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Karen Kain: The Birthday Ballerina
| Article
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14658 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1988 |
2,274 Words |
| Author
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Gary Parks
Gary Parks is the news editor of Dance Magazine. |
It's hard to believe, but Karen Kain, the Canadian wunderkind who made the dance world sit up and take notice at the Second Moscow International Ballet Competition, will celebrate her twentieth anniversary as a ballerina this season. That famous tourney in Moscow was staged in 1973, and Kain has been a leading light of the National Ballet of Canada almost from the moment she joined the company, in 1969.
So the troupe from Toronto is holding a "birthday party" for Kain at the start of its 1988-89 season. On November 29, dance luminaries from around the world, as well as local representatives of Canada's arts establishment, will gather at O'Keefe Center to pay tribute to one of the country's most prominent cultural celebrities.
Members of the administration of the National Ballet, including artistic directors Valerie Wilder and Lynn Wallis, "have gone out of their way in the last few years to show me how much they appreciate me," says Kain. It was the company's idea to throw a party, admits the dancer, who didn't realize the anniversary was coming up. "What, already?" was her response.
Blossoming Artistry
The ballerina to be honored is not some ancient denizen of the dance but a young woman of thirty-six whose artistry continues to blossom. Yet Kain rose to star status so quickly and has remained firmly and dependably in the front ranks of Canada's largest ballet company for so long that some ballet-goers seem to think she's been around forever. They forget she was barely twenty when ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev plucked her out of the corps
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