Lauren Janeway’s dream has come true: she’s set to begin her first year as a company dancer for the National Ballet of Canada.
Janeway, 18, is originally from Fergus and moved to Toronto to attend Canada’s National Ballet School when she was just 11 years old and in Grade 6, but her path was not always clear.
“When I first went to school obviously this was the dream, to get into the company after Grade 12,” she said.
“[When] I was in my middle years there, like Grade 9 and 10 probably and 11 … I realized how unlikely that was so then we all have our secondary dream.”
She said she started auditioning for European dance companies as well.
“That would be an awesome dream too, it’s just the National Ballet of Canada is home so that is where I wanted to go,” she said.
“But as it became more and more unrealistic … I was still working towards that but … I didn’t think it was going to come true and then I cried when I found out about it.”
Janeway graduated from Grade 12 at Canada’s National Ballet School on June 26 and will begin her new job with the National Ballet of Canada on Aug. 4.
She will be an apprentice in the YOU dance program, which stands for Youth, Outreach and Understanding Dance. Ten apprentices work for a year to put on educational performances for elementary school students in Grades 4 to 6, teaching them about dance.
“It’s a fairly long program,” Janeway said. “There’s a classical piece, an entertaining piece for the little kids, a cultural one, different stuff like that.”
As the year progresses the 10 apprentices will likely be cast in more company productions, Janeway said. Even now they are all cast as understudies in the first production, The Winter’s Tale.
In receiving a contract right out of high school, Janeway is an exception to the school’s pattern. She said many of her fellow classmates are taking an extra year to prepare for company life and will likely audition for the apprentice program next year.
“Basically after Grade 12 most people do an extra year of training, like a post-secondary thing because the dance world used to be really young and they used to take people out of high school to join companies and such but it was causing a lot of injuries and things so most people do that extra year,” she explained.
“So I was really lucky that I got in after this year.”
She was one of three dancers from her class of 21 to be given a contract with the National Ballet of Canada and was chosen for one of four available female apprentice positions out of more than 40 auditioning dancers.
“The whole idea of the (apprentice) program is to be a transition into company life because it’s a big jump in terms of training because you go from doing half a day of dance to full day every day which can be hard injury-wise and everything,” Janeway said.
But she isn’t unfamiliar with hard work.
She said when she transitioned from the Grand River Dance Academy in Fergus to Canada’s National Ballet School she didn’t have a lot of natural flexibility.
“I was not flexible, I was not, I had a really tight upper body and everything,” she explained. “If I had not worked really, really hard on everything or if I had strayed from what I wanted to do, it wouldn’t have happened.”
And it almost didn’t.
“I feel like in Grade 10 I started to get behind a little bit and then my ballet teacher was really intense and it was like ‘just work hard, work hard,’” she remembered. “I think that’s most important … you kind of learn how to work harder.”
She said perseverance was her key to success and she was able to overcome her lack of natural flexibility and her weaker turnout.
“Some people are natural at everything, they’ve got everything, but if you’re not working at what you don’t have it’s impossible,” she said.
“You can have nothing and still do well if you’re making up for it in other things.”
Janeway said she loves the feel of moving and working at dance as well as the expression it encourages.
“The artistic side of ballet, obviously, is what I really love … and that’s something that you really have to develop, especially as you get older, being an artist,” she said.
“You can’t be an artist unless you can actually do stuff. So working hard can allow me to express everything.”
She hopes to be accepted for a full position in the Corps de Ballet at the National Ballet of Canada next year or do a second year in the apprentice program.
For now, in addition to understudying, Janeway said she will be performing as a company dancer in the The Nutcracker this holiday season.
Though it won’t be her first time performing in the piece, it will be her first time since Grade 8 and as a company dancer.
“The Four Seasons Centre (for the Performing Arts) is such a beautiful theatre, and it’s so big and I just can’t believe I’ll be on the stage,” she said. “I’m so excited.”
