In Montreal, journalist Louis-Philippe Messier travels mostly on the run, his desk in his backpack, on the lookout for fascinating subjects and people. He speaks to everyone and is interested in all walks of life in this urban chronicle.
She is a little mouse. He is King Candy. For the 60e birthday of Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s Christmas ballet brings together a dancer father and his ballerina daughter. The Journal met them before the dress rehearsal of the Grands Ballets on Wednesday evening.
Did I get to a secondary school?
There are so many teenage ballerinas and little dancers sitting on the floor chatting that I have to step over them to cross the artists’ entrance to the backstage area of the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts.
The atmosphere is feverish.
The overwhelmed guard is trying hard to get the parents of this army in tights and tutus from the École supérieure de ballet du Québec to sign an attendance register.
It’s the last warm-up before the big marathon of Nutcracker, either 17 performances in 19 days.
The fifty adult dancers will struggle behind the stage to move from one role to another and undress, put on their clothes again, remove their make-up, reapply their make-up, etc.
The hundred children will go to bed late after the evening performances.
Ballerina at 7 years old
New this year, Gemma Giday, 7 years old, will be one of the mice.
“I will be the first mouse to enter the stage!” enthuses the budding ballerina.
Gemma to whom to have.
Her mother Marie-Ève Lapointe, a former dancer with the Grands Ballets for 16 years, assists the children’s coach.
As for his father, Andrew Giday, a 59-year-old dancer, he has been playing the role of King Candy for 25 years.
King Bonbon is a character imagined by the choreographer Fernand Nault in 1964.
Andrew Giday has been playing King Candy for 25 years.
Photo provided by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens
“This is the start of the journey for Gemma and it of course takes me back to my own childhood as I danced in Nutcracker for the first time also when I was 7 years old,” confides the veteran.
Andrew Giday’s parents, Hungarian immigrants, enrolled him in dance classes because he was too fidgety, without realizing that this would be his career.
A beard for Gemma
The mice do not end up on stage at the same time as King Candy, so the father and daughter will not dance simultaneously.
“I’m going to try to go see my daughter dance when I’m backstage if my costume change and makeup obligations allow me,” announces Mr. Giday.
The mouse team was waiting for their turn to rehearse their scenes during the general.
Photo Louis-Philippe Messier
As a mouse, Gemma will “confront” the Nutcracker soldiers armed with a cannon. Warning: it goes boom.
From February, the little girl will play the roles of Aurore as a child and… one of the seven dwarfs in another Tchaikovsky ballet, Sleeping Beauty!
“She’s going to dance wearing a fake beard,” laughs her father, who will still play the role of a king.
