Robert Glumbek, winner of the 2008 Clifford E. Lee Award in choreography, completed a five-week creation and production residency at the Centre, and worked closely with the dancers to create, rehearse, and premiere a new work for 16 dancers called Prefigured Effect. At right, Glumbek works with dancer Brittany Bristow.
Summer dance scrapbook
Drawing on a 60-year legacy as one of Canada’s premier institutions for creative development in dance, the Banff Centre’s dance program was re-launched in 2008 in collaboration with seven professional companies. Directed by Lindsay Fischer (pictured at left with dancers Beth Lamont [facing back], Sarah Davey, and Alyson Fretz), the Professional Dance program included four weeks of intensive training, followed by a week of mainstage performances. in addition to directing the Banff program, Fischer is the artistic director of YOU dance and a ballet master with the National Ballet. All photos: Don Lee.
Sorella Englund (right, in rehearsal for La Sylphide with Elizabeth Marrable and Elena Lobsanova), one of the world’s foremost experts on the works of choreographer August Bournonville, was the 2008 Arnold Spohr Distinguished Guest Artist. “Bringing Sorella Englund to the Banff Centre was greatly inspirational,” says program participant Tristan Dobrowney. “I think the easiest way to learn is by example, and Sorella made this very possible. She definitely inspired me to be the type of dancer and person that she is.”
“Because the majority of dancers will proceed directly from Banff to their initial professional contracts, this program was specifically designed to provide the participants with experiences that would stimulate their development as professional artists,” saysFischer (working at left with dancer Shino Mori). “Faculty were chosen for their ability to articulate and transmit their own experience of the transition awaiting the young artists.”
The Festival Dance ensemble in Robert Glumbek’s Prefigured Effect. “The run of performances, which included La Sylphide (1836), Divertimento #15 (1956), Julio Luomo (2000), and Prefigured Effect (2008), gave the dancers an accurate experience of a professional company playing in season,” says Fischer. “It allowed them to discover that performance is not an event at which an inanimate object is perfected and displayed, but a living process of examination, reacquaintance, and enjoyment.”
At left, the Festival Dance ensemble performs Peggy Baker’s Julio Luomo. An acclaimed contemporary dancer, choreographer, and teacher, Baker was a 2007 Fleck Fellow and the 2008 Toshimi and William Sembo Master Class Artist. In addition to Fischer, Englund, and Baker, 2008 program faculty included Mandy Richardson, Roberto Campanella (recipient of the Steven and Ilona Diener Senior Artist Scholarship), Cathy Taylor, Nehemiah Kish, Stephane Leonard, and Je-an Salas.
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