Fifteen years ago, in an unpretentious basement dance studio, Les Ballets-Jazz de Montreal was created - the collective brain-child of a cosmopolitan trio: a Hungarian immigrant (Eva von Gencsy), a Parisian expatriate (Genevieve Salbaing), and a neo-Canadian of Haitian origin (Eddy Tousssaint). All three had been linked to jazz dance as it was being exclusively taught in Canada at that time by von Gencsy, a ballerina formerly with both the Royal Winnipeg ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.
Genevieve Salbaing, also originally a ballerina, had interrupted her career when she followed her husband, a well-known businessman, to Montreal. After a brief stint with Les Ballets Chiriaeff (later Les Grands ballets Canadiens), she retired from the stage for family reasons. Years later she became interested in jazz through von Gencsy, who then approached her to help shape the fledgling company.
The Toussaint Touch
Eddy Toussaint, the last of the founding trio, is better known today for his own present ballet company. His stay with Les Ballets-Jazz was brief. He had discovered jazz dance through the teaching of von Gencsy, thus helping to make it become prominent in French Canada during the seventies. Toussaint, as one of her eager students, had formed a semiprofessional company named Retros with the help of a Canada ManPower grant. Von Gencsy, moreover, had a nucleus of professional dancers who performed with her on numerous television shows. These two groups were to form the basis of the new company with Salbaing as administrator, fund-raiser, and organizer.
The artistic mandate the company gave itself was to promote jazz dance and jazz ballet even though the company's original name was the all-inclusive "Les Ballets-Jazz Contemporains." The latter part of the title was soon dropped, to be replaced later by "de Montreal," partly because of the numerous foreign tours the company was making and for purposes of identification.
In 1972, Canada's first jazz ballet company was formed. A year later Toussaint left over artistic differences, soon forming his own present company. In turn, von Gencsy herself withdrew from the board. Since 1978 the company's sole artistic director has been Genevieve Salbaing.
The history of Les Ballets-Jazz is fraught with various tribulations. One of the company's greatest difficulties has been denial of financial aid from Canada's biggest funding agency, the Canada Council (comparable to America's National Endowment for the Arts). In the early days of the company, the Canada Council awarded small project grants for the specific creation of a new work. Yet the council repeatedly denied Les Ballets-Jazz any operating grants, as jazz dancing does not fall under either of the two eligible categories: ballet or modern dance. Furthermore, the council regarded the artistic product of the company as being too commercially oriented.
Fortunately, however, with the help of Salbaing's own contacts and the undeniable popularity of this dance form in Quebec, the company has managed to keep afloat. It has been, and still is, Canada's most active touring company, spending close to eight months a year on the road. It has toured on four continents on more than one occasion, and completed a recent Far Eastern tour which
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