Canada's National Ballet School

Canada’s National Ballet: 50 Years of Evolution by Paula Citron It was clear with the founding of the National Ballet of Canada in 1951 that a future national ballet school was a necessity. Betty Oliphant and Celia Franca are the two remarkable women who co-founded Canada’s National Ballet School in 1959. As Oliphant wrote in her autobiography Miss O: My Life in Dance: “Celia Franca and I knew that a good company needs a good school to feed it.” James Neufeld says in his book Power to Rise: The Story of the National Ballet of Canada: “(Franca) was a teacher of professionals and saw with a teacher’s eye that the raw material before her had to be shaped and trained. Teaching would be the key to the company’s success.” The NBS is commemorating its 50th anniversary this year, and there is much to celebrate. The school is considered among the top professional ballet academies in the world. Just as the Herculean efforts of Oliphant and Franca helped found the school, so have the innovative policies of Oliphant and her chosen successor, Mavis Staines (class of 1972), help raise the school to its lofty perch in the world of dance education. On the recommendation of Dame Ninette de Valois of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Franca came from England to Toronto in 1951 to found the National Ballet of Canada. Betty Oliphant, who had arrived from England in 1947 as a war bride, ran a successful ballet school in the city. Oliphant was asked by Franca to become the company’s ballet mistress. From 1969 until 1975, Oliphant was also the company’s associate artistic director. And so began a troubled relationship and a clash of egos that would never be reconciled. (Oliphant passed away in 2004 and Franca in 2007). As an example of their personal discord, Victoria Bertram (‘63) recalls that whenever Oliphant attended company performances, she’d leave her coat in the dressing room Bertram shared with Mary Jago, rather than have to face Franca in the artistic staff room. Prior to the founding of the NBS, the two women oversaw intensive professional training during an annual 4-week summer school in order to upgrade technique. It was a command performance for both company dancers and potential company dancers. The establishment of the NBS with Franca as director and Oliphant as principal gradually took over the role that the summer school played in technique training. (The last summer school was held in 1965.) After a predictable battle of wills between these two strong women, Oliphant got the board of directors on side and assumed complete responsibility for the school as both director and principal. Her comeuppance, as she calls it in her book, came when Franca made a speech from the stage at the National Ballet’s 25th anniversary gala and failed to mention Oliphant among the people who helped build the company. The NBS is unique in North America because it is the only professional ballet academy to offer elite dance training, academic studies (grades 6 to 12), and residence facilities in one complex. It makes for a long day, with academic classes from 8:30 until 3:30, followed by the ballet program which can end as late as 6:45. From the onset, Oliphant, with Franca’s support, mandated that the school should be an autonomous entity from the National Ballet. She felt it necessary to avoid the problems she saw in Europe when a school director was under the authority of a company artistic director. Oliphant wanted complete control over the students’ best interests. She also believed that students should have the freedom to choose their own career path and not be obligated to join one company. As a result of this independence, NBS graduates are artistic directors, choreographers, dancers, teachers and administrators in 65 companies world-wide. In 2003, to reflect the open-arms nature of the NBS’s role in the country, the official name became Canada’s National Ballet School. (The NBS students are distinguished by their distinctive green and grey uniforms, kilts for the girls, trousers for the boys, modelled after the British schools of Oliphant’s youth.) Oliphant’s goal was to produce an international class dancer whose technique was, in her words, “without affectation or mannerisms” and so could absorb any choreography. Says Veronica Tennant (’63): “Celia’s emphasis on what she wanted for a company dancer was a sound technique base and strong musicality. Betty’s focus was cleanliness, purity and grace of lines. She stressed the importance of port de bras, fluidity of motion and a mobile spine.” By all accounts, Oliphant was a dichotomy. She could be devastatingly cutting in her comments to students (“cruel”, “nasty” and “insulting” are other epithets that came up in interviews), yet she fancied herself a benign force because she encouraged the students to speak up over issues. One positive description of Miss O is “honest”, even if she did cut to the quick. That the students were very intimidated by Oliphant, there can be no doubt. Bertram thinks Oliphant’s toughness stemmed from her belief that the profession itself was brutal and she was training her students to be prepared for the worst. Says Karen Kain (’69): “Betty was a troubled woman who accomplished a lot of amazing things, and she did try to be forward thinking and wise. Nonetheless, we did what we were told and kept our mouths shut. I didn’t start voicing opinions until my late 20s.” What is fascinating is that all these long years after the fact, middle age NBS graduates still slip into calling the women “Miss O” and “Miss Franca”, such was the force of their authoritarian personalities. Kain also raises a note of caution about NBS training in the early years. “Betty tried to be careful and not harm our bodies. She was reacting to bad training that she had experienced in England, but she was too careful. When I went to the Moscow competition in 1973, I realized just how behind we were in terms of classical technique.” Kain mentions weakness in turn out and extensions, for example. To some extent, Tennant agrees. “We weren’t razor sharp in the legs or in fast turns,” she says. Kain also remembers getting weighed every week. (The scales disappeared in 1971 when Oliphant realized the weigh-ins were causing eating disorders.) Kain points out that Oliphant had difficulty being objective, particularly about the handling of more gifted students. On this point, long time NBS teacher Sergiu Stefanschi concurs. “Betty did get results, but she was impatient. She tended to move the students along at the same pace.” Oliphant’s overall achievements as an educator of elite ballet students cannot be denied. In 1963, Eugen Valukin from the Bolshoi Ballet made his first of several visits to teach at the NBS and his influence on training was seismic. Valukin, Erik Bruhn and flamenco teacher Susana Robledo were just a few of the master teachers Oliphant brought to the school. As well as the daily technique classes, ballet-related classes included eurhythmics, creative dance and pre-character (waltzes, polkas, gallops) for the junior school, while the older students took classical variations and repertoire, pas de deux, character dance (stylized ethnic dances), and flamenco (for rhythm and style). The all important performance component began under Oliphant and includes the annual spring showcase, participation in National Ballet productions such as The Nutcracker, the student recital at the AGM, and lecture/demos on the audition tour. Not to be forgotten are the choreographers Oliphant engaged to set works on the students like Rudi van Dantzig’s Four Last Songs. Oliphant was also instrumental in starting the choreograph workshops that produced talents like James Kudelka (’73), Dominique Dumais (’86) and Matjash Mrozewski (’93). The NBS has been erroneously called first, a Cecchetti school, and latterly, a Vaganova school. In the case of the former, Oliphant and Franca chose the Cecchetti method to be the basic training tool of both the summer school and later, the NBS, because that had been the anchor of their ballet education in England under such teachers as Antony Tudor. Oliphant even coached Franca when Franca took her certification to become a Cecchetti examiner. All the older graduates well remember the toil of those Cecchetti exercises, but Cecchetti was not the only NBS educational pathway. Teacher Deborah Bowes (’65) is both manager of the NBS junior school and the annual audition tour. “The students’ short term goals were the Cecchetti examinations,” she says, “but there were also what Betty called the free ballet classes which had a much broader syllabus than Cecchetti. Over the years Betty developed her own technique pulled together from teaching principles she had experienced in England, Denmark and Russia. While both Betty, and Mavis after her, did have a deep respect for tradition, they really were avant-garde, pushing limits, and always looking ahead. They both believed in keeping ballet relevant and exciting.” Staines enrolled in the NBS teacher training program when her dance career was cut short by an injury. She joined the NBS staff in 1982, was appointed associate artistic director in 1984, and became artistic director in 1989 when Oliphant retired. One of her first major decisions was dropping the Cecchetti syllabus in 1991 in favour of a training program, unique to the NBS, that is an amalgam of Cecchetti, Vaganova, Royal Academy of Dance and other established educational principles. “It was, therefore, no longer a priority for us to bring in external Cecchetti examiners to evaluate the effectiveness of NBS training,” explains Staines.

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