Who is celia franca

She really participated in the development of dance and performing arts in Canada. I think, to understand her importance, it is important to know that before the s dance did not have much significance here. There are a few pioneers of dance. As I was saying earlier, Boris Volkoff, who founded a school, would put on shows here and there, but they were still amateur productions: they were still amateur schools of dance or amateur troupes.

Other than that, it was international troupes who came here to put on shows. Dancers were often from abroad. There was not much interest. Things began to change in the s. In Winnipeg, there was an amateur troupe that would gain professional status and become the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. A few years later still came the Grands Ballets Canadiens. A trend was taking hold in the s and Celia Franca was no stranger to that…. MG: She is important also because she brought a lot of discipline to dance and ballet in Canada.

Coming from Great Britain, having danced for major companies that were very demanding—only the elite achieve that status.

She arrived with her baggage and demanded more or less the same in a country where there really was nothing. She had to build from the ground up and bring all that discipline with her. So, she brought all that baggage, all that discipline, and all that strictness to the company and its dancers.

I should mention that the other reason I think she is so important in the history of dance in Canada, in addition to everything that was mentioned, is that creating a school of dance was important to her. To her, this went hand in hand with the quality of a great, professional dance company. Until then, anyone wanting to find the best dancers to be the principal dancers, or Canadian dancers with massive potential wanting to perfect their training and pursue their career, would have to go abroad.

MG: So, that is when she would co-found, with the help of Betty Oliphant, a school of dance affiliated with the National Ballet of Canada, and really cement the whole thing. If you could create your own dancers to become big stars, then that would ensure…. MG: Success and the sustainability of the company. And it worked. Just look at Martine van Hamel who would become a very successful ballerina, and other dancers who are slightly more well known by our generation—Veronica Tennant, or Karen Kain….

MG: Exactly. They spent time at the school, and also under the direction of artistic directors at the Grands Ballets. In a way, she created a character, Celia Franca in the dance world, she is a very important figure. Like her or not, she represents ballet here in Canada. And she is a self-made woman. That is what is extraordinary. She came from a very modest upbringing, far removed from the arts. She managed to climb the ladder to the top and set the standard for ballet in Canada. MG: Other than that, we might say that her most remarkable accomplishment is the birth of the dance company as such.

MG: The National Ballet of Canada, which she founded, is a very big accomplishment that has been around since It has had some shining moments, and it continues to shine…. JO: It is a well-established school now, a well-established school and company…. Her reputation—stemming from her creation of the National Ballet of Canada—and the school that was extremely important to her; I think all these things combined make her someone who accomplished a lot. JO: How can the holdings be consulted? Is there anything accessible online?

TM: Absolutely! In fact, just go to the LAC website and search the archival holdings for Celia Franca and you can not only get a description of the fonds, but also order unrestricted documents. The consultation can be done in the consultation room at LAC. However, some graphic components of the fonds—especially certain photographs—are already available online, including on the LAC portal and on Flickr.

There is also a database of online images that can be found on the website. JO: Yes, yes, yes. Celia Franca taught and developed her students at the National Ballet, who themselves would become emeritus dancers, who would have major national and international careers. Among those, there is…. We have a wealth of splendid documents that document not only their careers at the National Ballet, but also what they did afterward to develop dance, to be advocates for performing arts in Canada.

In the case of Veronica Tennant, she provided her archives not only in connection with her dance career, but also in connection with her youth, her education, her careers and her accomplishments as a writer.

She even wrote for children. We have a few versions of her book here in the LAC collection. Then there is her career as an actor on stage, including at the Shaw Festival , choreographer, television host, director and producer of a number of major documentaries, including for the CBC. She is, as I said earlier, an advocate for arts and culture in Canada. She encouraged Canadian choreographers such as Grant Strate, while calling on friends like Tudor, Bruhn and John Cranko to mount or create ballets, including Bruhn's important productions of La Sylphide and Swan Lake, in which she danced the unfathomable Black Queen.

She drew on her formidable memory to remount or reinterpret classics like The Nutcracker, and organised strenuous tours, always with live music, to keep her dancers working. She oversaw the company's move from small theatres to the 3,seat O'Keefe Centre in Toronto, where the opening ballet in was a unique version of Cranko's Romeo and Juliet, in which she performed Lady Capulet. Throughout, as she said with considerable understatement, "it was a fight. Although what she later called "the Miss Franca persona" terrorised many of her dancers, who hid in washrooms to escape her wrath after a bad performance, Franca had a keen eye for talent, casting the year-old Veronica Tennant as Juliet and offering Swan Lake to Karen Kain in only her second year with the company.

She was determined to give the company not merely a Canadian identity but also an international reputation, organising European, Japanese and Latin American tours. The decision aroused cavils in Canada, but Franca saw to it that her Canadian ballerinas, not guest artists, danced Aurora, and young Canadian men shone as the Bluebird.

As the dancers acknowledged, Nureyev's presence as example and mentor carried them to new heights. Franca was particularly proud of the creation in of the National Ballet School, with Betty Oliphant obituary, August 2 as its first artistic director, and the mounting of Cranko's Romeo, which would become one of 14 ballets filmed by Franca and the late Norman Campbell.

In , exhausted by constant financial strife, Franca stepped down as artistic director, but this was hardly retirement. Rasky died before the book was finished, and the project was shelved. Franca was an up-and-coming ballerina in England when she was recruited by a handful of wealthy ballet enthusiasts to come to Canada to help found a national ballet company. In , amid a cloud of cigarette smoke and chutzpah, the year-old tyrant-to-be stepped off a plane in Toronto wearing her trademark theatrical makeup — white face, red lips, and pencilled eyebrows — ready to lead what became the National Ballet of Canada.

Franca immediately announced that, as artistic director of the troupe, only she, and not the board, would make all the important decisions. Franca agreed to become founding artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada in and remained its head until Despite a lack of adequate financial support and the short supply of well-trained classical dancers, Franca succeeded in developing a well-schooled repertory ballet company that by the early s had gained an international reputation.

Franca's leadership of NBC was at times controversial. Her battles with difficult dancers, staff and board members were often the stuff of lively gossip and became legendary, even making occasional headlines. In retrospect, the merits of her artistic vision have also been widely debated.

Some have argued that Franca was a cultural colonizer who failed to invest in Canadian creativity and instead built a self-proclaimed "national" troupe in Canada that was effectively a clone of Britain's Sadler's Wells later Royal Ballet. Others point out that Franca's post-Sadler's Wells career in Britain and own early choreography suggest a strong personal leaning towards innovation.

Given freedom of action and better resources her artistic policies might have been far more adventurous. The reality is that Franca's vision was often circumscribed by factors beyond her control.