick to point out , there isn 't much original movement - though in fairness to Marcuse I wonder how stereotypes could have been presented 16 effectively were they not based on the exaggeration of conventional gesture. And then there's the obscurity of the prologue and epilogue. I'd like to know, not guess, who the bowler-hatted man is and what the groups of men and women represent. This sort of ambiguity isn't real ly constructive in a sem i-polemical ballet. More serious, though, are conceptual problems that admittedly would disturb a femin ist more than most balletomanes. The program note, presumably pre pared by Marcuse, reads, "Men and women play out a multitude of roles assigned by society. These roles can bring us together ... often they keep us apart." That commen t, reinforced by the occasional inclinations towards union shown in the prologue and epilogue, suggests an optimism that the performances do not support. The on ly ways that roles "bring us together" in the ballet are clearly destructive, both to the stereotyped women and to th e predatory men they thwart. Nor does the organ izin g metaphor of "baby" work: in the first two sections, the women are clearly babies (or babes) of a recognizab le type, but in the third , the woman is baby-maker and t he men the babies. Finally, and most important, Marcuse is simp ly presenting stereotypes, but I think she ought to have provided a more searching analysis of them - their causes, their effects on those involved, perhaps the possibility that an individual can choose not to live in a rigid sexual role. Unfortunately, we can all, regardless o sex, react with scorn and smugness to the parade o stereotypes - we aren't as bad as those men, or as mindless as the women who experience such pain in trying to live in the accepted definitions of womanho od . but who gain so little knowledge from their suffering . T he ballet's blandness doesn't mean that it cannot be misunderstood, of course; Noel Goodwin in Dance and Dancers (June 1975) claims that "the two girl adolescents were portrayed as too innocent to be endangered; the two sex-figures [vamps in the second " performance" wh ose manipulation and rejection by a man lead to a momen t o' mutual support iveness] too bored to be endangering "A neat play on words, but surely miss ing Marcuse's poi n that both sets of women are gravely endangered by the ro les they choose to play. That Goodwin felt the sexy ladies should be end~ngering demonstrates a blatant albeit unconscious male bias in response to the stereotype as well as to the ballet. If points that seem so obvious to me can be ignored so completely by critics, maybe Marcuse's ballet is more necessary than I'd have thought. The most interesting feminist choreography, and t he most severely condemned by London critics, is Jenn ifer Muller's work for Nederlands Dans Theater , An Americ an Beauty Rose (1974) and Strangers (1975). Muller seems to be a committed and militant feminist; although her ba-llets are funny as well as political, many viewers, and especia lly men, see only stridency (and there is a little, I adm it). When Muller makes them laugh (too seldom for thei· tastes), that's fine, but when she gets down to the nittygritty of what sexual stereotyping does to women's (ana men 's) psyches, average London aud iences alm os: scream "castrat ing bitch! " Personal attacks on Mu ller abound; the Times is astonished that a woman like Muller clearly so happy and successful (she has her own company and a few grants), should be so ungrateful as to attack the establishment that nurtures her. I don't want to argue that Muller's ballets are masterpieces but they are fascinating expositions of ho , men themselves acquiesce in playing the roles :rdained by society and of how great a price women who ;:._cept conventional ideology must pay to survive. A n American Beauty Rose uses the cheerleader-drum -aj orette as a metaphor for the life style of most young -'Tlerican women . Troops of girls flaunting sexy, skimpy, ·ed -white-and-blue uniforms and high red boots strut '1eir stuff with flags, guns, and batons, rigid caricatures of : il es on their faces even when they stumble and mess up · eir enthusiastic footba ll half-time formations. A jock in a '.'ack suit arrogantly selects one of them for thorough -aul ing; when he can tear himself away from play ing to :-e audience with exaggerated he-man poses (one _on don critic was outraged that a man should appear in :;all et as a sex object), he throws the woman around :o demonstrate his strength . At one point, she places his 'lan d on her head - a wish for some tenderness? He grins .and clutches her breasts and crotch before dashing her to : e ground and striding off in imagined glory. What is t eresting here is not Muller's consciousness that men are brutes (a common critical reading), but that she sees : at the jock stereotype is as dehumanizing as the :;heerleader stereotype, and that she shows that the ,vomen on the team actually want such treatment if that's 1 e only way to get their man. Masochism is a crucial o mponent of many female roles. The women's flamboyant routines continue to excerpts 'ro m a documentary on an actual group of flag-swirlers: A girl shouldn't stand out"; "she should perform in a gro up, not alone"; "beauty knows no pain." One girl can 't eep in step and runs away in disgrace; another suddenly ebels, attacks the troop leader, and is peremptorily shot. rlette Van Boven, the leader, is left alone on stage after he murder; slowly she begins to crack up, twitching and co ntorting, preserving what passes for her sanity only by re treating into bits of the familiar cheerleader routine as if o prove to herself what she really is, indeed that she really is because she has a role to play and an audience to play 0 . The other girls return with suitcases (on to the next performance?), only to disintegrate when they see the co rpse. But the music switches to a rock beat and the w omen automatically fall in line for still another routine, o rgetting the tragedy. They grow exhausted, the lights d im, and they comfort each other - sisterhood for a brief m oment. But as the lights go up, on go the pasted smiles an d serious communion disappears. When they leave Van Boven again, she is desperate; she falls, crawls amidst the litter, and is horrified at the sight of her victim, st ill lying dead on the stage. Training prevails m omentarily; she pulls herself together, flashes a smile, and poses provocatively on a suitcase, reassuring herself. But suddenly her face cracks, and she frenetically pulls he suitcases about to make a pyramid. She opens one case, hurls roses around the stage, pulls on a long robe, an d mounts the dais of suitcases. A crown, a sceptre, and here she is, Miss America, psychological and actual m urderer of her fellow women; the Statue of Liberty, who as freedom only to be the typical all-American girl. What is striking here is Muller's perceptive depiction of how women oppress each other and themselves. The rol es may come first, they may be created by society (w hatever "society" is); but it's women who are the Jennifer Muller's Strangers 17 enforcers. The lone jock is the carrot, and the Great White Cheerleader the stick. If well-defined roles exist, Muller seems to say, then women will fall into them as the easiest solution to life; the search for an independent identity, one where a woman might stand out as an ind ividual , where beauty does acknowledge pain and decides to sacrifice beauty rather than self, is bluntly fatal. The only optimism the ballet provides is that women do rebel and that when the audience is away women will naturally comfort one another. Muller's ballet shows women that help is available if they'll only take the chance, but she doesn 't underestimate the risks entailed. Obv iously this is all pretty heavy stuff for a m ixed audience, and it's hardly surprising that Muller is berated for dealing with subjects like these. Her other NOT ballet, Strangers, is a full-length work difficult to summarize. Briefly, it presents a morning in the life of a couple who come to realize that t hey have nothing in common; the man is preoccupied with brute sexuality, and his fantasies (fantasies are danced , while " reality ' is mimed by actors) involve apes and pop anthropology primeval families . The woman is nervous about sex and is imbued with an almost Victorian love of the superficial trappings of courtship and romance; her fan tasies involve rep ressed young women in rigid poses and dapper young poets who offer violets and waltzes and innocent romps in the forest. There are twelve dance sections in the ballet, each with its accompany ing and sim ultaneous mime scene, and some of the sect ions are superb in themselves , others clear in ideological content. For example , in several places Gera rd Lemaitre , a kind of ringmaster f igure throughout , appears in full dress with cane and top-hat, while Marilyn Lewis , wearing hot pants, boots, hat, dinner jac ket, and red curls , is a sexy Shi rley Temp le. They mount several shuffle-off-to-Buffalo vaudeville routines , Lewis generally rebels, and Lemaitre forces her into line so that the act can finish with something approaching Fred-and-Ginger po lish . A lovely running commentary on the games peop le, and especially the couple in the ballet , play. In the last section , Slate Grey, Roslyn Anderson dances a terrified woman surrounded by surrealistic thirties m,usical comedy men in long coats and enormous shoes who stomp around her, imprisoning her. The circle narrows, the woman grows more hysterical , and finally she escapes. In the mime that follows, the man walks in, takes the woman 's hand , and both walk out. There's no sense of real contact or affection ; instead the coup le seem to have capitulated to their own internal need to be a couple, so that they will continue their terrifyingly mismatched life if only to avoid solitude and its terro rs. Critical comments that Strangers is "too busy," "too loud, " "not inventive enough," seem facile and misguided, 18 but characteristic of general response to Muller in London . What strikes me immediately about the ballet is not its merit as dance, though merit it does have, but rather its content: the sophistication of Muller's analysis of sexual dynamics and her concern - a truly feminist one with the constraints that all sex roles, male and female, place on the individual, and with the difficulty of contemplating living on one's own, not as half of a couple. I hope NOT dares to defy the critics and keep the work around longer. Strangers may prove mediocre dance in the end , but it should have the chance to establish itself as a feminist (and humanist) ballet of considerable interest. Is feminist dance possible? I hope it is, although I agree with Virgin ia Woolf that an artist's anger almost always diminishes his work's quality from what it might have been had the artist's emotions been under stronger rein. Feminist ballet will probably be angry for some time to come - Muller's ce rtainly is. Yet dance can be polemic , and the excitement of a passionately conceived work may well atone for some aesthetic errors of judgment. But if we use "fem inist" in a rather general sense, to connote a sympathetic consideration of the female condition even if no easy solutions are offered , then I thin k there already are good feminist ballets: Nijinska'a Les Noces , Kenneth Macmillan 's Manon and Anastasia , an d Jiri Kylian 's La Cathedrale Engloutie , to name only four offered in England this past year. And perhaps these ballets are more successful than Sappington's, Marcuse's, and Muller's simply because they aren't so ex plicitl y political; t hey allow a greater breadth of movement, of conception, of characterization . But t hey also grow out of an older tradition than do the feminist ballets I've discussed here, and that's a great advantage. Possibly with more experience and some dissipation of anger (at least in her work) , Muller may create such ballets ; I fee l less certain of Marcuse's and Sappington 's potential. But these and other women must have the chance to prove and improve themselves as serious feminist choreographers. What stands in the way is adverse critical response. So long as strong feminist statements in dance are discouraged as happened with Muller, so long as even conditional approval is reserved for easy works like baby whose ideological impact and intellectual content are slight and uncontroversial, it will take brave women to make feminist ballets , and braver companies to commission them . Meanwhile Muller and company may be reduced to taking jobs as cheerleaders or drum majorettes, and that would be a tragedy for dance as a vital art form which not only preserves the best of the past but also responds to changing human needs and preoccupations. Like other creative arts, dance stiould be able to shape as well as reflect society . T he Royal Winnipeg Ballet was a major component of the rw o-week Canadian Bicentennial tribute in Washington in October. The Winnipeg company was at the Opera House of the Kennedy Centre during the first week (Oct. 13-18) iving three separate programs. Canada took over ashington theatres for the two weeks of the festival .vh ich was arranged by the Touring Office. In addition to he Royal, Canada presented Monique Leyrac, Maureen a rrester, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the \J ational Arts Centre operatic production La Belle Helene , h e opera Louis Riel, and the Shaw Festival production of Th e Devil's Disciple. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is the subject of a major feature n the September issue of Dance Magazine, written by ancouver critic Max Wyman. Wyman calls the company "'M anitoba's most important export after wheat." The o mpany's popularity at home and abroad is undeniable. In fact, says Wyman, the company's at-home subscription audience is 9,000, higher than that of every other company on this continent except the New York City Ballet, and, on a proportion subscriber-to-populat ion basis, the highest in No rth America. But, says Wyman, what makes the company un ique is its artistic director, Arnold Spohr . For the first time this November (Nov. 5-9), the city of Winnipeg will have a chance to see the trilogy Pictures, by John Neumeier, in full, when the Royal Winnipeg Ballet performs it during its home season. Toronto, Washington and other cities have already seen the full trilogy. Then from mid-November to mid-December, the company undertakes a tour of the Western provinces and of the northern United States, taking with its crowd pleaser Rodeo , as well as all its works by Argentin ian choreographer Oscar Araiz. 19 Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Macdonald's Bawdy Variations The Roya l Winnipeg scored a coup with the announcement that Valery and Galina Panov will guest star with the company during their Christmas Winnipeg season (Dec. 26-30). The Panovs, who were both harrassed by the Soviet government before their appl ication to emigrate to Israel was accepted , were both leading dancers with the famed Leningrad Kirov Company (alma mater of Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov) . In Winnipeg , they will dance Adag i o and Harlequinade. director of Les Grands Ballets; Linda Rabin and Brydon Paige. The two works by Macdonald are Diabelli Variations and Bawdy Variations, Linda Rabin is offering A Yesterday's Day, and Brydon Paige's piece is Variations for a Dark Voice. The company performs at Place des Arts Nov. 14, 15, and Nov. 20-23. Then the company will stage its traditional Nutcracker in Montreal and Quebec City. Les Grands Ballets has an exciting winter season ahead of it, an hommage to Canadian composer, the late Pierre Mercure. A number of choreographers will be taking part. Les Grands Ballets Canadlens' November home engagement at Montreal's Salle Wilfrid Pelletier at Place des Arts will not include a revival of Brian Macdonald's Rose Latulippe as previously scheduled. The piece was withdrawn because of technical difficulties and instead the company is presenting four new works by three Canadian choreographers: Macdonald, who is artistic Alexander Grant has been named as the third artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, effective July 1, 1976. The fifty-year-old New Zealand-born Grant was a top character dancer at the Royal Ballet for 30 years. Currently, he is director of the educational company, Ballet for All. Grant replaces David Haber who resigned from the company over irreconcilable artistic differences with the board, after 11 months as artistic director. 20 Musicamera, CBC's impressive music television series, 'l as a lot of dance scheduled for this year: on Nov. 19, Klee Wyck, choreographed by Anna Wyman (see the current issue of Dance in Canada) to Ann Mortifee's music; Dec. 7 marks the turn of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet with its radically different Nutcracker, choreographed by John eumeier and filmed by Norman Campbell; on Dec. 24, Vienna Cinderella, a ballet-mime on the Cinderella theme, appears; and on Jan. 28 Loves presents two ballets by Brian Macdonald danced by his company Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. Appointments: Jeanne Renaud, founder and former artistic director of Le Groupe de la Place Royale, is taking a post with the Canada Council in the short-term grants section . . . . Lawrence Bennett takes over as general manager of the Anna Wyman Dance Theatre this month. . .. Susan Jane Arnold, who taught dance and theatre production at York University last year, has become general manager of the Regina Modern Dance Workshop. ... Jeremy Leslie-Spinks is the new director of the Alberta Ballet Company . ... David Williams is administrative director of the Contemporary Dancers of Winnipeg .... J ackie Malden has been hired as co-ordinating secretary of the Dance in Canada Association .... Jennifer Munroe became general manager ofTournesol Dance Experience in November .... since Martine Epoque-Poulin has gone to the United States to study for a PhD in dance, Christina Coleman has taken over as co-artistic director of Groupe N ouvelle Aire. G rants: the Regina Modern Dance Workshop received $8,000 from the Canada Council towards the preparation and performance of its spring productions .... Tournesol Dance Experience was awarded $5,000 by the Canada Council for a special projects grant. ... the Paula Ross Dance Company got $7,000 in a B.C. cultural grant for the year.... the Touring Office awarded Le Groupe de la Place Royale $35,000 for its nine-week Eastern Canada B allet Ys in Ann Ditchburn's Nelligan tour . .. . Anita Anne Briggs won $1,000 from the Canada Council's Explorations program for her summer program of modern dance conducted by professionals for the general public in Penticton B.C .... Eight dancers were awarded arts grants of $6,000 in the last round (Rodney Andreychuk, Susan Bennet, Natalie Breuer, Eva Christ iansen, Natalia Juga-Peria, Elizabeth Keeble, Barry Smith and Peter Ottman) . ... Terry McGlade, one of the directors of Visus, the video group which films dance events, also received an arts grant from the Council. ... The Anna Wyman Dance Theatre received a $2,625 Washington State Arts Commission grant to tour the state in 1976 ... . Anyone interested in a Touring Office Grant should realize that applications must be submitted at least six months before the program. For more details, contact Joanne Morrow, Grants Co-ordinator, Touring Office, P.O. Box 1047, Ottawa, Ontario K1 P5V8 .... Closing dates for senior arts grants and arts grants for the coming round of competitions is April 1, 1976. Applications will be accepted at any time for short term grants, travel grants and project cost grants. The Council's Aid to Artists brochure is available from Information Service Canada Centres or by writing to the Canada Council, Arts Awards Serv ice, P.O. Box 1047, Ottawa, Ontario, K1 P 5V8 .... The Ontario Arts Council has set up a new grant program for choreographers of both proven ability and of promise. Applications for grants (up to $3,000 may be awarded) will be screened by a selection jury. Deadlines forOAC grants are Jan. 1, Mar. 1, May 1 and Aug. 1. Applications and further details may be obtained from Charlotte Holmes, dance officer of the Ontario Arts Council, at 151 Bloor St., Toronto. Ballet Ys had its Toronto premiere at Seneca College's Minkler Auditorium, from Oct. 8 - 10. The company soon travels to Montreal for November engagements which cu lminate in a Decembe r 1st performance at Centaur Theatre. From there it goes to the Shaw Festival in N iagara-on-t he-Lake (Dec. 15-25) for a mixed bag of workshops, school concerts, and perfo rmances. Ballet Ys gave a number of local choreographers opportunities and had particular success with Ann Ditchburn's Nelligan and Anna Blewchamp's Relics. After a stay in Toronto where she conducted a speci&I allday event at Fifteen (Oct. 8), Paula Ross ·returned to B.C. to rejoin her company which was on tour from Oct. 14-17 in Merritt and Kam loops. The Paula Ross Dance Company gave a lecture/demonstration at Cariboo College in Kamloops and an interview/demonstration for Kamloops Television on Oct. 17. Ballet Ys in Anna Blewchamp's Relics Menaka Thakkar, the Indian dancer who bowled critics over during Toronto's Festival of Women and the Arts in June, has opened a new school, NRUTYAKALA, to teach the two classical Indian dance styles, Bharatanatyam and Odissi, to 3 levels - beginners, advanced and children's. Dance in Canada conference reports from Edmonton and Montreal will both be ready in the new year, although, because of financial pressures, in the language of origin only. Both will be available at a small cost. For more information, write the Dance in Canada office, at 314 Jarvis St., Suite 103, Toronto. Dance in Canada's Conference 1976 has been scheduled for Halifax Aug . 6-10. Companies and individuals are asked to plan for this event in their budgeting if they wish to attend. Provincial governments were helpful in providing assistance to conference delegates for Edmonton 1975 and the association suggests participants apply immediately for this kind of assistance again for the upcoming conference. Our apologies to Iris Garland for dropping her name from the list of board of directors of Dance in Canada as announced in the summer issue of the magazine. Iris Garland is art istic director of the Simon Fraser Dance Workshop and a member of the faculty of the University. The Touring Office of the Canada Council has announced two tours by leading international companies for 1976. From Sept. 7 - Oct. 21, the Roland Petit Ballet de Marseilles will undertake a national tour from Quebec City to Vancouver. Karen Kain, for whom Petit choreographed an original ballet last year, and who danced with his company in October in Paris, may be dancing with the company on tour. Then from Oct. 18 to Nov. 7 the Dutch National Ballet visits Ontario , Quebec and Manitoba. Eight dancers are participating in an unusual series of concerts and activities at Toronto's Fifteen Dance Laboratorium Nov. 24-29. The eight (Susan Aaron, Lawrence and Mi riam Adams, Peter Dudar, Lily Eng, Jill Bellas, Elizabeth Chitty and Margaret Dragu) will give performances, show videotapes and make dance events all day each day during the period. Anna Wyman has added Catherine Lee (C. Lee) to the staff teaching creative-contemporary dance at the Anna Wyman School of Dance Arts . . . . Savannah Walling joined the dance teaching staff of the Simon Fraser Centre for Communications and the Arts this year. The Vancouver Ballet Society plans a series of guest classes with visiting teachers and stars. First on the list is a class with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Nov. 28, and then on Dec. 12 or 13, Maurice Bejart will be guest teacher. Students must belong to the Vancouver Ballet Society to take part. In Vancouver, the Contemporary Jazz Dance Studio (Prism Dance Theatre) plans to have, as guest teacher, Albert Reid from the Merce Cunningham Studio. Reid will give two classes daily in Cunningham technique during the Contemporary Jazz Dance Studio's Christmas course (Dec. 29 - Jan 9) which covers beginners to advanced. The studio, at 518 West Hastings St., in Vancouver, can be reached at 681-6715. York University opened its Performing Arts Series on October 8 with the Dancers and Musicians of the Burmese National Theatre. In the winter, Lar Lubovitch and EntreSix appear as part of York's dance series ... . York's Christmas concerts will be held from Dec. 11 to 13 of this year and include new pieces by Sandra Neels, Yves Cousineau, Grant Strate, Jane Beach and Noemi Lapsezon . On October 24 the Paula Moreno Spanish Dance Company began a seven-week tour of 40 towns and cities across Canada and in the northwestern United States before appearances in the Ontario region. Accompanying the group on its current swing is classical-flamenco guitarist David Phillips. The Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company is in residence at Simon Fraser University Nov. 3-7 and tops off its residency with a performance at the university's theatre on Nov. 6. The Marijan Bayer Dance Company performs at Minkler Auditorium, Seneca College, Friday evening, Nov. 14 in Toronto. The Marie Marchowsky Dance Company makes its debut at the Minkler Auditorium of Toronto's Seneca Theatre Centre on Friday, Nov. 28. Marie Marchowsky is a former soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company. Entre-Six Groupe Nouvelle Aire has added three new works by choreographers Edward Lock, Christina Coleman (the company's co-artistic director) and Margaret Goldstein to its repertoire. Nouvelle Aire begins its season at the end of November. and co-artistic director Marianne Liv ant at (306) 522-1029. Dancemakers performs at the UC playhouse on the University of Toronto campus on Dec. 6. The company has had a big turnover. Only Noelyn George and David Langer remain of the original dancers. Entre-Six, directed by Chalmers Award in Choreography winner Lawrence Gradus, is now on a Prologue tour of Ontario Schools. From Dec. 26 - Jan. 4, Entre-Six performs its Christmas Montreal children's show at the Centaur Theatre. Gradus has choreographed works to such favourites as Clair de Lune, Peter and the Wolf and the Blue Danube . ... Entre-Six embarks on a Western tour from Jan. 15 - Feb. 14. The Regina Modern Dance Workshop presents a dance program in a circus format for children ( of all ages) at the Globe Theatre in Regina, Saskatchewan for 10 performances between Dec. 10 - 14. The company is also scheduled to present a series of dance improvisation workshops at Mackenzie Hall in Saskatoon the last week of November. The Regina Modern Dance Workshop is seeking one male dancer for January. For more information, call founder Judy Jarvis, 1974 Chalmers winner, holds an open demonstration in improvisation in Toronto at her top floor studio at 9-11 St. Nicholas St. ( one block west of Yonge and one-half block north of Wellesley) on Nov. 22 at 8:30 p.m. Larry McKinnon Is teaching and choreographing as a guest with the Saskatchewan Dance Theatre this season. 23 One of his works, So Anyone's Any, is already included in the fall performances of the company . The Saskatchewan Dance Theatre appears in Regina Nov. 16 and Saskatoon on Nov. 29. Aaron Shields, a graduate last year from the National Ballet School, will be dancing with Vancouver's Pacific Ballet Theatre as leading dancer. Synergy, directed by Linda Rubin, received a Canada Council Explorations grant to conduct weekend workshops for dancers and social workers. Toronto Dance Theatre mounts its children's production Babar at the Central Library Theatre in Toronto Dec. 23 Jan. 3 (no performances on Christmas day) with two performances daily in the morning and afternoon . ... From Jan. 16 - 24 , the company restages Parade, a recreation of La Belle Epoque, first created last year for the Art Gallery of Ontario. This time the Toronto Dance Theatre produces it at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto . . . . TDT's first major Toronto season of the year is from Feb. 16 - 21 at the MacMillan Theatre ... . Two of its original dancers , Barry Smith and Merle Salsberg , are off in New York for the year studying . Mikhail Baryshnikov and Veronica Tennant in National seaso n A unique magazine - Dance The Contemporary Dancers of Winnipeg opened in Winnipeg Oct. 24 - 25 with Rachel Browne's new choreography, Woman I Am , before embarking on a Western tour. The company has two more home seasons in Winnipeg t his year (Nov . 16 and Jan . 9-10) . ... Norbert Vesak arrives in W innipeg the end of November to stage The Gift to be Simple , based on Shaker hymn tunes of t he 1850s and 1860s, for the Contemporary Dancers. Une revue unique in/au Danse Canada a unique offer! une offre unique! 1 year subscription/ Abonnement d'u n an: $6.50 D 2 year subscription/ Abonnement de 2 ans $12.00 □ Libraries/ Bibliotheques: $10.00 □ On Nov. 23 the Alberta Contemporary Dance Theatre gives a performance in Edmonton and two more in Jan . (23-24) before embarking on a Western and Northern Alberta tour (Jan. 26 - Feb. 15). {please add $1.00 for subscription outside Canada) (Priere d'ajouter $1.00 pour Jes abonnements en dehors du Canada) The Theatre de danse contemporain is giving a unique series of performances for 24 Saturdays beginning Dec. 6 at the Eglise St. Cunegonde, Ville Emard, Quebec. Name/ Norn ... . . . . ..... . .. . .... • .... . . • . .. ... . . . . . .. . . ... Address/ Adresse ... . .. . .... . . . .. .. ... .. . . . . . . . ... . . . .. . . Province . . . . . .... .. . . ........ Postal Code Postal . . . . .... ~ I Please find enclosed my cheque/ money order made payable to Dance in Cariada . D I Veuillez trouver ci-inclus mon cheque/ mandat-poste, payable I a Danse au Canada. D I Please bill me/Veuillez me facturer D I I This magazine is included with membership in the Dance in Canada Association. I Cette revue est fournie gratuitement aux membres de I /'Association de la Danse au Canada. I Dance In/au Canada, 314 Jarvis Street, Suite 103, Toronto, Ontario MSB 2C5 Canada, Telephone (416) 368-4793 24 Globe and Mail dance critic John Fraser has moved over to the theatre beat. Lawrence O'Toole has taken over as dance critic. I I The National Ballet, back from its Western tour, is about to undertake its annual Nutcracker. The production raises the hackles of most local critics but is the company's surefire moneymaker. The Nutcracker can be seen in Hamilton (Dec . 10-12) and in Toronto (Dec. 23 - Jan. 3) at the O'Keefe Centre . . . . The company continues its assoc iation with Mikhail Baryshnikov when he appears during the National's home season in Toronto (also at the O'Keefe) from Feb. 7 to March 6. The company will be presenting Rudi van Dantzig 's Monument for a Dead Boy during that time. 15 Dance Laboratorium november 24 to 29 donce artists 7 5 aaron-adams-adams-bellos chitty-dragu-dudar-eng december 10 to 13 missing associates choreographed by peter dudar-lily eng december 21 to january 17 "under new management" susan aaron-elizabeth chitty february 11 to 14 terrill maguire DANCE Into Summer 76 at the Elliot Lake Centre d'Elliot Lake Eleventh Annual Summer School of the Arts 5 July - 13 August an interdisciplinary approach to MUSIC, DANCE, and the ARTS Our dance program is designed for the serious student and includes: Royal Academy and Dance Syllabus Work Character Dancing Modern Dance Expression and Improvisation BARBARA COOK, A.R.A.D., A.T. C. and staff For Detailed Information Write: The Director Elliot Lake Centre 180 Mississauga Elliot Lake, Ontario modern dance unique energy technique using minimal muscular tension performing company being formed 625 yonge st toronto, ont 92'2· 1771 STUt11 AUDITIONS: DANCERS AUDITIONS: SCHOLARSHIP STUDENTS The Toronto Dance Theatre will hold auditions for both ma le and female dancers on Friday, December 19, 1975 at the Toronto D ance Theat re Studios. For further information contact Anne Taylor or Nicki Abraham at the Toronto Dance Theatre, 957 Broadview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4K 2R5 or te lephone (416) 423-7016. Scholarship auditions for the Toronto Dance Theatre School w il l be held on Monday, January 12, 1976 at the Toronto Dance Th eatre studios. For further information please contact Dona ld Himes at th e Toronto Dance Theatre, 957 Broadview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4K 2R5 or telephone (416) 423-0562. loisS ith __c;acnli9eol IJc '- o'l\2ii~.mit~"'•'fN•no•<e """~""'™ Programme of the George Brown College of Applied Arts and Technology 81 A Front Street East Toronto, Canada M5E 1B8 (416) 363·9945 Ballet Pointe Jazz Modern Benesh Notation WINTER AND SUMMER SESSIONS FULL-TIME AND PART-TIME COURSES ONUP And find that item you've looked for everywhere else. Or just browse yourself silly in our brand new inventory of books that are all about the same things. Theatre and Dance! AUDITIONS The National Ballet School Upstairs at 659 Yonge St. Toronto M4Y 1Z9 (416) 922-7175 judy jarvis dance and theatre company concert at st. paul's centre 1 21 avenue rd., toronto, ontario 961 - 0050 february 15th through february 29th 1976 8:30 p.m. judy Jarvis dance and theatre company eleven walmer rd., suite 303 toronto, canada MSR 2W9 telephone (416) 961-1980 COMPLETED APPLICATION FORMS SHOULD BE RETURNED TO THE SCHOOL NO LATER THAN: [JI j 1 ~~ YORK UNIVERSITY e DECEMBER 19, 1975 for: Sault Ste. Marie Thunder Bay Winnipeg Regina Saskatoon e Edmonton Calgary Kelowna Vancouver Victoria POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Dr. Joseph G. Green, Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University announces the position of: CHAIRPERSON OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DANCE Position Description Appointment will be at the Associate or Full Professor rank. Salary will be dependent on qualifications and experience. The Department of Dance is one of the five departments in the Faculty of Fine Arts (which includes Film, Visual Arts, Theatre, and Music) serving 155 undergraduates in dance stud ies: Ballet, Modern, Criticism, Dance Therapy, N otation, Composition , Pedagogy. Qualifications The Candidate should be a senior scholar or artist with academic and/or professional administrative experience. Enquiries, Nominations, and Applications should be sent to: Professor Sandra Caverly Dean's Advisory Search Committee for a new Chairperson of Dance Faculty of Fine Arts York University 4700 Keele Street Downsview, Ontario M3J 1 P3 ( 416) 667-3445 An application should consist of a recent detailed curriculum vitae, a personal letter, and the names of three referees. e JANUARY 9, Belleville Ottawa Montreal Sherbrooke Quebec 1976 for: e Fredericton Saint John Moncton Halifax Charlottetown January 30, 1976: 1st Toronto Audition March 5, 1976: 2nd Toronto Audition March 12, 1976: St. John's, Newfoundland •Financial Assistance is available for. full-time students For further information and Application Forms contact: The Registrar, 111 Maitland Street, Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1 E4 27 The National ~ Ballet of Canada. Founder Celia Franca 't.... The Banff Centre g SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS 1976 SUMMER PROGRAM IN DANCE/BALLET July 5 to August 13 The Nutcracker Hamilton: Toronto: Dec. 10-Dec. 12 Dec. 23-Jan. 3 The Great O'Keefe Hall, Centre Hamilton Place A six-week course for intermediate, advanced and master class students including classical, pas de deux, pointe , variations, nation al dance, contemporary and jazz. Performance opportunities in workshops, major production and opera ballet. Special Master Class in Contemporary Dance Coppelia Ottawa: Dec. 2-Dec. 6 The National Arts Centre Anna Markard will instruct a selected group of advanced students and professional dancers in this six-week Master Class. Enrollment will be limi ted to 20 dancers. FACULTY Co-Directors: Frank Bourman Betty Farrally Arnold Spohr Keith Burgess Eva Von Gencsy Peter George Nana Gollner Larry Hayden Earl Kraul Vernon Lusby Anna Markard John Marshall Deirdre Tarrant The National Ballet of Canada, 157 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada MSC 1G9 Telephone: (416) 362-1041 Cable: NATBAL, Toronto 28 AUDITIONS Auditions for admission and scholarship will be held in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, London, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver from February 13 through February 23 , 197 6. The audition team for the Dance/Ballet program will be Frank Bourman and Larry Hayden, both from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. For more information regarding courses, application and audition procedures, contact the Registrar, The Ban ff Centre, School of Fine Arts, Box 1020, Banff, Alberta T0L 0C0.