Vanessa Clare Harwood | |
---|---|
Born | Cheltenham, England | 14 June 1947
Career | |
Former groups | National Ballet of Canada |
Dances | Swan Lake |
Vanessa Clare Harwood, OC (born 14 June 1947) is a Canadian ballet dancer, choreographer, artistic director, teacher, and actor.
Born in Cheltenham, England, Harwood was one of the first pupils at The National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto when it opened in 1959. [1] She joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1965, became a soloist in 1967, and was a principal dancer from 1970 to 1987. Harwood was celebrated for her portrayal of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake , and came to be known as Superswan because of her mastery of the demanding dual role. [2]
As an actor, Harwood had minor roles in Road to Avonlea and Due South . As a choreographer, she makes an uncredited appearance in the introductory sequence of "Poison à la Carte" a 2002 episode of A Nero Wolfe Mystery .
In 1984, Harwood was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. [3] She is also an Advisory Council member of the Dancer Transition Resource Centre. [4]
As of 1969, she was a resident of the Town of Mississauga. [5]
Karen Alexandria Kain is a Canadian former ballet dancer and was the Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada from 2005 to 2021.
The National Ballet of Canada is a Canadian ballet company that was founded in 1951 in Toronto, Ontario, with Celia Franca, the first artistic director. A company of 70 dancers with its own orchestra, the National Ballet has been led since 2022 by artistic director Hope Muir. 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 dancers and choreographers.
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is Canada's oldest ballet company and the longest continuously operating ballet company in North America.
Veronica Tennant, is a Canadian producer, director, and filmmaker and a former principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada. She was born in London, England and moved to Canada with her parents and sister in 1955. Dancing from the age of four, by the age of 18, she became the youngest person ever to enter the National Ballet of Canada.
Brian Ronald Macdonald was a Canadian dancer, choreographer and director of opera, theatre and musical theatre.
Greta Hodgkinson O.Ont is an American-Canadian ballet dancer. She was a Principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada until she stepped down in 2020. She continues to perform freelance and is Artist-in-Residence of the National Ballet.
Lynn Seymour was a Canadian-born ballerina, mostly associated with the Royal Ballet in London. She was a muse of choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, creating lead roles in Romeo and Juliet, The Invitation, Concerto, Anastasia and Mayerling, among others. She originated lead roles for several ballets by Frederick Ashton, including The Two Pigeons, Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan and A Month in the Country. She also guested with various ballet companies throughout her life.
James Kudelka, OC, is a Canadian choreographer, dancer, and director. He was the artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada from 1996 to 2005, now serving as the National Ballet's artist in residence.
Michael Greyeyes is an Indigenous Canadian actor, dancer, choreographer, director, and educator.
Lata Pada, CM is an Indian-born Canadian choreographer and Bharatanatyam dancer. Pada is the founder and artistic director of Sampradaya Dance Creations, a dance company that performs South Asian dance. She is also the founder and director of Sampradaya Dance Academy, a leading professional dance training institution that is the only South Asian dance school in North America affiliated with the prestigious, UK-based Imperial Society for Teachers of Dancing. Pada founded the dance company in 1990; Pada said that she founded the company because she wanted to showcase Bharatantyam dance as an art form throughout the world. Pada is known as an influential figure in South Asian-style dance in Canada.
Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
Anne Ditchburn is a Canadian ballet dancer, choreographer, and film actress headlining films like 1979's Slow Dancing in the Big City as a dancer with a crippling disease, a film directed by Rocky director John G. Avildsen and co-starring Paul Sorvino. She also played the doomed ballet dancer Laurian Summers in the 1983 cult horror film Curtains with John Vernon and Samantha Eggar. She danced in nearly all of her film credits, and earned a Golden Globe nomination for her work in Slow Dancing in the Big City. In her time with the National she choreographed some of its most distinguished pieces of the 1970s, including Mad Shadows and Kisses, while also heading side company Ballet Revue.
Reid Bryce Anderson is a Canadian ballet dancer, ballet director and artistic director. He danced with the Stuttgart Ballet before returning as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada in 1987. He returned to the Stuttgart Ballet as artistic director in 1996.
Geneviève Salbaing was a Canadian dancer, choreographer and director. She was born in Paris but moved to Casablanca shortly afterwards. She began taking classes at three years old and returned to Paris to continue her training. After dancing with the Washington Concert Ballet for three years, she moved to Montreal and danced for various choreographers. After getting injured she turned her attention to choreography and co-founded Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal. She became its artistic director and opened dance studios in various Canadian cities to train dancers in the ballet-jazz style. She retired as its artistic director in 1992. In 1987 Salbaing was appointed a member of the Order of Canada and in 2012 she became an officer of the National Order of Quebec.
Miriam Elaine Adams is a dancer, choreographer, and dance archivist from Toronto. After performing with the National Ballet of Canada, she co-founded 15 Dance Laboratorium with her husband Lawrence Adams. It was the first theatre to present experimental dance in Toronto. In 1983, Miriam and Lawrence launched Encore! Encore! to document the works of six Canadian choreographers from the 1940s and 1950s, and in 1986 they launched a centre for archiving dance and publishing books called Arts Inter-Media Canada/Dance Collection Danse (DCD).
Donna Feore is a Canadian choreographer and theatre director, most noted for her work with the National Arts Centre and the Stratford Festival.
Tina Pereira is a Trinidadian-Canadian ballet dancer and designer. She joined the National Ballet of Canada in 2001, then the Dutch National Ballet in 2004. She returned to the Canadian company in 2006, and was promoted to principal dancer in 2021.
Zella Wolofsky is a Canadian modern dancer, researcher, columnist, and educator. During her dance career, she danced with various dance companies including Dancemakers, Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers, Burnaby Dance, Laura Dean, and independent choreographers such as Jean Pierre Perrault, Muna Tseng, Elizabeth Chitty as part of 15 Dance Labs, founded by Miriam Adams and Lawrence Adams in Toronto, Canada.