Lawrence Adams

Lawrence Vaughan Adams was a Canadian dancer, archivist and publisher. He was a member of the National Ballet of Canada from 1955 to 1960, and also performed with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and New York's Joffrey Ballet. In 1963, he rejoined the National Ballet of Canada as a soloist and then, principal dancer, leaving the company in 1969.

Adams was the co-founder, with wife and collaborator Miriam Adams, of the experimental Toronto performance space 15 Dance Lab, and the dance reconstruction project Encore! Encore!; and with John Faichney he co-founded The Arts Television Centre. In 1983, the Adams pair established Dance Collection Danse, a publishing company and archives dedicated to preserving Canadian dance history.

Early life and education Adams was born in the English-speaking neighbourhood of Norwood in St. Boniface, Manitoba on November 2, 1936. He had three siblings, including David Adams, who became a prominent ballet dancer. When the family moved to Vancouver, Adams studied ballet with Mara McBirney. When he was 15, Adams joined his brother David and sister-in-law, ballerina Lois Smith, in Toronto. A 1957 Maclean's magazine article describes their home as a makeshift studio-workshop where Lawrence and his brother did carpentry, experimented with film and video equipment and discussed the beginnings of a Canadian dance archive. While living in Toronto, Adams studied with local teacher Boris Volkoff. At 16, he made his professional debut with the Toronto Theatre Ballet in a performance in Midland, Ontario.

Adams joined Les Grands Ballet Canadiens in 1961. He stayed there for a year, performing a main role in Labyrinth by choreographer Eric Hyrst. For the rest of the company's repertoire, he danced in the corps de ballet.

In 1963 Adams joined the Robert Joffrey Theatre Ballet (now Joffrey Ballet), then based in New York City. He went on an extended tour with them to Lisbon, Amman, Jordan, Ramallah and East Jerusalem, Damascus, Beirut, Kabul and Teheran, followed by an 8-week tour of India.

At around the same time Adams returned to the National Ballet of Canada in 1963, he opened an antique shop in Toronto's Mirvish Village with fellow dancer Yves Cousineau. They called it Adams and Yves. The store sold pieces of Adams’ refurbished furniture, which he worked on in a carpentry workshop at St. Lawrence Hall. In time, they opened up a gallery, print and framing shop across the street from the antique shop. Concurrently, they offered a typesetting and layout service called LAMA Labs to the Toronto cultural community (1977-1980). These endeavours reinforced the Adamses' commitment to preserving Canadian dance history through a variety of means, work that is ongoing to this day.

Encore! Encore! In 1983, the Adamses began researching Canada's early dance history, and the artists who pre-dated the founding of institutions such as the National Ballet of Canada (1951) and the Canada Council for the Arts (1957). Choreographic works from pioneers such as Gweneth Lloyd (co-founder of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet) and Françoise Sullivan were in danger of being forgotten completely, they believed. Using cross-Canada field research and interviews collected by Saskatchewan dance teacher Sonja Barton, and funding from the Laidlaw Foundation, the Adamses embarked on a large-scale dance reconstruction project they called Encore!Encore! Over a six-week period in 1986, a handful of early dance works, including Shadow on the Prairie by Gweneth Lloyd, Red Ear of Corn by Boris Volkoff, Maria Chapdelaine by Nesta Toumine and Déformité, Moi je suis... by Françoise Sullivan and Jeanne Renaud, were reconstructed, videotaped and notated by a team that included many of the original choreographers and performers.

A multi-media performance based on the Adamses' Encore Encore! research was presented at Expo '86 in Vancouver. There's Always Been Dance introduced Canadian Pavilion visitors to the country's vibrant theatrical dance history using live performance, film, video and photographs. The complex production toured several cities in Western Canada at the end of its Expo run.

Dance Collection Danse

An organic extension of Miriam and Lawrence Adams’ work in Canadian dance history, Dance Collection Danse (DCD) began official operations in 1986. An archive of photographs, costumes, scrapbooks, souvenir programs, letters, poster and company records, DCD is also Canada's only dedicated publisher focused on dance.

Housed in Miriam and Lawrence Adams’ own home until 2013, DCD commissioned, edited and published both print and electronic newsletters and books, including the Dictionary of Dance: Words, Terms and Phrases (edited by Susan Macpherson 1996), the Dictionary of Classical Ballet Terms - Cecchetti (Rhonda Ryman 1998) and Theatrical Dance in Vancouver, 1880s - 1920s (Kaija Pepper 2000). Several early editions were published on the short-lived 5 -inch floppy disk format, an indication of Lawrence's ongoing love affair with technology of all kinds. By contrast, Lawrence also bound several books by hand for limited editions that include early copies of Maud Allan and Her Art by Felix Cherniavsky.

Since Lawrence's death in 2003, DCD has continued to grow. Along with Miriam, his mentee Amy Bowring took over some of his tasks, including the design and printing of several new books. Instrumental in opening DCD's new research centre and exhibition space in 2013 to showcase highlights from a growing collection, Bowring now continues as Executive and Curatorial Director.

Awards Dance Ontario Lifetime Achievement Award 1981 (with Miriam Adams) Dance in Canada Service Award 1985