In a remarkable collaboration between Canada’s top five ballet companies and The Banff Centre, the country’s most promising dancers will participate in a unique new summer training program. The artistic directors of all five companies — The National Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Alberta Ballet, and Ballet British Columbia — will select young professional dancers to participate in the program.
Drawing on the Centre’s 60 years as one of Canada’s premier sites for creative development in dance, this new program will bring dancers to Banff for five weeks of intensive training, followed by a mainstage performance that will include a new choreographic work as part of the annual Banff Summer Arts Festival.
“I am very pleased that we have been able to recruit Lindsay Fischer to direct this new program,” says Sarah Iley, The Banff Centre’s vice president, programming. A former principal dancer with Het Nationale Ballet in the Netherlands and the New York City Ballet, Fischer has spent more than 10 years helping young dancers transition into professional artists, most recently as the head of the National Ballet of Canada’s apprenticeship program.
“Our hope is that this new program will provide emerging professionals with exposure to a wide range of styles and approaches,” Iley adds. “It will also give these talented young dancers a tremendous opportunity to collaborate on the development and performance of a new piece.”
The program has come together with the collaboration of the artistic directors of Canada’s five major ballet companies, including Gradimir Pankov at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Karen Kain at the National Ballet of Canada, Andre Lewis of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Alberta Ballet’s Jean Grand-Maître, and John Alleyne of Ballet British Columbia.
Faculty and repertoire for the 2008 season will be announced shortly. The program will incorporate the Clifford E. Lee Award in Choreography, which provides an opportunity for a Canadian choreographer to come to The Banff Centre to create and premiere a new dance piece working with the participant dance company. Past winners of the Lee Award include Mark Godden, Christopher House, Wen Wei Wang, Crystal Pite, and Sabrina Matthews.
The Banff Centre’s dance programs have become integral to the creative fabric of dance in Canada. Alumni of the Centre’s training programs fill the lists of corps and principal dancers in companies across the country and overseas, and the Centre’s creative and production residencies in dance have brought Canada’s top choreographers, artistic directors, and their companies to Banff’s studios and stages.
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