What's On
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
BRIGHT LIGHTS: An Evening with EVELYN HART
In conversation James Neufeld
presented by Market Hall Performing Arts
Celebrated Canadian dancer and former Peterborough resident Evelyn Hart will share stories of her life and career in an informal evening of conversation with Trent professor and prominent dance historian James Neufeld.
An Evening with Evelyn Hart is presented as part of the Market Hall’s Bright Lights series, an ongoing program of on-stage interviews with great artists from the Peterborough area. The evening will feature Hart and Neufeld in conversation as well as a selection of video clips of Hart’s performances taken from various stages of her extensive career.
“We’re very proud to bring Miss Hart back to the city as part of our Bright Lights series,” said Market Hall general manager Bill Kimball. “This is a chance for Peterborough residents to hear first-hand about the life she led after leaving here as a teenager.”
Hart, who danced for 30 years with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and has won acclaim around the world for her dramatic intensity and compelling on-stage presence, lived in Peterborough between the ages of five and 14. She and her twin sister, Eleanor, attended Queen Mary Public School and started high school at PCVS before the family moved to the London area, explains older brother John Hart, now solicitor for the City of Peterborough.
“Someone – it might have been the University Women’s Club – brought in a performance from the National Ballet when Ev was quite young,” John said. “Evelyn saw the show and knew from that moment what it was she wanted to do. She started taking dance lessons here in Peterborough from a young woman named Wanda Ross.”
After moving with her parents to the London area in 1970, Evelyn studied at the Dorothy Carter School of Dance and did a brief stint at the National Ballet School before settling in at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.
She joined the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 1976, was promoted to soloist in 1978, and just a year later advanced to principal dancer. Hart performed with that company for almost three decades, until her retirement in 2005.
She has been hailed across Canada and around the globe for her timeless interpretations of all the classic ballerina roles, including the starring roles in Giselle, Romeo And Juliet, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker.
Hart also danced as a guest artist with a number of other companies, including the Bayerische Staatsballett in Munich and the National Ballet of Canada. Her performances in the starring roles of classic ballets such as Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake and Giselle won her recognition and praise from some of the world’s toughest dance critics.
Hart was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1983 and was elevated to the rank of Companion in 1994. She received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in 2001 and was inducted into the Order of Manitoba in 2007. Her life and work are the subject of Max Wyman’s best-selling biography, Evelyn Hart: An Intimate Portrait. Hart was also the subject of several films, including the 1992 television documentary Moment of Light: The Dance of Evelyn Hart.
James Neufeld, who will host the Market Hall event, is a professor of English at Trent University and a prominent dance writer and historian. He is the author of Power to Rise: The Story of the National Ballet of Canada, and of numerous reviews and articles about dance which have been published in Canadian and international journals.
About Bright Lights
Bright Lights is a series of live
on-stage conversations with great artists who live in, or hail from,
the Peterborough area.
The series is based on Market Hall's Greatest
100 in the Performing Arts, a centennial project for the City
of Peterborough that named the 100 most outstanding performing artists
in its history.
Proceeds from Bright Lights events contribute to Market Hall's artistic
programming as well as to the Bright Lights Award, an educational
bursary given out at each event to a young artist working in the same
field as the featured guest.