Mountain magic

Dancers perform with the Rocky Mountains as backdrop in this Banff Centre image from the 1950s. The Centre celebrates 60 years of dance with an anniversary gala performance July 28. (The Banff Centre)

Given that he turned 79 this past May and that he’s spent more than half his summers in the Rockies with the Banff Centre’s dance program, it’s tempting to call Brian Macdonald “the old man of the mountains.” That phrase would suggest some hoary old geezer, however, and Macdonald is anything but. On the phone from Banff on a Monday morning, he has the chipper voice of a man half his age and, to judge from his current activities, he’s got the energy of one, as well.

The eminent Canadian choreographer and director has not only been busy preparing a series of performances to mark the program’s 60th anniversary, he’s also written a book to commemorate the occasion.

Maybe that mountain air acts as a kind of youth serum. It’s certainly beneficial to dancing, as Macdonald notes when we discuss the title of his book, Dancing in Thin Air — although newcomers to Banff require some adjustment to a town that, at close to 1,400 metres above sea level, is the highest in Canada.

“It takes a few days to get used to the higher elevation,” says Macdonald. “There’s less oxygen here. We tell dancers not to worry if they feel winded after exerting themselves in the first few days. You eventually get used to it, and then it becomes an advantage. It’s like those long-distance runners who train at higher altitudes and then go down and win races — you get stronger.”

Dancing in Thin Air is being launched on July 28 during a weekend of dance celebrations at the Banff Centre, during which stellar alumni like Tara Birtwhistle of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Heather Ogden of the National Ballet of Canada will join current students to perform a mix of classical, modern and Canadian work. Macdonald’s book, illustrated with many vintage photos, complements the live events with a history of the Banff program, which has turned out some of Canada’s finest dancers and dance makers over the years. Macdonald, who headed the program from 1982 until 2001, is perfectly placed to survey its legacy, since his association with it goes back almost 50 years.

The program was founded in 1947, at what was then the Banff School of Fine Arts, by Gweneth Lloyd and Betty Farrally, that dynamic duo from Britain who had laid the groundwork for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet a decade earlier. Lloyd knew the Montreal-born Macdonald, who had begun his career dancing in the National Ballet’s original company but was forced to retire following a serious injury. In 1959, when he was just beginning to remake himself as a choreographer and teacher, she lured him to Banff.

Brian Macdonald, centre, rehearses dancers Rokaya Duval, left, and Sasha Gamayunov at the Banff Centre in 2002. (The Banff Centre)

“In those days [the school] had character dancing and classical ballet and contemporary movement, and Gweneth felt that jazz should be added to the curriculum,” Macdonald recalls. “Increasingly, to get a job you needed to be able to move freely, and jazz was doing that to dancers. And Gladys Forrester in Toronto and myself were two of the first teachers of jazz in Canada, so Gweneth phoned and asked me to come and teach. And that began the association.

“Of course, when I got here, she said, ‘Would you also create a little piece for the program? And do you mind teaching the boys Monday, Wednesday and Friday? And the drama department wants you to play Oberon [in A Midsummer Night’s Dream]...’ So, before I knew it,” he says, chuckling, “Banff took over.”

For the next two decades, Macdonald continued to teach and choreograph in Banff. Even during his years as artistic director of Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Ballet, New York’s Harkness Ballet and Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, he seldom missed a summer. When he eventually took charge of the dance program in 1982, he raised it to a professional level, providing enhanced training to dancers already in the profession and bringing in top international teachers and artists to work with them. One of those was his second wife, Annette av Paul, a principal ballerina with the Royal Swedish troupe, who joined the Banff faculty in 1984 and is now program director.

During his tenure, Macdonald also started Banff’s long-term relationship with one of the 20th century’s greatest choreographers, making the works of George Balanchine a mainstay of the curriculum.

“His ballets are so challenging and so good for dancers,” says Macdonald, who knew Balanchine personally and refers to him fondly as “Mr. B.” “At the time [the 1980s], they were spreading rapidly in the U.S. and in Europe, so there was a demand for dancers to be able to dance them.”

Banff dancers continue to get a good grounding in Balanchine. Victoria Simon, ballet mistress with the George Balanchine Trust, is restaging his Concerto Barocco as part of the 60th anniversary showcase performances from July 25 to 28. The program also includes pieces by three Canadian choreographers — Troisième Soufflé by Jean Louis Morin, Quest by Crystal Pite and Bengt Jörgen’s Cinderella pas de deux — as well as excerpts from three of Macdonald’s own works. They are Requiem 9/11, Lignes et Pointes and the popular Tam Ti Delam, a lively ballet based on a song by Quebec folksinger Gilles Vigneault.

“It’s like Mr. B. would say: ‘You have the soup, the meat and the dessert,’” Macdonald says of the lineup. “Tam is the dessert.” Among the meaty selections is the “Offertorium” from Requiem 9/11, a dance set to Verdi’s Requiem and prompted by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The dance premiered in Ottawa in 2002 and is Macdonald’s most recently choreographed work.

The Offertorium, from Brian Macdonald's Requiem 9/11, will be performed as part of Banff's 60th anniversary dance celebrations. (Don Lee/The Banff Centre)

The weekend festivities also include a salute to past winners of Banff’s Clifford E. Lee Award for Canadian choreography, with live performances of dances by Pite, Gioconda Barbuto, Marc Godden and Joe Laughlin, as well as film clips of work by other Lee recipients. That event takes place on the afternoon of Saturday, July 28; it’s followed in the evening by a final gala featuring the Balanchine, Morin and Macdonald pieces, and the pas de deux from Alberta Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet and the National Ballet’s Swan Lake.

The shows are being performed by 14 guest artists and 94 students from the dance program, which includes beginning dancers in training as well as emerging professionals. For the latter, Banff serves as a mountain retreat, and when Macdonald describes them, the paternal side of his personality shines through.

“During my time here, we began training dancers for a life of dancing,” he explains. “Sometimes the training of dancers is severe and it can be very discouraging. It became important to us to nurture people, to encourage them. This is not meant to sound Pollyannaish,” he adds. “There are talented dancers who’ve been damaged by their training experience. We call those damaged dancers who come to us ‘wounded birds.’ It’s our job to pick up the wounded birds, and brush them off, and help them fly again.”

That nurturing approach is not the least of Macdonald’s many contributions to the program, and a philosophy that continues under av Paul. Since handing over the directorship to his wife, Macdonald has stayed on at Banff in the official capacity of artistic advisor and the unofficial one of venerable figurehead — a position he says he’s happily settled into. “I’m enjoying the role of grand old man.”

Amusingly, though, his commitment to Banff only goes so far — he’s never wanted to settle there. He and av Paul stay in the Banff Centre’s residence during their summer sojourns, but they’re based in Stratford, Ont. Macdonald directed musicals at the Stratford Festival for many years — his 1980s Gilbert and Sullivan revivals, televised by CBC, are legendary — and the city remains his home. “I can’t imagine living in Banff in the winter,” he says.

The Banff Centre’s 60th Anniversary Dance Gala Weekend continues from July 25 to 28 in Banff, Alta. Dancing in Thin Air, by Brian Macdonald, published by the Banff Centre Press, is being released July 28.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca Arts.

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