Canadian Children's Dance Theatre.

Despite the young ages of the performers (ten- to nineteen-year-olds), Toronto-based Canadian Children's Dance Theatre (CCDT) is accorded the same respect as professional companies by media and audiences alike. The quality of the performances is consistently high, and so is the quality of the repertoire.

The company was founded in 1981 by ballet teacher Deborah Lundmark and her husband, Michael deConinck Smith, as an antidote to dance school recitals. Says Smith: "At these events children perform before adoring parents, often tarted up like miniature chorus girls. Our mandate is to create appropriate choreography for children that also provides a satisfying dance concert for an audience."

Initially, Lundmark's narrative choreography using Smith's scenarios tended to be over-earnest. When by chance Smith stumbled upon Carl Orff's delightful Musica Poetica, Lundmark was inspired to choreograph the captivating Street Songs, a work that shows children at play. Street Songs became CCDT's signature piece.

"The choreography displayed a freer movement, although still based on classical technique," explains Lundmark. "We got away from weight and structure and created a piece that allowed the dancers to express who they were. We also changed our training to half ballet, half modem, with a strong theater component."

Street Songs and subsequent works established the reputation of CCDT - that young dancers can perform challenging choreography and still be true to themselves. To capitalize on this image, Smith and Lundmark invited guest choreographers to broaden the horizons of the young dancers by giving classes in their own technique and setting new works.

"This company is preparing new generations of professional dancers," says Toronto Dance Theatre co-founder David Earle. "These young people take theater very seriously and have a strong sense of individuality, probably because they are not exclusively ballet-trained. The children are at the age of imagination. When I choreograph for them, I believe that children should be children."

Says Carol Anderson, former artistic director of Dancemakers: "Initially, the dancers give you back exactly what you give to them. As they gain experience, they do begin to ask questions and interpret the choreography. You can push the dancers a long y dramatically and physically. The key is to make material suited for them and anchored in their own experience."

Earle's Chichester Psalms, to music by Leonard Bernstein, calls for a mixed cast of children and adults to depict an Old Testament journey to a new land. Anderson's Garden, to music by Debussy, is a nostalgic look at the more innocent time of Edwardian childhood.

In 1991, CCDT mounted its most ambitious project. Using poet William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience as the point of departure, eight well-known Toronto choreographers, including Lundmark, Earle, and Anderson, created a collection of dances that challenged company members to execute a wide range of differing visions. "The work is a microcosm of what we're trying to do," says Smith.