In February 1948, an eighteen-year-old Jean Orr danced Giselle in Ottawa — the first full production this country had ever seen, with a full orchestra in the pit. She went on to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and decades later became a founder and the first president of Ballet BC.

Ashley Daniel Foot sat down with her in her West Vancouver living room, alongside Joshua Beamish, who has just founded Ballet Vancouver and opens its first season this month. Jean describes choosing to die by the sword rather than of a heart attack, because at eighteen she wanted to die dramatically. She remembers touring Nova Scotia with no backdrop and running around the outside of the theatre mid-performance. And she explains, almost in passing, the night she put her mortgage-free house up as collateral so a choreographer would be paid and the show could go on.

Josh had never heard any of it. You can hear him find out.

Ballet Vancouver's Balanchine's Apollo & Other Works plays the Vancouver Playhouse September 11 and 12, with pre-show talks before all three performances. The season closes with @giselle, May 13–15, 2027. balletvancouver.com

Chapters

  • 00:00 — Two people, forty years apart
  • 01:04 — Highland dancing on the prairies
  • 01:34 — A land grant, a motorcycle, and the Qu'Appelle Valley
  • 02:04 — "My absolute lifesaver of life"
  • 03:00 — Josh starts tap dancing at two
  • 04:00 — Nesta Toumine and the Ballets Russes
  • 04:47 — Ottawa, February 1948
  • 06:35 — Nobody called it the first — until Toronto did
  • 07:16 — "I wanted to die dramatically"
  • 08:49 — Josh hears the story for the first time
  • 10:33 — Winnipeg, no bus fare, and Pincher Creek
  • 12:54 — Building Ballet BC with David Y. H. Lui
  • 14:30 — The car raffle, and the house
  • 16:12 — The 2026 equivalent
  • 17:13 — Is dance the most fragile art?
  • 17:45 — Balanchine's Apollo, and Heather Ogden comes home
  • 19:08 — Seventy-eight years apart

Guests
Jean Orr — dancer; founder and first president of Ballet BC
Joshua Beamish — choreographer; founder and Artistic Director, Ballet Vancouver


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