Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s artistic director to step down in 2025, ending 50-year career – Winnipeg | 24CA News

The longtime creative director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet says he’ll step down from the position in 2025, ending a 50-year profession with Canada’s oldest ballet firm.

Andre Lewis turned the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s creative director in 1996, and in 2018 he was additionally appointed chief government officer of the corporate.

Lewis started his dance coaching in Ottawa earlier than being accepted into the skilled division of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in 1975.

He joined the corporate in 1979, the place he had a profession as a dancer for 10 years earlier than he shifted to a administration position.

He mentioned he nonetheless remembers his first dance class.

“My sister was taking a class there, and her teacher told her class ‘we need boys for the nutcracker.’ So my mother sent three of us to perform,” Lewis mentioned.

“I love the physicality and I love the artistic intent behind that physicality. That’s what drew me to ballet in the first place. I adore the ability to put emotions into motion.”

The firm mentioned in an announcement Thursday that the board of administrators has begun the transition and can launch a global recruitment plan to rent his successors.

Lewis’s position shall be break up into two, with new individuals approaching to take over as government director by June 2023 and creative director by 2024.

“For the last, let’s say three years, it’s been on my mind. What do I do, how do I do it? And I will reach age 70 at one point — it’s not so much the age, it’s just I want to do other things,” he mentioned.

As the corporate rehearses for Swan Lake, Lewis displays on his lengthy profession, wherein he oversaw 30 years of productions as creative director, and commissioned new works, like Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation, a selected level of satisfaction.

“I’ve had this incredible privilege of serving this organization, and serving the people, the students, the dancers, and the administrative staff. It’s because of them that I’ve been able to do what I’ve been doing.”

But even after retirement, Lewis mentioned he received’t be leaving dance fully. “I think it’s a wonderful aspect of our human endeavours, that artistic side, it makes a difference in a city, and a country, in a province, and I want to continue sustaining it.”

— With information from the Canadian Press and Global’s Iris Dyck

1:00Longtime RWB head to step down

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