FreelanceInk

Veronica Tennant: A new role
The former National Ballet star has shunned retirement for a new career in as filmmaker and producer, thus setting herself up as a model for baby boomers approaching mid-life
(published in Forever Young)

By Ellen Ashton-Haiste

Along the road from prima ballerina to award-winning filmmaker — a journey where accolades pop up like signposts: Officer of the Order of Canada, Emmy Award winner, Walk of Fame inductee, Governor-General’s Performing Arts Award recipient, UNICEF Ambassador, Companion of the Order of Canada (the nation’s highest honour) — Veronica Tennant has acquired one that was both unexpected and surprising: that of role model.

Tennant retired as the National Ballet’s prima ballerina in 1989, at age 43, following a 25-year career during which she brought her celebrated talent to myriad classical ballet roles, beginning and ending with the romantic heroine of Romeo and Juliet, and shared the stage with some of the greatest male dancers of the time, including Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

(Veronica Tennant photo)

In retirement, she could have rested on her laurels but Tennant moved seamlessly into uncharted waters in television, film, and stage — as associate director and choreographer at Toronto’s Canadian Stage Company and Tarragon Theatre, actor/dancer at Shaw Festival in its 1992 season, choreographer at Stratford Festival (1994’s Cyrano) and as a writer, director and producer of documentaries that bring her passion for dance to new audiences.

     In 1998 she won television’s coveted Emmy award for her production of Karen Kain: Dancing in the Moment, the same year she formed her own company, Veronica Tennant Productions.

     The message in this for baby boomers is that there is life after mid-life and it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

   It’s a message that, Tennant says proudly, was heeded by her own husband, Dr. John Wright.

     “He was so inspired by the fact that I was able to expand my directions that he took his executive MBA while carrying on as a physician and, so, has steered his career into a wider career.”

     Tennant believes she’s also been a role model in terms of juggling work and motherhood, as she raised her daughter, Jessica while carrying on a rigourous performing schedule.

     “At first I was surprised when I was called that but now I’m happy and also honoured to take on these roles,” she says.

     She’s expanding that responsibility by using her celebrity to promote a healthy lifestyle, as part of a campaign by Centrum to launch a new multi-vitamin, called Advantage, that targets the chronic illnesses of aging by bolstering cardiovascular, prostate, breast and colon, eye, and bone health. It’s a product Tennant endorses for its “high-end nutritional science research,” something she says is particularly important to her, in that her husband is a doctor and her daughter a molecular biologist, both skeptical of vitamin therapy fads. “They always say ‘what’s the research?’”
She also agreed to lend her name to the product because the company advocates a healthy lifestyle including regular exercise and good nutrition.

“I’m excited about taking this on because I think there’s so much strength in being proactive rather than reactive, talking about wellness rather than illness,” Tennant says. “We’re all thinking about how to improve the quality of our life.”

     As a ballet dancer, and as a wife and mother, a healthy lifestyle was always important to her, she says, recalling that since the National Ballet rehearsals were held at Toronto’s St. Lawrence Centre, Saturday afternoon visits to the farmer’s market for fresh vegetables, meat and fish became a family routine.

     And exercise was, of course, an integral part of her career. Today, she says, she doesn’t follow the structured exercise regime that she did when she was dancing but focuses on maintaining an active lifestyle. “I walk. My doctor says walking is just about the best exercise you can do. I’m always running for a bus and I never see a set of stairs that I don’t run up and down.”

     That’s something she particularly appreciates after a number of dance-related injuries threatened to sideline such activities. In 1977, a major knee injury forced her to take a year off (during which time she took the opportunity to complete the first of two books she’s written for young people, On Stage, Please). Then, four years ago, she had a hip replacement, also a direct result of strenuous dance career.

     Staying on top of her health is equally important for Tennant in her second career as a hands-on producer and director.

“It’s demanding, I have to tell you,” she says. “You go out on a shoot, and the shooting days are 12 and 13 hours, so you really have to have a lot of stamina.”

     Her most recent project found her helping her cameraman lug around his equipment in Havana Cuba, where she’s discovered Danza Cuba, “a fantastic flamenco, fusion, classical, contemporary dance company” founded by Cuban choreographer and composer Lizt Alfonso.

     “I’m doing a film documentary of them and the wider picture is a very interesting social look at a country on the cusp of change through its art and its artists,” Tennant says. “It’s very exciting.”

     This comes on the heels of completing Celia Franca: Tour de Force, a television portrait of the National Ballet of Canada founder which was telecast on the Bravo! network and named Best Dance Film of 2006 by the Toronto Star.

     It was another intensive project that involved more than a year and a half of work and research. “It’s a portrait of an extraordinary woman,” Tennant says of Franca, now 85. “Most people talk about her monumental achievements here, which they were. But what I did was to delve into her early years in London, England, in the twenties and thirties and investigated who she was before she got here. (Those achievements) become even more monumental when you realize that she was a Cockney and her first job was as a chorus girl.”

   Tennant says being a filmmaker has allowed her to develop creatively even more than she could as a dancer and she has “lots of exciting projects” in mind for the future. So she doesn’t see herself retiring from this second career any time soon, or even slowing down, as long as she can stay healthy.