The Company

“To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful… This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.”
                                                                                Agnes De Mille

Company as it’s known by the Canterbury dance students gives you the opportunity to show your soul – to show who you are as a choreographer and as a performer. In grade twelve the students in the dance program have the extreme privilege to take the Dance Company course linked with the dance program at Canterbury High School.

In grade nine, we are first introduced to “Dance Night” and we see the result of four years of hard work – the beautiful dances and dancers, the settings, the audience, it sets the stage and raises the ante – it drives us to complete the program to look forward to the grade 12 Dance Company course so that one day, it is our “Dance Night”.

When we finally have the opportunity to take this course in grade 12 – when the opportunity knocks on your door it is an opportunity of a life time – it opens your eyes and shows dance like it has never really been seen before, from a career point of view. Company in its entirety gives the outlook of dance to be an actual career; it shows how to be a good choreographer, how to be a good dancer, and how to work in the theatre with both practical and theoretical knowledge. It is like you are apart of a real dance/theatrical company – through this course you will grow immensely as a dancer, as a person and as an artist. This course progresses for the full year and takes place during different points of the day with rehearsals for pieces for company taking place, before school, during lunch and after school to the weekly classes on Wednesdays, the vast time you put into this course makes you appreciate every detail you are part of. You feel so involved and amazing to be apart of something so significant. It makes you appreciate each dance piece even more because you see what goes into it, the rehearsals, the long nights and early mornings and all of the original choreography composed by the choreographer.

As a dancer in the program for four years you look forward to creating your own dance piece, having it shown in a showing and then in dance night.  Your dance piece is four years in the making, a lot of hard work and ever changing ideas. However, with all that hard work the rewards in the end comes when you see your finished product and hear the applause of the audience for your piece, it is a feeling that is indescribable and so very wonderful.

By: Jennifer Baird