André Lewis On His 30 Years At The Helm Of Royal Winnipeg Ballet

For 50 years, André Lewis has been part of the fabric of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, first as a ballet student, then as a company dancer, then finally as artistic director, a post he’s held for 30 years.

It’s hard to imagine RWB without him.

“I can’t actually picture it,” says associate artistic director and former principal dancer Tara Birtwhistle, who herself has been with the ballet for 35 years and was a student before that. “He was always there — how do you even describe that? He was just this grounding force I knew was always with me.”

In 2023, Lewis, 70, announced he would be stepping down in 2025. The 2023/24 season was dubbed the Living the Dream season — a wink to his catchphrase whenever anyone would ask how he was doing — as a celebration of Lewis’s artistic vision and legacy.

Now, here we are: this week’s performances of Bolero With Angels in the Architecture & Hikarizatto at the Centennial Concert Hall will be the final shows of his final season.

“It went fast,” he says. “I mean, 30 years went fast.”

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When a 40-year-old Lewis took the reins as artistic director — on an interim basis in 1995, then officially in 1996 — it was a turbulent time at the ballet.

Three artistic directors had come and gone within the space of about five years after Arnold Spohr had been in the role for 30.

Principal dancer Henny Jurriens was hired to succeed Spohr in 1988, but he and his wife were tragically killed in a car accident the following year. Jurriens was succeeded by John Meehan, who was artistic director from 1990 to 1993, followed by William Whitener, who was in the role from 1993 to 1995.

Lewis had had his eye on the top job for a while and had been asked to step in on an interim basis in between Jurriens and Meehan and then again after Whitener. He’d also applied for the role twice and had been turned down because the board thought he was too young.

André Lewis as Drosselmeier in a 1987 performance of the Nutcracker.

But Lewis knew he could be a steady presence — like Spohr, whom he’d admired.

“I saw his commitment and his respect and support for the organization,” Lewis says of the late Spohr. “He was an incredible person. He could be difficult, he could be sarcastic, he could be kind of poking, but generally speaking, I did not get that treatment.”

Lewis appreciated how Spohr conducted himself with the board, too.

“I just didn’t want to adopt his way of rehearsing,” Lewis says.

Spohr was old-school. Lewis was much more aligned with Jurriens’ approach.

“The old-fashioned way of doing things is you’re at the very top and you shout and scream until the dancer reaches the level that you feel is appropriate,” Lewis says.

“Whereas Henny came and he went underneath the dancer and tried to lift them to their level. So it’s a much more positive message, which is the way I felt needed to happen.”

Lewis was also interested in taking the company in a more contemporary direction.

“(Artistic) vision is most clearly expressed through the repertoire you do. It was really important for us, I felt, to go into contemporary full-lengths, like we did with The Handmaid’s Tale or Dracula or Snow White or Jekyll and Hyde, Peter Pan, Moulin Rouge, Magic Flute — none of that existed in my days as a dancer,” Lewis says of a time when the RWB focused mostly on mixed-repertoire programs.

And it all began with Mark Godden’s Dracula in 1998.

It was the RWB’s first contemporary full-length ballet — as well as first full-length choreographed by Godden, a former company soloist. (Godden also choreographed Angels in the Architecture, which is part of this week’s mixed-repertoire bill.)

Dracula didn’t just cement a new artistic vision for the ballet, laying the groundwork for all the bold commissions that followed. It also established Lewis as someone who could work well with choreographers because he trusts their vision.

“I’m not a choreographer, so I wasn’t gonna sit beside a choreographer and argue with them,” Lewis says.

Lewis recalls a bit of a flap around Dracula and Godden — with whom Lewis would work many, many times — wanting to use the music of Gustav Mahler for the score.

“Lots of people said, ‘Oh, this is so boring,’ Lewis recalls. “Shockingly. But I felt it was the right choice. And I wouldn’t have told Mark, ‘No, you can’t use Mahler.’”

Dracula was a hit, and the ballet was adapted into a film by Guy Maddin. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) won an International Emmy.

Birtwhistle always lists Lucy in Dracula as among her favourite roles during her time as a company dancer. Lewis promoted her to principal shortly thereafter.

“I can’t picture my career without André,” Birtwhistle says, describing his leadership style as calm and steady.

“Our relationship changed too, obviously, because you go from a dancer to artistic staff to, ultimately associate director. It evolved into very much a partnership.”

André Lewis (front and centre) as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet in 1981.

In 1999, Lewis commissioned the Canadian-themed Nutcracker — choreographed by Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon, and set at Christmastime in Winnipeg at the turn of the last century — that, 25 years on, continues to be a juggernaut holiday tradition.

He also commissioned timely works such as Lila York’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in 2013, and Godden’s Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation in 2014, a work about intergenerational trauma experienced by Indian residential school survivors and their families.

“I think we were able to create or bring about some really unique works to the organization that have redefined or advanced the concept of what ballet can be,” Lewis says.

That is, in large part, because Lewis is not afraid to take a chance on an idea.

“Sometimes it’s a riskier idea — but creation is risky,” he says.

He thinks back to the Dracula days, when he was a newly minted artistic director wanting to do something different.

“At the time, there were a lot of people pushing, saying that we had no business in the full-length business. Well, I disagree, and ultimately, I did it my way.

“That’s why we’ve got André Lewis Way,” Lewis jokes, referring to the stretch of Graham Avenue between Edmonton and Carlton streets that now bears his name.

André Lewis in 1981.

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Lewis was only supposed to stay in Winnipeg for a summer.

It was 1975, and he had a girlfriend at the time whose parents lived in Australia.

“The idea is we were going to travel across Canada, stop in Winnipeg, do a summer school, then move on to Australia, where we were going to figure things out,” Lewis says.

One of those things was the language: the Gatineau, Que.-born and -raised Lewis didn’t speak any English in those days, only French.

But then, his girlfriend got injured and had to go back to Ottawa, where the pair were studying ballet. The Australia plan was dead.

“​​I didn’t have a penny. I did not have parental support. I was meant to go to the University of Ottawa in kinesiology,” Lewis says.

Instead, he ended up staying in Winnipeg to pursue his ballet training after being accepted into the RWB School’s Professional Division, studying under Jacqueline Weber and David Moroni. In the evenings, he worked at Canada Packers’ chicken plant as a shipper.

“I had to work in a freezer, in a deep freezer. Here I come to Winnipeg, where three-quarters of the year is a deep freeze, and there I was,” he says with a laugh. “I did that for four years.”

In 1979, he was accepted into the company as a corps de ballet member and was promoted to soloist in 1982.

Among the highlights from his dance career are partnering with Evelyn Hart, as well as performing in the Winnipeg première of Rudi van Dantzig’s Romeo & Juliet in 1981. The RWB still performs that version.

The RWB changed the trajectory of Lewis’s life — and not just professionally. It’s where he met his wife, Caroline Gruber, a former RWB company dancer and ballet master.

They have two children, now adults. Their son, Daniel, is studying law. But their daughter, Emilie, is in the family business.

A member of the corps de ballet, Emilie Lewis trained in the RWB School starting in Level 1 and joined the company in 2020. Being the artistic director’s daughter doesn’t confer any special treatment.

In fact, Lewis expects his role could be a challenge for her.

“She’s always had the fact that her dad was the artistic director, her mom was a ballet master, so it can create that sense of nepotism,” Lewis says.

“But I can tell you she worked twice as hard because of that and has proven time and again that she was up to the parts that were given to her, because she’s a very strong dancer.”

“It’s definitely a different situation,” Emilie says. “But we really figured out a balance of working together, but also not taking it home and really balancing a normal life together and supporting each other through the normal things — like just going for a walk with the dog and enjoying that time together.”

Emilie looks up to her father as a leader.

“He’s a lover of stories and he has such a strong vision of how he wants to portray the organization,” she says. “I always say that he holds himself very calmly and that’s something I admire.”

Like Birtwhistle, it hasn’t quite hit her that Lewis will not be a daily presence at the ballet. But to Emilie, he’s not just André Lewis, artistic director. He’s also dad.

“I’m excited for him to come see performances as a parent,” she says. “And see shows and enjoy the work that he’s done for the organization — to just come into the building with a sense of pride, of course, because this is what he’s built and worked hard towards.

“Yes, I’m one of the dancers, but I am very proud as a daughter and as a family member of what he’s accomplished.”

Lewis’s tenure hasn’t been without challenges — from naysayers right on up to a global pandemic that effectively killed live performance — but he has risen to them, without compromising his artistic vision.

“I don’t think there’s a single work that I have brought to this organization or created or acquired or revived that some people didn’t have a varying view from where I was — and fair enough,” he says.

“But at the end of the day, I’ve got thick enough skin to say, ‘Well, I did it my way.’”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com