Friday, February 22, 2008


At age 65 I am late into appreciating dance. I saw the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's Evelyn Hart in 1995 and I was smitten by her and with dance. At first it was ballet. Then I expanded my taste to modern ballet. From there I progressed further into modern dance, Butoh and contact improvisational with the wonderful Susan Elliott. But I will usually pass at watching tap dancing. I may be allergic to top hats and canes.

Through my 13 years of seeing dance of which the last five I have been often occompanied by Rebecca who is now 10. Lauren, 5, has seen her fair share the last year and a half.

There are dancers of the modern kind like Alison Denham, Crystal Pite, Emily Molnar and Cori Caulfield. But there are very few that I would define as ballerinas. A ballerina for me has to be graceful but also haughty, almost patrician. And the only dancer that has ever fit that category for me in Vancouver has been Adrea Hodge whom I first saw around 1995 when she danced with Ballet BC. It was perhaps because of her and others like Simone Orlando that Rebecca finally started taking dance classes at Arts Umbrella when she was 5.



To my delight her first teacher was Andrea Hodge who had just retired from Ballet BC. Rebecca was in Andrea Hodge's first class. I asked Hodge to come to my studio to pose with Rebecca. This photograph represents a little bit of that transfer from a person to another that is one of the wonders of being human. And, who knows, perhaps some day Rebecca will be a ballerina.