LONG LIFE IN DANCE
Choreographer’s rich legacy
Montreal-born choreographer Brian Macdonald, who once led Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Royal Swedish Ballet and other major dance companies, died on Nov. 29 at his home in Stratford, Ont. He was 86. He had been ill with cancer for the past two years.
In addition to his ballet work, Macdonald won acclaim for creating or staging ballets, operas and Broadway musicals, including his work for 16 seasons at the Stratford Festival.
While an undergraduate at McGill University in the 1940s, Macdonald began ballet studies with Gerald Crevier and Elizabeth Leese. In 1951, Macdonald was among the founding dancers of the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto, but an arm injury halted his dance career two years later. In 1957, back at McGill, he directed a hit satirical revue, My Fur Lady, that toured many cities across Canada with popular success.
His breakthrough as a serious choreographer came in 1959 with his ballet The Darkling, for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. He became the company’s resident choreographer, creating works varying from a farcical ballet, Pas d’Action, to historical drama, Rose Latulippe, a 1966 full-length ballet based on the Quebec legend of a girl’s meeting with the devil.
Some of his works, including While the Spider Slept (1966), promoted social causes. His dances showed a readiness to mix classical and popular genres, a trait that would draw popular audience response to his later work in musical theatre. Together, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Macdonald’s choreographies rose to international prominence.
Appointed artistic director of the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1964, Macdonald went on to lead Harkness Ballet in New York (1967-68), the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv (1971-72) and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (1974-77).
“When he first came to Les Grands Ballet Canadiens, he was a very hard taskmaster,” says Vincent Warren, a star dancer with the company in the 1970s for whom Macdonald created a farewell piece, Adieu Robert Schumann. “The technique level had gone down and he shook us up.
“After three years, the level was excellent. He brought new Balanchine works into the repertory. Brian’s Tam Ti Delam became a signature work for the company for years and years. There was his great pas de deux for ‘skaters’ — not on ice, of course, but we were tossing the ballerina in the air with twists. A great success. He really rejuvenated Les Grands.”
Other company dancers, however, were less pleased with Macdonald’s managerial style and he left Les Grands under tension. He returned nonetheless to create works for the company, including one of the recognized classic works of Canadian choreography, Double Quartet, to music by Franz Schubert and R. Murray Schafer.
Schafer was one of many Canadian artists whom Macdonald sought out as collaborators. Among other composers who worked with him were Pierre Mercure, Harry Freedman and Gilles Vigneault. His design collaborators included Ted Bieler, Robert Prévost and François Barbeau.
Macdonald’s opera productions for the Canadian Opera Company, the National Arts Centre and other major theatres were widely praised. But perhaps he gave greatest audience joy during 16 seasons at the Stratford Festival, where he staged 19 operetta and musical theatre productions.
His 1987 staging of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, with designs by Susan Benson, won the Dora Mavor Moore Award — and its Broadway incarnation earned Macdonald Tony nominations for choreography and direction.
Macdonald was a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 2008, he received Canada’s highest award for stage arts, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Macdonald’s first wife, Olivia Wyatt, died in 1959. In 1964, he married the Swedish ballerina Annette av Paul, later a leading ballerina with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens who inspired and danced in several of his works. She survives him as does their son, Wyatt.