David Adams (dancer)

David Adams
David Adams
	David Adams as Peer Gynt
Born	16 November 1928; Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Died	24 October 2007 (aged 78); Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada

Last updated March 23, 2019

David Adams, OC (16 November 1928 – 24 October 2007) was a Canadian ballet dancer and a founding member of the National Ballet of Canada.

The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order and the second highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada. It comes second only to membership in the Order of Merit, which is the personal gift of Canada's monarch.

One of the top international ballet companies, The National Ballet of Canada was founded in 1951 by Celia Franca. A company of 70 dancers with its own orchestra, the National Ballet has been led by Artistc Director Karen Kain, one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation, since 2005. Renowned for its diverse repertoire, the company performs traditional full-length classics, embraces contemporary work and encourages the creation of new ballets as well as the development of Canadian choreographers. The company’s repertoire includes works by Sir Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, John Cranko, Rudolf Nureyev, John Neumeier, William Forsythe, James Kudelka, Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky, Crystal Pite, Christopher Wheeldon, Aszure Barton, Guillaume Côté and Robert Binet. The National Ballet tours in Canada, the US and internationally with appearances in Paris, London, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Hamburg, New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Early career

After his training under Gweneth Lloyd at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet,^[1] David began his performing career with England's Metropolitan Ballet. Here he met Celia Franca, who would become the founding Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada. He also shared the stage with Eric Bruhn, Sonia Arova and John Taras, performing Design With Strings, Dances from Galanta and other works in a tour of Scandinavia.

Gweneth Lloyd, OC was a co-founder of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, a ballet teacher and choreographer.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is one of the world's premier dance companies. Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, it is Canada's oldest ballet company and the longest continuously operating ballet company in North America.

Celia Franca, was the founder of The National Ballet of Canada (1951) and its artistic director for 24 years.

Career

He returned to Canada in 1949 and after a brief musical theatre diversion in Vancouver and California, moved to Toronto to join Celia Franca during the formative years of Canada's National Ballet. He became the company’s first principal male dancer in 1951 and remained with the company until 1963.^[1] He used his knowledge of classical dance and stagecraft to build an audience for the company, and introducing Canada's first home-grown principal ballerina, his wife Lois Smith. A brilliant amateur cinematographer, his "in-camera" videos from the 1950s are a significant part of the Celia Franca Tour De Force double DVD set. Adams also played a part in the birth of television in his native country, directing and performing in weekly productions for the fledgling Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2016 census recorded 631,486 people in the city, up from 603,502 in 2011. The Greater Vancouver area had a population of 2,463,431 in 2016, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Vancouver has the highest population density in Canada with over 5,400 people per square kilometre, which makes it the fifth-most densely populated city with over 250,000 residents in North America behind New York City, Guadalajara, San Francisco, and Mexico City according to the 2011 census. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada according to that census; 52% of its residents have a first language other than English. Roughly 30% of the city's inhabitants are of Chinese heritage. Vancouver is classed as a Beta global city.

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Lois Irene Smith was a Canadian ballet dancer and dance teacher.

In 1961, David moved to England, dancing with the London Festival Ballet (1961–69) and Royal Ballet (1970–1976).^[1] During his time with Festival Ballet, he became known in Europe as "Peer Gynt" because of the familiarity of ballet audiences with his appearance in that role. He danced with Margot Fonteyn, Galina Samsova, Toni Lander, Lynn Seymour, Svetlana Beriosova and others during a long and distinctive career which brought him to the Middle East, South America and Japan.

<i>Peer Gynt</i> five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen

Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1867. Written in Danish—the common written language of Denmark and Norway in Ibsen's lifetime—it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed Per Gynt, the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modelled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845.

Dame Margot Fonteyn, DBE, stage name of Margaret Evelyn de Arias, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet, eventually being appointed prima ballerina assoluta of the company by Queen Elizabeth II. Beginning ballet lessons at the age of four, she studied in England and China, where her father was transferred for his work. Her training in Shanghai was with George Goncharov, contributing to her continuing interest in Russian ballet. Returning to London at the age of 14, she was invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School by Ninette de Valois. She succeeded Alicia Markova as prima ballerina of the company in 1935. The Vic-Wells choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, wrote numerous parts for Fonteyn and her partner, Robert Helpmann, with whom she danced from the 1930s to the 1940s.

Galina Samsova is a Russian retired ballet dancer and company director.

David's contributions to "the art" include a body of choreography. Two of his own works, Suite in G and Walpurgisnacht, became part of the repertoire with Festival Ballet. Pas de deux Romantique (1961), Barbara Allen (1961), Pas de Six (1960), The Littlest One (1959), Pas de Chance (1956), Ballet Behind Us (1952) and Masquerade pas de deux (1951) are part of his contributions to the National Ballet of Canada.

"Barbara Allen" is a traditional Scottish ballad; it later travelled to America both orally and in print, where it became a popular folk song. Ethnomusicologists Steve Roud and Julia Bishop described it as "far and away the most widely collected song in the English language—equally popular in England, Scotland and Ireland, and with hundreds of versions collected over the years in North America."

In 1977, David relocated to Edmonton, Alberta, where he turned his talents to choreography and teaching and the occasional performance. He joined the Alberta Ballet Company under Brydon Paige, alternating between the roles of choreographer, ballet master, technical director and principal dancer. In 1980, David played a key role in the creation of both the dance and theatre programmes at Grant MacEwan College. His 1994 version of Don Quixote is unique in its presentation of Quixote's perspective, paralleling a psycho-drama to the dance story.

Alberta Ballet presents its full season in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta. It is Canada's third largest dance company.

Adams also worked to preserve Canadian choreography. In 1983 he worked with Lawrence Adams and Miriam Adams, his brother and sister-in-law, to reconstruct and archive Boris Volkoff’s Red Ears of Corn. ^[2]

Adams retired from active teaching in 1998 and began work on a range of historic, artistic and technical memoirs.

Awards

In 1966 Adams won the Festival de la Opera Gold Medal in Madrid for his performance in Giselle.^[1]

In 2004, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.^[1] On 2 September 2005, he was presented the insignia of Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General Adrienne Clarkson during a private ceremony held near Stony Plain, Alberta.

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References

1 2 3 4 5 Anthony, Pamela (April 3, 2015). "David Adams". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Retrieved April 6, 2016.
↑ Debra Craine; Judith Mackrell (19 August 2010). The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. OUP Oxford. pp. 3–. ISBN 0-19-956344-6.

External links

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[CanEncycDavidAdams-1] 1 2 3 4 5 Anthony, Pamela (April 3, 2015). "David Adams". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Retrieved April 6, 2016.

[CraineMackrell2010-2] Debra Craine; Judith Mackrell (19 August 2010). The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. OUP Oxford. pp. 3–. ISBN 0-19-956344-6.

David Adams
David Adams as Peer Gynt
Born	(1928-11-16)16 November 1928 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Died	24 October 2007(2007-10-24) (aged 78) Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada