Celia Franca

Celia Franca (25 June 1921 – 19 February 2007) was a co-founder of The National Ballet of Canada and its artistic director for 24 years.

Early life Franca was born Celia Franks in London, England, the daughter of an East End tailor. Her family were Polish Jewish immigrants. She began to study dance at the age of four and was a scholarship student at the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Dance. She made her professional debut aged 14. She successfully auditioned for Marie Rambert's ballet company in 1936. She changed her name to Franca in emulation of Alicia Marks, who changed hers to Alicia Markova. She entered into the first of three marriages, to fellow dancer Leo Kersley.

Career

In 1941, aged 20, she was a dramatic ballerina in the Sadler's Wells company. In 1950, a group of Toronto balletomanes asked Franca, who had come to Canada to attend a festival, staged some Promenade Concerts, organized a summer school, gathered an artistic staff and prepared her uneven but enthusiastic new company for its opening on 12 November 1951. She and Betty Oliphant founded the National Ballet School of Canada in 1959 to provide trained dancers for the company.

In 1979, Franca joined Merrilee Hodgins and Joyce Shietze as a co-artistic director to The School of Dance in Ottawa, a non-profit organization designed to provide professional training for dance. In 1994, Franca received a Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

After a year of poor health after breaking the vertebrae in her back, she died on 19 February 2007, aged 85, in an Ottawa Hospital.