Meredith Adams received a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Alberta in 1977 and began teaching in northern Alberta. In 1980/81, she studied musical theatre at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, where she took dance classes from David Adams. During this time, she also completed the requirements for an Associate Diploma, one of two highest standings awarded ARCT (Piano Teacher) diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music. In the 1980s, she did some performing and taught early childhood music classes with Alberta College, eventually settling on a fulfilling career as a private piano instructor. In 2008, Meredith, along with Janine Adams (David Adams’s daughter with Lois Smith) and Gunnar Blodgett (one of David’s former students), completed a research project on the Life and Legacy of David Adams, funded by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Dance artist and author Carol Anderson has chronicled Canadian dance since the 1980s. She has performed, choreographed, and taught in numerous professional, educational and community settings since the 1970s. Professor Emerita of York University’s Department of Dance, Anderson continues to write, move, teach, and create.
Peggy Baker is one of Canada’s most celebrated and influential dance artists, respected as a performer in the work of esteemed Canadian and American creators; as an educator in important dance programs throughout North America; and as a choreographer of poetic and visually striking works for her Toronto based company, Peggy Baker Dance Projects. Artist-in-Residence at Canada’s National Ballet School, Ms. Baker’s many honours include the Order of Canada, the Governor General’s Award, the Premier’s Award, the Carsen Prize, Honorary Doctorates from York and the University of Calgary, a 2017 Bogliasco Foundation fellowship, and six Doras.
Cheryl Belkin Epstein is the Developer of Creative Resources and Ballet Historian at Canada’s National Ballet School. In this capacity, her responsibilities include teaching the History of Dance in both the Professional Ballet and Teacher Training Programs and co-coordinating Career Planning for the senior students. Belkin Epstein trained in ballet in Winnipeg and danced with Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and Les Feux-Follets of Montréal. On retiring from dance, she returned to school and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1981. She practised corporate law at McCarthy & McCarthy in Toronto until 1983 and later, while living abroad for many years, worked in the Legal Department of the Bank of Israel and did freelance legal editing and writing in Morocco and France. Returning to Canada, she began the study of dance history; first at the National Ballet School and later at York University where she obtained an MA in Dance History. Over the years, she has served on a number of arts boards. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Peggy Baker Dance Projects.
Judie Colpman (aka Nora Brown) is a Charter Member of The National Ballet of Canada (1952 to 1962). Ms. Colpman has performed as a dancer, actor, and currently works as a director, choreographer, and playwright in Canada, the United States, and Europe.
Michael Crabb is a Toronto-based arts journalist, broadcaster, and lecturer and has written about dance internationally for almost forty years. He was a CBC Radio producer and on-air host from 1981 through 2000. He is currently dance critic for The Toronto Star.
John Fraser is the former dance and theatre critic for The Globe and Mail and was also that newspaper’s correspondent in Beijing and, later, in London. He was editor of Saturday Night magazine for seven years and then went on to be Master of Massey College in the University of Toronto for two decades. Currently, he is Executive Chair of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada.
Vanessa Harwood was born in England, and raised in Toronto, attending the National Ballet School as an original student in 1959, graduating in 1964. She joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1965 and became a principal dancer in 1970 until leaving the company in 1987. She coached bronze medal 1988 World and Olympic Ice Dance Champions, Tracy Wilson and Robert McCall. In 1989, she made her acting debut with the Kingston Grand Theatre as Mollie Ralston in The Mousetrap in 1989. In 1991, Harwood also appeared as the ballerina in the film Stepping Out, starring Liza Minelli. She spent a season as Artistic Associate with Theatre Plus Toronto. She has also appeared on the televisions shows Road to Avonlea, Due South, and Nero Wolfe. Ms. Harwood was Artistic Director of Balletto Classico from 1989 to 1993. She was honoured as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1984. She received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal 1992, Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal 2002, and Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. She has been a photographer for the last twenty years, using her images for a line of greeting cards for all occasions. She has also exhibited at a number of galleries and shows including the National Ballet Art Show at the Sony Centre.
Lilian Jarvis was one of the inaugural dancers of the National Ballet from its official beginning official opening in 1951 until 1963 when she left to study in New York City. Known for her lyrical and musical qualities, Lilian was famous for her lead role in Celia Franca’s L’après midi d’un faun, one of her own favourite roles to dance. Lilian’s other roles ranged from Giselle in the “white” ballets to the Tudor ballets Serenade and Lilac Garden, and the character roles of Coppelia and Pineapple Poll, as well as Debutante in Offenbach in the Underworld. Lilian made dance history when she came out of a twelve-year retirement at the age of forty-five to dance the role of Juliet at the National Ballet’s twenty-fifth anniversary performance of Romeo and Juliet for the first and only time. Lilian left the company in 1963 to further her ballet studies in New York City and subsequently became enthralled with the Martha Graham modern dance technique. From there, her career took a major turn when, beginning in the late seventies, she created her own Graham-based teaching method, currently known as “Somatic Stretch: The Jarvis Technique.” Lilian continues to teach her method both in class and online alongside her daughter, Meredith Sands Keator.
Selma Landen Odom is a dance historian and writer. Recruited to York University in 1972, she was founding director of the Masters and Ph.D. programs in Dance and Dance Studies, the first offered of their kind in Canada. Professor Emerita at York, she is also an Adjunct of the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies of at the University of Toronto. With a practical dance background and degrees in English literature, History of Theatre, and Dance Studies, she has published articles and reviews since the 1960s. She has contributed to scholarly and professional conferences and organizations, curated exhibitions and film festivals, advised publishers and consulted for various cultural agencies. For many years, she served on the Board of Directors of for Dance Collection Danse, Canada’s national dance archive and museum. She co-edited the anthology Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories (2004) and co-authored Practical Idealists: Founders of the London School of Dalcroze Eurhythmics (2013). Her continuing research focuses on the sources, practices, and influences of the Dalcroze method of music and movement education.
Myriam Guevara Mann is director of Escuela de Danzas Teresa Mann, a dance school in Panama City founded by her mother. Born in Panama, she moved to Toronto at twenty-one years old and worked as a professional dancer from 1988 to 2000. She then returned to Panama to take over as director of her mother’s school. She and her students have performed in world-class competitions and shows all over the globe, and as featured performers at World Youth Day.
Annette av Paul was born in Sweden in 1944 and accepted into the Royal Swedish Ballet school at the age of eight. At seventeen, she was picked by choreographer Yuri Grigorovich (later the director of the Bolshoi Ballet) to dance the principal role of Katerina in his full-length ballet, The Stone Flower. In 1964, she married Canadian choreographer, Brian Macdonald, who brought her to Canada. After a successful performing career, Annette took on teaching roles at the National Ballet of Canada and the National Ballet School, among others, and has served on the board of many ballet companies, including Ballet British Columbia in its inception. Annette and Brian lived in Montreal until they settled in Stratford, Ontario, in 1985, where both became involved in many creative capacities in the Stratford Festival.
Joysanne Sidimus, M.SM., was born in New York and trained with George Balanchine. She was a dancer with the New York City Ballet and went on to become a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and the Pennsylvania Ballet. After retiring from performing, she taught and staged Balanchine works for fifteen years and founded the Dancer Transition Resource Centre, serving as its executive director until December 2005. She was also the founding vice-chair of Toronto Western Hospital’s Artists’ Health Centre and became the project director for the Senior Artists’ Research Project. She continues to work as a Balanchine répétiteur for the Balanchine Trust both in Canada and internationally. She is the recipient of both the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal and the 2006 Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
Timothy Spain appeared at age thirteen as the child, Orestes, in the National Ballet of Canada’s House of Atreus, the same production in which Earl Kraul played Orestes as an adult. In 1968, he joined the National Ballet as a full-time member and danced with them until 1972. Later, he performed with London’s Festival Ballet, the Molly Molloy Dance Theatre, and freelanced in London, Paris, and other European centres. He choreographed for the National Ballet of Canada, London’s Festival Ballet, and for television and commercial productions in England, Canada, and France. In 2004, he joined Toronto’s Bishop Strachan School, where he continues to teach on a part-time basis.
Mavis Staines is a former dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and current Artistic Director of the National Ballet School.
Veronica Tennant, C.C., spent her illustrious twenty-five-year career as Prima Ballerina with The National Ballet of Canada. She won a devoted following on the international stage as a dancer of extraordinary versatility and dramatic power. Born in London, England, Veronica Tennant began her ballet lessons at the age of four with the Arts Educational School. Upon moving to Canada at the age of nine, Veronica started training with Betty Oliphant and then the National Ballet School. While she missed a year of training due to her first back injury, she entered the National Ballet Company in 1964 as its youngest principal dancer, chosen by Celia Franca and John Cranko for her debut as Juliet. She went on to earn accolades in every major classical role and extensive neo-classical repertoire as well as having several contemporary ballets choreographed for her. She worked with the legendary choreographers Sir Frederick Ashton, Roland Petit, Jiří Kylián, John Neumeier, and championed Canadian choreographers such as James Kudelka, Ann Ditchburn, Constantin Patsalas, and David Allan. Tennant is now an established and multi award-winning filmmaker, producer, and director. She was the first dancer in Canada to be made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1975 and in 2003 was elevated to the rank of Companion of the Order of Canada, the Order’s highest honour.