Peaking in Guelph

Guelph Tribune, Friday, September 6, 2002
By Doug Hallet

Time is pressing in on David Earle, a top name in Canada 's modern dance world who now makes Guelph his artistic home.

Turning 63 this month, he's at a stage in his life where he can't afford to wait for some things, and he's willing to take risks to make things happen.

One of those risks for Earle, who moved to Elora from Toronto six years ago and last year made Guelph his artistic base, is a show his company will present on the River Run Centre's main stage on Thursday Sept. 19 at 8 p.m. Made up of four of his dance works which have never been performed together, the show is being produced by Dancetheatre David Earle, a company he formed in 1996.

"One of the most forbidden acts is to self-produce in the arts," he says with a wry smile. "But time is flying and I want to show Guelph the work that most expresses my work as a creator."

He adds, with characteristic quiet humor: "If we lose our shirts we can always go to Value Village ."

His own age and the advancing ages of two of the show's other main stars - Helen Jones of Toronto and Suzette Sherman of Erin, who teaches at Earle's downtown studio in Guelph - was a factor in the decision to forge ahead with such a show now.

"I feel we are at the peak of our powers as dance artists, and we should be before the public," he says.

The Sept. 19 show will also serve as a place for Earle to officially receive the $6,000 Jacqueline Lemieux Prize for 2002 from the Canada Council for the Arts. The prize, awarded annually to the most deserving applicant in the Canada Council's program for grants to dance professionals, isn't the most lucrative prize that the oft-decorated Earle has won. But he says it's special, because it's decided by a jury of dance artists and also because it's named in memory of an arts administrator who made a huge contribution to dance in Canada before dying too young of cancer.

Earle, who co-founded the well-known Toronto Dance Theatre in 1968, and was an artistic director and a choreographer there, decided to risk making a new start in 1996 when he left the company, moved to Elora and founded Dancetheatre David Earle. Since then, he has created 27 new dance works. Most were commissioned for performance with area groups such as Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the Penderecki String Quartet and, last spring, the Guelph Chamber Choir.

At the same time he commuted regularly into Toronto to teach dance along with Sherman, until they decided battling traffic on the 401 was too draining. Now they teach advanced dance classes at Temple Studios in Guelph, while Michael English teaches beginner and intermediate classes.  English, of Elora, also handles administration at the studio and dances with Earle's company.

The promotional material for the Sept. 19 show describes Earle as an 'artistic giant,' but Earle demurs - on technical grounds. "When I saw the news release I asked, would it be okay to say a diminutive dance giant?  They said no.  But it would be more accurate," Earle says with a big smile.  He says he's five-foot-eight , "but I've probably shrunk to 5'7'' by now."

Earle's quiet humour is mixed with other comments reflecting quiet dismay during an interview in his studio, as he refers to financial and other difficulties of doing his sort of work in an often crass part of the world.

When he left Toronto in 1996 he sold his house "so I would have something to live on" and moved into an apartment in a beautifully situated 19 th-century building in Elora.  A new owner of his apartment building has made changes that have disturbed him deeply, though.  Worse yet, a controversial casino-racetrack now being built in Elora probably spells the end of his time in that town.

"I will leave when I can," he says, "which is sad because I have good friends there."  He'd like to move to Guelph, but the high cost of housing here is a deterrent.

Temple Studios, which has second- and third-floor space on Quebec Street across from the Bookshelf, has taught about 150 dance students since it opened in June 2001.  This includes 15 from five provinces who attended the studio's first summer school this year.  The studio also offers non-dance classes such as yoga taught by Kristen Honey.  But as a business enterprise it's been a struggle.

"Temple studios doesn't pay for itself yet," he notes. “"We are desperately in need of support, that's for sure.  But the important things have happened. Dancers have come forward in the community who are interested in serious training in this art."

The kind of support he'd like includes people buying tickets to the Sept. 19 show, of course.  But he would also like volunteers to help with a variety of jobs at the studio, and "it would be wonderful to find some patronage, because government support for the arts is so limited."

Five of his students are among the 15 dancers who will perform Sept. 19 at the River Run, which Earle calls "one of the most beautiful stages in Canada."

They are Bea Benian, Michelle Mummery and Aleta Crawley, all of Guelph, and Heather Roy and Stephen Filipowicz of Kitchener-Waterloo.

The show's music will be played by the Penderecki String Quartet, a well-known group made up of four musicians based at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo.  He calls them "brilliant musicians with a tremendous appetite for innovation and theatre."

Earle says he decided to make Guelph his artistic base largely because he feels at home here.

"I'm an architecture addict, which is really why Elora appealed to me initially.  It was like a piece of Europe.  And I feel Guelph is still intact as a historic urban centre."

The Bookshelf, which has been one of his favourite spots for years, "is a kind of mecca for those who have as appetite for existence and for the cultural expression of existence," he adds.  From Elora "I would come to the bookshelf for a fix of civilization."

Guelph, he says, "has a community that reminsds me of the West Coast, Victoria particularly," with an abundance of "socially conscientious and creative residents."

As well, "the scale is very good for the individual here."

Finding the right space for a studio sealed his decision to devote himself to Guelph, he says.  It's above a shop run by Michelle McMillan who co-founded the studio.

It's called Temple Studios not only because it's in the Masonic Temple building, Earle says.  As well as that, "we were interested in certain values that need reinforcement in our society, such as dignity, respect and commitment. It's hard to say you are creating a sacred space.  But on the other hand, by keeping away the elements that don't have spiritual concerns, we hope that what is left is sacred."

The studio has a distinctive point of view, he says. "I think I am teaching the recovery of instinct.  I think all of us have surrendered our instincts to an enormous degree to fit into society, with its values and its uses to us.  I think the arts are about identity."

Earle says he doesn't plan to get involved in the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival in spite of similarities in dance form.  Catrina Von Radecki and Janet Johnson, co-artistic directors of the festival now in its fifth year, "are pioneers ," he says, "and I think they offer a great diversity of dance artists to the Guelph public. It can only be healthy when there is a place for young artists to take all the risks thet want to take creatively.  It is essential that the Festival exist and thrive."

However, he said, he's at a point in his life "where I want to concentrate on my own vision" rather than doing any more collaborating, something he's done a lot of in his artistic life.

He timed his Sept. 19 show to be at a different time of year from the dance festival, which is held each April.  That will also apply to any future dance shows he arranges, he says, noting that if all goes well he'd like to bring some of Canada's top dance acts to the River Run.

Earle says that seeing the Bolshoi Ballet in Toronto in the late 1950s changed his life, convincing him to drop his radio and TV studies at Ryerson and join the National Ballet School, while working at the same time with a modern dance company.

Putting his work on stage at the River Run on Sept.19 is being done partly in the hope of unleashing the artistic potential of at least one audience member, he says.

"If you are serious about your work, you have to put it in front of the world, because it may create a great artist."

Latest award one of many

David Earle, who brings what is being described as international calibre Canadian contemporary dance to the stage of the River Run Centre on Sept. 19, has won a sting of awards during an illustrious career.

Earle, who has created more than 100 works in 30 years as a choreographer, will be awarded the $6,000 Canada Council of the Arts Jacqueline

Lemieux Prize during the Sept. 19 show. In 1987, he received both the Clifford E. Lee Award from the Banff Festival of the Arts and the Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new Choreography for a work called Sunrise.

In 1988, along with the two Toronto Dance Theatre co-founders, he received the Toronto Arts Award for Performing Arts. In May 1994, he won the Jean A. Chalmers Award for Distinction in Choreography.

An Order of Canada recipient in 1996, he's also won a Gemini Award and a Grand Prix award in France for dance choreography on film.