The details are a distant memory, although I’m pretty sure that I went with my elementary school class and that we probably saw “The Nutcracker.” I certainly had no idea who any of the dancers were.
Unlike the National Gallery of Canada and the National Arts Centre, the National Ballet is not a federal institution. While it receives some government money, the dance company has always been a nonprofit organization run by a board of directors.
As the National Ballet celebrates its 75th anniversary, Martha Schabas, an arts critic, a novelist and a contributor to The Times’s dance coverage, has written an engaging history of the company and the never-ending debate over what defines Canadian ballet.
I spoke with Martha, who lives in Toronto, this week about her article. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
The fact that Toronto’s only auditorium 75 years ago was in the Eaton’s department store suggests that there wasn’t much of a performing arts scene in the city at the time.
It was a bit of a cultural wasteland. There was a small symphony at the time, but the Canadian Opera Company wasn’t up and running yet. There was no real theater company in Toronto, and the theater culture that has since thrived outside of Toronto — like the Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festival — didn’t exist either.
So when this 29-year-old woman from London showed up, she had to essentially convince the country that it needed a cultural scene.
How did that 29-year-old, Celia Franca, come to appear in Toronto to build a ballet company with national aspirations?
There was a group of women who had seen Sadler’s Wells — the ballet company that would later become the Royal Ballet Company in London — perform in Toronto a few times, and they saw it as the platonic ideal of a ballet company. That’s what they aspired to.
They managed to get an envoy off to London to speak with the head of Sadler’s Wells, Ninette de Valois. She had been Celia’s boss and hadn’t been a great fan of her as a ballerina. But she was very impressed with her ability to choreograph and her facility as a ballet mistress.
The National Ballet seems to have had a shoestring beginning despite its founders’ ambitions.
They hadn’t come up with enough money for Celia’s salary. So she was working officially in the box office above the Eaton’s department store in the Eaton Auditorium.
On top of that, for their rehearsal hall they had the old St. Lawrence Hall, which at that time was a shelter for men. They were given it with the proviso that they vacate in the winter to allow the men to come back. There are these anecdotes of the company being in rehearsal and a man forgetting that it’s off season and wandering in.
What was Franca like?
Before I wrote this article, I’d heard that she was someone who you either love or hate. But while doing my research, I heard only praise. I heard that she was strong. I heard that she was courageous. But I heard none of the negativity.
I wonder how many of those negative stories come from the fact that she was pleading her case in front of businessmen. Her board was all male. All the money in Toronto at that time was monopolized by men. And here was this very young woman with no business experience making these strong demands and not relenting.
