I began to study dance and music from an early age with some of Toronto's finest teachers. At age nine I joined St. Simon's Choir, which was directed by Dr. Derek Holman. As I showed an interest in composition and harmony, he began to instruct me privately once a week. At around the same time I began singing, I also began to study ballet with Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Zingg, who founded Opera Atelier the following year. They began using me to do small parts in their productions, (page boys and cupids and the like) and I developed a taste for the theatrical stage. At the age of 13, I had toured with St. Simon's Choir to Norridge Cathedral and Westminster Abbey in England, and performed in numerous performances with Opera Atelier, including the sung role of Cupid in their production of Marco Di Gagliano's La Dafne. During that time I also performed Ahmal in Menotti's Amhal and the Night Visitors with the Amadeus Choir, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in a chamber concert produced by my singer uncle, Carl Strygg, and I sang in a televised christmas concert at Roy Thompson Hall for CTV (at that time, CFTO TV).
Alas the career of a boy-soprano is brief at best, and by the end of my thirteenth year, my voice was swiftly changing. I remember many of my peers being upset by this inevitable progression, but perhaps because I was performing in a dance capacity as well, I felt ready to 'retire'. The next couple of years I continued to study music with a variety of wonderful teachers, although, as I'm sure that they would attest, I was always less than a wonderful student. I had very little self-discipline, and while they could see that I had potential, I was very lazy and practised as little as I possibly could. The one pursuit that saw me becoming more serious, however, was ballet. I would skip piano. I would skip claranet. I often skipped school, and almost never did any homework. But I never skipped ballet class.
It was around this time that I pointed out to my ballet teachers that I had never actually gone to see a ballet. I had been in Operas that involved plenty of dancing, and I had gone to many concerts (I especially enjoyed Baroque and Renaissance music, and frequently attended Tafelmusic Baroque Orchestra's fantastic performances) but although I had been consistently studying ballet I had never attended a performance. That winter I had the opportunity to watch the National Ballet perform Nutcracker at the then O'Keefe Centre in Toronto. At last I knew what a classical ballet looked like on stage. In the months that followed, I began to purchase ballet videos. Anything I could get my hands on, and I watched them as often as I could. I began to video myself doing class, or practising, and to compare my image with that of the dancers I saw in the videos. And although I had progressed to a certain level through my training, for the first time I could see how far yet I had to go. I also had a clear goal to strive for. I asked myself, 'If I have been able to get this far in my ballet training, how far can I take it?'
From the age of 15 until I finished high-school, ballet was the only thing I cared about. One by one I quit all my other lessons: recorder, piano, voice, composition, counterpoint, harmony, music history. As far as I was concerned, I was going to be a dancer, and any other lessons, no matter how interesting I found them, were occupying time I could be using to learn to dance better. Also during this time, Opera Atelier had grown from doing small-scale performances at the Royal Ontario Museum's Theatre, to doing much larger shows, and touring them extensively. I travelled with them during my high-school years to Vancouver in Canada, and France, Germany and the Netherlands in Europe. This added immeasurably to my on stage experience and instilled in me a love of travel which I have never lost.
As the end of my final year of high-school drew near, many people expected me to go to university and to get a degree. Most of my friends from school were headed that route, but I was convinced that I could be a dancer. Even my ballet teachers wanted me to go to university: a dance career is not an easy one, not very financially rewarding, and it would be safer to have some sort of a degree to fall back on. I agreed to apply to Ryerson Polytechnic University and York University because they both had programs in dance. I felt that my dancing still wasn't at a level that would gain me a contract with a major ballet company, but I also wasn't sure that going to university was the way to accomplish my goal.
I had a great stroke of luck when I auditioned for Ryerson. After the audition I had a meeting with the director of the dance program, Nadia Potts, a former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada. She said that she wasn't supposed to announce the results of the audition until she had seen all the applicants, and then the announcements were sent as letters. But she said that she was very impressed with my audition, and that if I really wanted to go to Ryerson, that I would be accepted. But she continued and asked me why I simply didn't go and audition for a company, and find a job in the ballet world? It was a shock to me that someone of Nadia's experience and stature would tell me that I was fit for a company, and I still didn't feel confident enough in my ability, but her words were the momentum I needed to decide that I was on the right course.
I decided not to attend university, but instead to take the next year off and train full-time, and then begin to audition for companies the following year. My teacher Jeannette Zingg often attended open class at George Randalf School of Dance and I began to go with her. It was there that I first took class from Glenn Gilmour and Kevin Pugh. The basis of classical ballet is the same for male and female technique, but the closer one gets to virtuoso technique, the more specialized and differentiated the male and female techniques become. I suppose that Jeannette felt that she had taught me all she could from a woman's perspective, and if I was going to progress further I needed male instruction. She began to invite guest teachers to teach at Atelier Ballet School too, including Glenn Gilmour, Kevin Pugh, and also Peter Ottmann who had just began working at the National Ballet as a ballet master.
I had a second great stroke of luck: one day while taking Glenn Gilmour's class at George Randalf's studio as usual, Mr. Gilmour came up to me and said, "I have a good group of boys down at the National Ballet School. Why don't you come and train with us there?" Of course I agreed, and started my training there the following month.
For most of my training I had been the only boy in my entire ballet school. Other boys would come for a short time and quit, or move away, but there was nobody consistent. So I had no real point of comparison to judge how good I was for my age-group. But I remember walking into studio D of the National Ballet school on my first day, and finding a spot at the barre amongst nine other young men my age. And they were good. Very good. I realized that I had a tremendous amount of catching up to do. But I worked hard, and before too long I had proven my place in the class, and was enjoying the comraderie and competitiveness. Mr. Gilmour has trained a large percentage of the professional male dancers trained in Canada. Conversely, a very large percentage of his students go on to become professional dancers, many of them principal dancers with major companies in Canada and globally. Suffice to say that Mr. Gilmour is a legend in the dance world as a teacher of thoroughness, toughness, and results. I can safely say that without those eight months in his class at the National Ballet School, I would not have become the dancer I am today.
The year drew to a close, and the graduating students of the National Ballet School automatically auditioned for the National Ballet of Canada. However, I was set to perform with Opera Atelier in a tour to Houston, Texas, and miss the audition. So (and this may very well have worked to my advantage) it was arranged that I would go and take company class with the National Ballet before leaving for tour. I was definitely nervous as I made my way to the company's studios, and found a place to stand at the barre amongst the very same dancers that I had now gone to see so many times on stage. The then director of the company, Ried Anderson, taught the class, and being nervous, I had trouble picking up the exercises. But in the center I enjoyed myself, especially the petit-allegro (small jumps) which were my forte. After the class I had a meeting with Ried who said, "Well, I still have to see the other boys from the school, but I liked your dancing so we'll see how it goes."
The tour to Houston was great fun, but the whole time I had the question of whether or not I had a contract with the Ballet hanging in the back of my head. Finally I got back to Toronto, and went to take class again at the National Ballet School, and it turned out that three of my classmates and myself had received apprenticeships with the National Ballet of Canada. I was ecstatic. It wasn't a full corps de ballet contract, but it was a foot in the door. It was a chance to prove myself by dancing on the O'Keefe Centre stage with the company dancers whom I so much admired. And, it was vindication that I had made the right choice, that I did have what it takes to dance professionally.
I joined the company with every intention to dance, and very eager to impress. However, I had one commitment with Opera Atelier that I wanted to honor. In fact, honoring that commitment was conditional to my acceptance of the apprenticeship with the National Ballet. It turned out that the production I had gone to Houston to dance with Opera Atelier, was picked up for a major European tour. Reid Anderson was, luckily for me, very supportive of the opportunity I had, and allowed me to take the time off from apprenticing. So it was that having just got my foot in the door of the National Ballet, I turned around and headed for Europe with Opera Ateleir. We played Bremen Germany, Montreux Switzerland, Citta di Castello Italy, The Proms at Royal Albert Hall in London England, and we were the first people to perform in the Theatre du Chateau Versaille in Versaille France since the French Revolution. Although I was disappointed to miss out on Romeo and Juliet which was touring to Art Park in upstate New York with the National Ballet, you can see why I was not about to cancel my engagement with Opera Atelier.
James Kudelka, the then resident choreographer of the National, was commissioned to create a new version of The Nutcracker. I returned from Europe to find that rehearsals were starting, and that I had a few small parts in the show. I was excited to finally get a chance to get on stage with the National Ballet at the O'Keefe Centre. The production was and still is a lavish affair. The sets and costumes designed by Santo Loquasto cost in the neighborhood of $2 million, and require 17 big-rigs to move. The premiere was a great success, and even though the parts I was dancing were a rooster that lived inside a giant rolling bed/stove, a table-dragging waiter, and the front end of a dancing horse, I was thrilled to be there.
It was to be a year of change for the National Ballet in many ways. The company was preparing to move from the historic St. Lawrence Hall on King St. at Jarvis which had been their home since the early days, to the brand new facilities at 470 Queen's Quay West which would come to be christened The Walter Carsen Centre for the National Ballet of Canada, after Walter Carsen, the company's ever generous patron. But that was not the only change that happened early in 1996: Ried Anderson decided to step down as director. Whether it was the political problems here in Canada or the fact that Marcia Haydee had just stepped down as director of Ried's old company, The Stuttgart Ballet, or a combination of the two, I'm not the one to say. But I can say that it was a shock to all of us dancing for him in the company. Reid invited many of his favorite dancers to go with him to join the Stuttgart Ballet, including my very talented former classmate at the National Ballet School, Eric Gauthier, and part of me hoped that I would been chosen to go too. I had toured with Opera Atelier to Stuttgart a few years previously and had enjoyed the city, but it was not to be.
It was announced that James Kudelka would become the next director of the National Ballet to much surprise among the dancers, most of whom believed that former principal dancer Veronica Tennant was the shoe-in for the position. James was becoming well known as a choreographer in the dance world, having created works on several major companies, but Veronica was a Canadian icon, and for a cash-strapped National Ballet, having someone of her fame at the helm could certainly boost fundraising potential. The reasoning for choosing James Kudelka was given as having a choreographer in charge of the company would lead the company in a new direction, and ultimately give it more of it's own identity, and looking back at James' directorship, that is just what happened.
All the apprentices had meeting with James towards the end of the season, and I was nervous about the result. It was unusual for an apprentice contract to last longer than one year, so if I didn't receive a full corps contract, I would have to go auditioning for other companies. I was already mentally preparing for that possibility; trying to make a list of cities I would like to move to, or companies I would like to dance with. Leaving Toronto of course meant that I would have to move away from my family and friends, but also that I would have to discontinue performing with Opera Atelier. It was tough to rehearse all day with the National and then to trek over to Opera Atelier and rehearse or perform until 10 or 11 at night, but Opera Atelier had always been my home company and the shows were always fantastic. James Kudelka, however, saved me all that trouble, and offered me a full contract. In August of 1996, I officially joined the National Ballet of Canada as a member of the corps de ballet.