Canadian dance pioneer dead at 87
Grant Strate, a pioneering and influential figure in Canadian dance, died Monday evening at his Vancouver home after a short battle with cancer. He was 87.
Strate was a charter member of the National Ballet of Canada in 1951and later its first resident choreographer. Although none of his modernist-influenced works for the company has survived, in the 1950s and ’60s they drew critical plaudits, and occasional condemnation, for their boldly progressive esthetic.
He also served as assistant to founding artistic director Celia Franca and was instrumental in the National Ballet’s 1964 acquisition of John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet, which became one of the company’s signature works for almost half a century.
In 1970, Strate founded York University’s department of dance, the first of its kind in Canada.
“The founding of the dance department at York was a major achievement,” says Christopher House, a York alumnus from the Strate era and, since 1994, artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre. “It altered the course of Canadian dance in ways that are still playing out.”
Strate became the champion of a new generation of contemporary dance artists struggling to gain recognition and funding.
Strate moved to Vancouver in 1980 to direct the interdisciplinary Centre for the Arts at Simon Fraser University. He remained on staff as director of Simon Fraser’s Summer Institute of the Contemporary Arts until retiring as a professor emeritus in 1994.