Professional Dance

Drawing on a 60-year legacy as one of Canada’s premier sites for creative development in dance, The Banff Centre’s Professional Dance program brings dancers to Banff for five weeks of intensive training, followed by a week of mainstage performances that will include a new choreographic work as part of the annual Banff Summer Arts Festival. Directed by Lindsay Fischer, head of the National Ballet of Canada’s apprenticeship program, the summer program was developed to offer an intense professional rehearsal and performance schedule for young dancers of exceptional promise.

Building on the collaborative foundation that has inspired the Centre’s summer program in Professional Dance, the following participating professional ballet companies in 2009 will nominate young dancers for inclusion in the Banff program: The National Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Alberta Ballet, Ballet B.C., Ballet Jörgen, and Boston Ballet.

The Professional Dance program is directed by Lindsay Fischer. 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.

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 Robert Glumbek.

Repertoire

• George Balanchine’s Raymonda Variations
• Hans Van Manen's Grosse Fuge
• Excerpt from Swan Lake
• New work by the recipient of the 2009 Clifford E. Lee Award