The Canadian National Ballet Company made its debut at Toronto’s Eaton Auditorium with a mixed program pulled by founding director Celia Franca from the top of her head. Newly arrived from England, the former Sadler’s Wells dancer had been invited by a group of local balletomanes wanting to establish a classical dance ensemble on Canadian soil. She had just 10 months, so stuck to such crowd-pleasers as Les Sylphides, the peasant pas de deux from Giselle and the rousing Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor, adding in her own Dance of Salome, a piece of overwrought exoticism with her as the lead, and Kay Armstrong’s Étude, hailed by The Globe’s then-theatre critic Herbert Whittaker as “beautifully sculptured.” Franca had done it; she had performed a miracle. A company was born.
Irene Apine applying make-up backstage, 1953. Photo courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Lilian Jarvis, Judie Colpman, Yves Cousineau and Lois Smith in class at Pape Hall, 1954. Photo courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Irene Apine and Jury Gotshalks with Artists of the Ballet in Swan Lake, 1954. Photo by Ken Bell, courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Lois Smith, Celia Franca, and David Adams at a costume fitting for Gala Performance, 1953. Photo by Ken Bell, courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Artists of the Ballet in Les Sylphides from the wings, 1955. Photo by Ken Bell courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Penelope Winter and Joanne Nisbet with fans backstage at Princess Aurora, 1960. Photo courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Celia Franca and David Adams in Giselle. Photo by Ken Bell courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives
Lois Smith, Prima Ballerina, of the National Ballet of Canada dances with a small girl in Washington, January 1957. Photo by Ken Bell courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada