Dance Community: Training, Education and Performance
Excerpted from earthdancers: Dance, Community and Environment Masters of Arts thesis by Julie-Anne Huggins York University, April 2005
FOR EDUCTIONAL USE ONLY
4
th
Generation
Fourth Generation In the early 1970s, Gerry Gauvreau was appointed artistic director of the dance program at the Centre des jeunes, fuelling the new company Les Folkloristes Ontariennes (The Ontario Folklorists).59 These dancers ranged from ages ten to eighteen, and toured internationally with ballet, jazz, folklore dances of Canada, and modern interpretations.60 By 1973, the Gauvreau School of Fine Arts was opened, and the company followed in affiliation. The new studio’s colourful array of classes included ballet, pointe, jazz, tap, gymnastics, ballroom, folk, drama and modelling, as well as the trendy disco-jazz, dancercize, slimnastics, and slim dancethetics.61 By 1978, the school’s name changed to 60 The Ontario Folklorists to perform in Russia. Gauvreau School of Performing Arts, while the company’s name evolved to Canadian Showcase Chorus Corporation in 1980, focusing their talents on ballet, musical theatre, as well as song and dance.62 Another project had been brewing for a couple of years at the hands of Tini Pel and Ida Sauve, whose toil and trouble sought to increase local performing opportunities for all young dancers in the area. In the spring of 1971, the Kiwanis Club of Sudbury had informally adopted a dance division into its annual Kiwanis Music Festival; however, it took several more years before the name changed to the Kiwanis Music and Dance Festival. This competition would bring many young students from across Ontario to perform and receive adjudications from respected dance professionals and teachers, with prizes and scholarships awarded to outstanding performers.63 In its founding year, ballet teacher Diana Jablokova Vorps of Toronto adjudicated in the style categories of ethnic dance, freestyle jazz, tap dance, acrobatics and adagio dance, stage dance, modern dance, classical ballet, classical ballet pointe, and demi-character. The competition’s most notable performances were also featured in a showcase at the end of the festival.64 For many dance studios, this was not only good exposure, but for some it would become an important part of their business.
During the mid 1970s, a few more studios arrived on the Sudbury dance scene. Glenys Lafrance, a former student and teacher of the Centre des jeunes, began teaching in the Sudbury and Chelmsford areas around 1970, providing affordable training in tap, jazz, ballet, acrobatics, modern, step dancing, and folk dancing. She later merged her students with the Centre des jeunes program (Studio de Danse Civitas Christi) when she was appointed director in 1973. Around 1976, Lafrance established the Regional School of Dance, and with a staff of seventeen, her holistic and accessible approach addressed the outlining communities of Azilda, Levack, Copper Cliff, Dowling, Onaping Falls, and Chelmsford. Annual recitals, exams, community events and local/regional competitions were made available and affordable for the school’s substantial student base, with the support of fundraising and volunteers. However, the doors closed on this noble endeavour in 1985.65 Another teacher at the time was Claire McLaughlin, a former student of and teacher for Ida Sauve. In 1973, McLaughlin opened Claire’s School of Dancing, offering classes in acrobatics, tap, and jazz, as well as ballet, pointe, modern, lyrical, and stage in later years. Her teaching partner Annette Lumbis, also a former Ida Sauve student, left two years later.66 Annette Lumbis Dancers was then founded, whose two locations also taught acrobatics, tap, jazz and modern. Both schools eagerly took advantage of the local and regional Kiwanis Festivals, and also staged annual recitals for their students. By 1982 however, Annette Lumbis Dancers had disbanded.67
A The Bird Cage Dance with Karen Martin,
A Bretonne Dance with Josette St. Aubin,
Nancy Wong & Jodi Lahaye of the Sudbury School of Ballet.
Wendy Green, Stephanie Dietz, Elizabeth Gauvreau, Corin Potvin, Deborah Belcourt, Mary Ellen Gauvreau & Rebecca Pott of the Sudbury School of Ballet.
Soon after the curtain closed on the Sudbury School of Ballet in 1973, former student Helene Skakoon opened The Ballet Academy in 1975. Performing in local Kiwanis festivals, community projects and annual studio recitals, students were exposed to modern and national styles along with their rigorous coaching for ballet exams.68 This small but significant studio focused on quality over quantity, specializing in ballet training from the RAD syllabus, and investing in students with strong potential to become professionals.69 Despite its honourable intentions, the school closed its doors by 1980.
69 Magda Arango, Barbara Saville, Lisa Barry,
Anna-Lyn DiPaolo, Shauneen Ryan, & Laura Maloney of The Ballet Academy.
69 Larissa Lapchinski & Nathalie
Rask of The Ballet Academy.
All the while, Tini Pel was working to develop another opportunity for the art form, that of liturgical dance.  Her first performance was in a local Anglican church in the early 1960s and was so well acclaimed that her dancers soon began touring to other cities and appeared on television. By 1973, her work further inspired a course at Huntington College of Laurentian University called Religion in the Arts, as well as the later Religion for a New Generation, for which she was a guest teacher featuring her choreography.70 Around this time, the Cambrian College continuing education program also sought Tini Pel and other dance teachers to enhance its local and outreach dance classes, which offered ballet, ballroom and the ever-popular disco.71 Responding 70 Religion In the Arts at Huntington to the growing need for more local advanced dance College. education, the Arts Guild sponsored an intensive summer course in 1974, which offered advanced level RAD ballet, classical repertory, modern, folk, character, stage makeup and even Benesh notation.72 The name Arts Guild Dance Theatre was then adopted in 1976 as the school’s distinguished performing company.73 In 1979, Pel also began offering a three-year post-secondary course including studies in Russian ballet, jazz, social dance, ethnic dance, dance history, theatre arts, dance notation, anatomy and music theory.74 Denise Vitali and Lareen Baricelli-Lavallee were two of the students in this program, and together they produced an independent two-person show in 1979 entitled Jazz’n Stuff, which was again 74 Carolle Bradley, Denise Vitali, 75 produced in 1980 with Vitali and her new partner Anne Sirois. Tini Pel
75 Lareen Baricelli & Denise Vitali.
75 Anne Sirois & Denise Vitali.
Within the Centre des jeunes, Ida Sauve was appointed program director in 1974 and helped to organize the Centre des jeunes Dancers as a performing and competing group, which often collaborated with the Ida Sauve Dance Company.76 Further, in the early 1970s, classes in ballroom with Doris Lalonde and Gaston Lapierre had become quite popular, setting the groundwork for competitions and examinations.77 Cambrian College further facilitated these ballroom classes, where teachers such as Noreen Saari, Susanne Bourque, and later Giselle and Rheal Rouselle were building a following.78 By 1978, the Rouselle couple, former Centre des jeunes students, decided to open a Monsieur Danse franchise school; two years later, it was converted to their own studio Prodanse. Though there had been several independent ballroom teachers in the area, often offering classes at various studios, theirs was the only school dedicated to this form, since the closure of the Arthur Murray Dance Studios nearly fifteen years prior. Here, under certified instruction, students could compete and receive examinations in both the social and international styles.79 The interest in dance training was growing outside of the studio setting, and in 1975, the City of Sudbury had commissioned Annette Lumbis to teach a ten-week introduction course in acrobatics, jazz and tap in the public schools throughout the area.80
83 Sudbury Arts Festival
Association - Spectrum
83 Mini-Bolshoi
Also in the mid 1970s, professional performances graced local stages, such as the tour of the Anna Wyman Dance Theatre.81 In 1975, the Sudbury Arts Festival Association (SAFA) produced Spectrum ’75, which was intended as an annual fall “series of concerts and cultural activities, as the first phase in encouraging a higher standard of performance and fostering an appreciation of the arts in Sudbury.”82 Thanks to this funding and organizational body, touring companies such as Ballet Ys, Danse-Partout and Mini-Bolsoi were welcomed in the latter half of the 1970s.83 As evolution would have it, Spectrum disappeared back into the primordial ooze, and SAFA matured into the Sudbury Arts Council in the following decade.84 All these offshoot developments certainly brought new excitement to the horizon of the 1980s.
Endnotes 59
Sudbury Bell directories, 1969-1972. 60 “Folklorists to Leave with Police Escort on Way to Russia,” The Sudbury Star 9 Aug. 1973: 3. 61 Sudbury Bell directories, 1969-1990. 62 Gerry Gauvreau, personal interview, 8 October 2004. 63 Michele Caruso-McGuire, personal interview, 30 December 2004. 64 Eleanor Marzetti, ed., Annual Kiwanis Music Festival 1971 (Sudbury, ON.: n.p., 1971). 65 Glenys Lafrance, telephone interview, 24 January 2005. 66 Tracy McLaughlin, telephone interview, 16 November 2004. 67 Annette Lumbis, personal interview, 9 October 2004. 68 Helene Van Alphen, telephone interview, 26 November 2004. 69 Tom Colton, “The Academy of Hard Work,” Northern Life: Lifestyle 14 Nov. 1979: 1. 70 “Religion in the Arts at Huntington College,” Northern Life 4 July 1973: 11. “Huntington College: Religion for a New Generation,” ts., Denise Vitali Records, Sudbury. 71 Denise Vitali, personal interview, 19 December 2004. 72 “Advanced Dance Course Sponsored by Arts Guild,” Nothern Life 21 Aug. 1974: B3. 73 Tini Pel, personal interview, 10 November 2001. 74 Norm Tollinsky, “Arts Guild Dance School Shapes Sudbury Ballerinas,” Northern Life: Lifestyle 7 Feb. 1979: 13. 75 “Local Ballerinas Kick Up Their Heels,” Northern Life: Lifestyle 23 May 1979: 4. “Dance Potpurri,” Northern Life: Lifestyle 28 May 1980: 3+. 76 Ida Sauve, personal interview, 8 October 2004. 77 Suzanne Bourque, personal interview, 9 October 2004. 78 Suzanne Bourque, personal interview, 9 October 2004. 79 Gisele Rouselle, telephone interview, 24 November 2004. 80 Annette Lumbis, personal interview, 9 October 2004. 81 Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, program, Sudbury, n.d. 82 Teresa Pagnutti, “Arts Council Awarded Funds,” Northern Life 22 Aug. 1979: 3. 83 “Wintario Funding Sudbury Arts Festival,” Northern Life 4 Aug. 1976: A-6. Pauline Melhorne, “Wrap-up of Spectrum ’76,” Northern Life 27 Oct. 1976: A11. Teresa Pagnutti, “Mini-Bolshoi Packs’em In,” Northern Life: Lifestyle 17 Oct. 1979: 1. 84 “SAFA to Expand as Arts Council,” Northern Life 17 Jan. 1979: 10.
Additional Image References A
“Sudbury School of Ballet holds Wembly recital,” Northern Life 4 July 1973: 11.