The Banff Centre

2009 Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award winner Heather Myers

Clouds cover the mountains in Banff, but inside a dance rehearsal studio, Clifford E. Lee 2009 award recipient Heather Myers’s smile and deft touch with five dancers transports us into another world. She is tweaking a pas de deux in her new creation, Dedications, inspired by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet for Strings in C minor No. 8 Opus 110 and the Elegy movement from Quartet for Strings in F minor No.11.

The generous and unique benefits of the Clifford E. Lee award for emerging choreographers are: $5,000, six weeks residency at the Banff Centre plus a choice of professional dancers in the dance program, lighting and costume designers, rehearsal and production facilities at the Centre and a première in front of a discerning audience.

Myers chose the title Dedications because the word has so many connotations. Her work is partly a dedication to the composer and all other artists who have persevered against the odds and whose works have taken the art world forward. Shostakovich wrote the pieces during a dark personal time, when he learned of his failing health and enforced enlistment in the communist party.

Her piece is partly dedicated to the young artists in the dance program and their dedication to moving forward through their individual contributions.

“I don’t like to say too much about the piece before people see it because I don’t want them to read too much into it,” says Myers. “I would rather have them interpret it how they want. Because I think that is part of art too — the interpretation of the audiences.”

As a former Calgarian, returning to Banff is meaningful to Myers — a former participant in the Banff dance program and a former member of Alberta Ballet. Now, as a seven-year veteran of Boston Ballet and more recently a choreographer, Myers has experience and expertise to reflect on the difference between being a dancer and a choreographer. In the dancer role, Myers feels that she communicates more directly with the audience — she is an interpreter. But as a choreographer she is inspired by other influences. “I realize as a choreographer what a collaborative art it is. You have to have all the elements and without all those aspects coming together, you won’t have a successful work — what you had imagined.”

“As a choreographer, it is a much headier, intellectual experience and as a dancer it is experiential, where you are actually in the movement doing it,” says Myers.

“So as a choreographer, once you’ve taught the movement, that is the extent of your job technically. I like to work with the dancers, especially the young dancers here because they are so enthusiastic you can work with them to make the interpretation what you want.”

Myers says nothing can replace the feeling of performing for thousands of people. “The feeling of being onstage is very unique. The adrenaline rush and the nakedness of it, you are so exposed and so giving of yourself. The contrast as a choreographer is that you have put all your ideas and some private thoughts into this piece; I feel you are so much more responsible for the piece as a choreographer than as a dancer. It’s a very vulnerable position to be in.

“I would like them [the audience] to know that I am really doing it for them. That’s my ultimate motivation for doing it. It’s not fame or being onstage or being a glamorous ballerina or glamorous artist. It’s because I really want to affect people.”

Dedications attempts to do that by going from being dark to being optimistic in a piece Myers describes as “more of a poem than a short story.” Ballet-based with some organic movement, the piece will be presented, she says, as a “black-and-white photograph around the 1930s.”

Myers credits her Canadian background with stamping her with the philosophy that “if you do good work, it will pay off in the end.” Her recent honour reinforces that.

And as a teacher, pharmacist and home-builder, Clifford E. Lee would likely agree. Lee was an enterprising Albertan with a deeply felt commitment to humanitarian and environmental concerns. He was active in politics and wrote for a political newspaper. His desire to provide affordable housing prompted his early involvement in a company that became one of the largest development entities in North America. When it went public, Lee transferred the bulk of his personal fortune into the Clifford E. Lee Foundation founded in 1969.

The choreography award was established in 1978 and its recipients, from all over North America, have become internationally renowned choreographers.