IN PERFORMANCE The National Ballet/Alberta Ballet mixed program runs at Toronto's Four Seasons Centre from tomorrow through June 22 (416-345-9595).
National Ballet of Canada principal dancer Jennifer Fournier is retiring in a trail of rose petals, in a homage to Isadora Duncan.
Her farewell performance is part of the much-anticipated Luminato Festival program, also featuring the National and Alberta Ballet, which opens tomorrow. The latter is presenting Jean Grand-Maître's much-hyped The Fiddle and the Drum set to Joni Mitchell songs. The bookend National works are Harald Lander's Études and William Forsythe's the second detail.
Tucked in the middle is Fournier with Sir Frederick Ashton's seven-minute long Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan. The piece, for solo dancer and piano, was choreographed for Canadian-born, London-based ballerina Lynn Seymour in 1976 for Ballet Rambert's 50th-anniversary gala.
According to Seymour, Ashton actually saw Duncan dance to a Brahms waltz in 1921 in London, where she carried rose petals in her hands that streamed behind her as she moved across the stage. It was an image that made a life-long impression, and as a tribute to the American-born, modern-dance pioneer, Ashton ends his ballet with the same Brahms waltz and the rose petals. The coral pink colour of the dancer's body suit is the exact shade of Duncan's costume as Ashton remembered it, and, à la Duncan, the piece is performed in bare feet.
Seymour came to Toronto to teach the dance to Fournier. Seymour was 37 at the premiere and Fournier is 39. "This is a dance of experience that should be interpreted by a mature ballerina," Seymour says. "Jennifer has wonderful physicality, but she is also very dramatic and musical. She has a good intelligence so she understands that the work looks deceptively simple but requires enormous output of energy.
Unlike the control of ballet, this piece is about risk, and Jennifer has the courage to make the dance her own."
Says Fournier: "Ashton has created a poem to Isadora's extraordinary spirit and charisma. The ballet reflects Duncan's meaty, muscular style that is very hard on the legs. On the other hand, you have to look lighter than air and dance with abandon. It is a poem about a journey through life. To interpret the piece, I'm reaching deep inside to find the Isadora that lives in us all - an artist who is free and wild and strong."
A different kind of courage was needed to make the wrenching decision to retire from dance. Fournier has always been a realist. As she points out, to keep in shape, a dancer, particularly a veteran one, needs to be busy, and fewer new works were coming her way. With a narrowing repertoire of what she could perform and still look her best, her career was clearly in its twilight years. "Because we start so early, we live a lifetime of dance in a brief span of time," she says. "When we are at the end of our profession, the rest of the world is coming into its prime. We have a half a lifetime left and it's scary to look into that void." Fournier also has a young family. She is married to journalist Marty Cej and the couple have two children, Olivia, 7, and Henry, 10 months.
"I didn't plan to have a second child before I retired," Fournier says. "It is a different energy to both dance and have two kids. Part of my decision to leave is guilt about not being there for Henry."
For National cognoscenti, the much-admired Fournier has always been the epitome of an intelligent artist blessed with wonderfully clean technique.
She makes ballet look effortless, whether in classical or contemporary works. Her performances radiate truth because she can connect the dots, merging movement and choreographic intent seamlessly together. In story ballets, her characters come alive. In thematic or abstract ballets, meaning is crystallized, and the dancer and the music are one.
Erik Bruhn took Ottawa-born Fournier into the National as an apprentice in 1984 when she was 17 and fresh from the National Ballet School. She joined the corps de ballet in 1986, and was promoted to second soloist in 1990, first soloist in 1994 and principal dancer in 1997.
When she was 19, Glen Tetley cast her as the prostitute in La Ronde and it is at that point, Fournier says, that she finally believed that she would have a career. The ballerina also had her bad times, however. She was not artistic director Reid Anderson's cup of tea and languished during his tenure. "If it hadn't been for the ballets of James Kudelka," she says, "my career would have been over years ago."
Fournier looks to the future with cautious optimism. "Since I was 8, I have seen the world only through the prism of ballet. Now, I can begin to learn about things I never had time for, like history, theology, women's studies, and writing. I don't have any skills but dance, but I can bring to my new life the things that dance has taught me - commitment, discipline and working to a goal.
"I'm ready for whatever lies ahead."