THE HIGH PRIEST OF CANADIAN BALLET
Posted by Deirdre | Filed under Blog
Fernand Nault would have devoted himself completely to God had it not been for Fred Astaire. The American hoofer’s tap dancing utterly beguiled him, inspiring him to give himself over to dance instead. Nault eventually became a ballet dancer and then a celebrated choreographer for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, his artistic home until his death in 2008. Nault created many works for the Montreal company, including a French-Canadian version the Nutcracker which is performed to this day. But it is Nault’s 1970 production of Tommy that remains his biggest legacy. His dance version of the Who’s rock opera toured the world at the time, putting Les Grands— and Canadian ballet in general — on the international map. For this and other achievements, Canada’s postal service last year put Nault on a commemorative stamp, issued as part of its legends in Canadian series which also included the former National Ballet of Canada dancer Karen Kain. The stamp captures him in rapturously in flight, reaching for the heavens. Seeing it, I remembered the time I interviewed him in 1990 for The Globe and Mail, when I was the paper’s dance critic. That’s when I first learned how his strict Catholic family intended him to enter the Church, which he would have done had it not been for the tap dancing he caught sight of at the movies, and then practiced surreptitiously in the streets, beyond his family’s scrutiny. Dance for him was the ultimate revelation and he ended up devoting his life to it, a true disciple of the art. He recounts the story better than I. So here (from the archives) is Nault in his own words, speaking of the heaven he found in stylized movement.
Montreal choreographer Fernand Nault was raised in a strict Catholic household by parents who wanted him to become a priest. As his 25-year association with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens attests, he never did conform to his family’s wishes and become a man of the cloth, but he never lost sight of the spiritual values of his youth.
“Many of my ballets have overtures of religion and ceremony,” Nault said recently at Place des Arts, where a gala performance celebrating his quarter century with Les Grands got underway last night. “I believe in human relations and human kindness and I believe very much in bringing satisfaction to people who need to find peace through movement and through the body.”
The 68-year-old former dancer will be honored again tonight with a program of works created for Les Grands: Carmina Burana, Symphonie de psaumes, Quintessence, Pas d’epoque, Ceremonie, Incoherence, Liberte Temperee, Le Temps apres and La Scouine. Tommy, the rock-ballet that put Les Grands on the international map in the 1970s, will not be included in the retrospective because, Nault says, the work is dated. Hommage a Fernand Nault will be repeated again next Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Place des Arts.
While religion feeds him ideas for his ballets, it almost prevented him from becoming involved in dance. “In my days, dance was looked on by the religious not very well,” he recalls in his accented English. “It was considered a sin to dance. But nothing would stop me.”
Nault describes his family as humble and ordinary, with neither parent knowing anything about the theatre or about art. He discovered dance on the street one day when he spied a boy tap dancing outdoors. “I was about 12 years old and all I can remember is that it was a beautiful June evening and that I didn’t have any tap shoes.” He shuffled as long as he could in his street shoes until he heard about a man who was teaching tap in a downtown studio. “I went to study tap but then I saw ballet,” he says, pausing and opening his eyes as wide as saucers, “And I thought that’s what I want to do.”
After studying for about six years, he saw the celebrated Ballets Russe de Basil on tour in Montreal and decided he, too, should join a dance company. He went to New York (his mother, warming to the idea of her son as a dancer, said he had better get a job where the pickings were plenty).
In 1944, he auditioned for American Ballet Theatre, in front a daunting audience of company members that included ballerina Alicia Markova and choreographer Anton Dolin. To his surprise, he was asked to join. Originally contracted for six weeks, he ended up staying 22 years. “They were wonderful years,” he sighed, “because we did a lot of touring and we performed all the time and had great joy when dancing. We must have been sloppy technicians, but maybe in those days technique was not as important as it is today. In other words, it was not our main goal. We loved performing. We loved dancing.”
When Nault returned to Montreal he wasn’t intending to join Les Grands Ballets. He went to a party and met Les Grands founder Ludmilla Chiriaeff, who marvelled that he was a Montrealer doing so well in New York. “She said to me that she would love to work with me one day and asked if I would teach class. We decided to meet the next day at the Windsor Hotel for breakfast and she told me what she was hoping to accomplish. I liked her very much and felt tremendous respect for her artistic standards.” His first ballet for Les Grands, the Nutcracker, sealed his association with the company; now, 25 years later, he can’t think of being anywhere else.
“Les Grands has been a source of inspiration for me, it has given me everything I’ve needed on a silver platter. It gave me a solid brass curtain for my ballet Ceremonie, which is 20 years old; it gave me dancers to create my ballets.”
Winner of the Centennial Medal in 1967 and the Order of Canada in 1977 (both for his contribution to Canadian ballet), Nault says if he could live his life over, he would still be involved in dance.
“I must say my life did evolve, from dancer to teacher to choreographer, and I got to do all those things without the trauma so many dancers go through. I’d say I’ve been fortunate.”