40 Years of One Night Stands

The year is 1938. Winnipeg is a lonely place set in the middle of the Manitoba farmlands, a stop-off to somewhere else, a city recovering from the devastation of The Great Depression. It is into this remote centre of the Canadian prairies that two English women arrive-37-year-old Gweneth Lloyd and 23-year-old Betty Hey. What they don’t know is that here, in this unlikely setting, they will start a dance group that will one day be known internationally as The Royal Winnipeg Ballet Company – the first professional ballet company in Canada. Born out of nothing in the middle of nowhere, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet set the ballet world on prairie fire. From Flin Flon to Moscow, it wowed audiences and critics alike with its youth, vitality and innocent excitement. The impossible dream of two determined immigrants grew into what is now the RWB family, surviving fortune, famine, and a devastating fire, to become one of the world’s premiere dance companies and the oldest continuously running ballet company in North America. Through the diverse voices of RWB company members-past and present-Forty Years of One Night Stands recounts the saga of the obsessive commitment and vision of those who transformed the lofty art of ballet into dance for the people. Gweneth Lloyd and Betty (Hey) Farrally founded the company. But it was a mercurial and charismatic character named Arnold Spohr, basketball player turned ballet dancer turned artistic director, who over three decades propelled this feisty Canadian ballet company to its place amongst the world’s best. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet – a Canadian treasure which has survived for almost seventy years, and still reflects the spirit of its prairie beginnings: guts, grit and a belief in possibility.