The silver princess of Canadian dance.

It is an exceptional ballerina who is still performing leading roles after a quarter century, but National Ballet of Canada's Karen Kain is among the chosen few. This season the beloved star is celebrating her silver anniversary as a professional dancer, and as choreographer Glen Tetley says, "Karen is the Rolls Royce of today's ballerinas. Others may be more flashy and rattle their gears, but she just keeps purring along."

Two special events were planned to commemorate her anniversary: On November 25, 1994, the ballerina appeared in her last Swan Lake, and on May 3 she is to debut as Natalia Petrovna in Frederick Ashton's Month in the Country, the first performance of this work outside the Royal Ballet. The role of the bored, restless older woman who takes a fancy to her son's tutor is one that Kain has coveted for years; for her the National's anniversary present is particularly sweet.

"Karen has decided to give up certain ballets like Sleeping Beauty," says Reid Anderson, the National's artistic director, "but I twisted her arm to do Swan Lake because I knew it would make a very special evening, and she's never been dancing better. Last season she made me gasp at her Aurora. Here was a forty-threeyear-old dancer who could make herself look a radiant sixteen. The jewel in the crown of our repertoire, however, will be the all-Ashton evening with A Month in the Country. Apparently, when Ashton was setting La Fille Mal Gardee on the National in 1976, he told Karen that she'd be a wonderful Natalia Petrovna in ten years. It took a little bit longer than that, but we got the role for her."

Astonishingly, in the autumn of her glittering career, the ballerina continues to be a muse to choreographers. Being five feet, seven inches tall may have precluded Kain's dancing with most of the international male stars of her generation, but her very considerable talents have graced original works created for her by choreographers who are helping to define twentieth-century ballet--Roland Petit, Eliot Feld, Tetley, John Neumeier, and Canada's sensational James Kudelka.

Perhaps Tetley speaks for Kain's legions of admiring choreographers when he says, "It's almost as if Karen wills dances out of you because she's always twinned with you, not a step in advance or behind, and so eloquent in the things she says with just the quality of her movement. The disarming girlishness and simplicity of her offstage persona becomes transformed into a mature, powerful, and sensual woman in a working situation. One can touch the deepest chords in Karen and bring that forth in performance because she is totally open. And her runs are so beautiful that you don't think of individual steps because they're all connected, like the animal grace of a silk panther."

Tetley's silk panther is a far cry from the National Ballet School of Canada student whom people remember as a buck-toothed giant of a girl from Hamilton, Ontario, with a mouthful of braces. The gracious, modest woman of today was once a wild, boy-crazy teenager who delighted in escapades, whether sneaking off to the local pastry shop for sweets (even though she was constantly battling a weight problem) or smuggling a puppy into residence. Words like naughty, high-spirited, selfindulgent, and stubborn were used to describe the young Kain. It is not surprising that her mother had to be called to the school because her daughter was using foul language and talking back to the staff.

Underlying this willful behavior, however, was the potential of a great artist. Betty Oliphant, founder of the National Ballet School and its first artistic director, auditioned Kain when she was eleven. "Karen was told to imagine she was a princess who was greeting her mother and father," Oliphant recalls, "and she was absolutely wonderful. Even then she saw herself as a princess--and what beautiful arms! I was crazy about her immediately. When the time came for her to go into the company, Celia Franca didn't want any more tall girls because it was so hard to find them partners, but she couldn't turn down Karen."

Says Kain, "Being a teenager was hard because I was always melancholy. Life was dark and bleak, and my hormones were raging, but I loved to dance, and even in the throes of teenage angst, I couldn't imagine not dancing. When I joined the company, my personality changed. Once I focused on my work, that's all there was for me. The experience I gained in that first decade can never be equaled because these were the years that the company had a special relationship with Nureyev. Rudi's commitment and passion were so strong. How could I feel sorry for myself when he was working twice as hard as any of us?"

Kain rose through the ranks of the National like a rocket. In her first year she was performing principal roles on a corps contract, and the following season, at age nineteen, she was promoted to principal. Nineteen seventy-two was a banner year for Kain. Nureyev took an interest in the young dancer and insisted that she be cast as Aurora in his version of Sleeping Beauty, personally coaching her in the role. In fact, Kain became a favorite partner of Nureyev's, and subsequently guested with him all over the world. That year Kain also established a professional relationship with Petit and his Ballet National de Marseille.

In 1973 the ballerina won a silver medal at the Moscow Competition, also winning a silver medal for best pas de deux with partner Frank Augustyn. Kain and Augustyn, dubbed "The Gold Dust Twins" by a critic, became Canada's darlings. In 1976 she received a singular honor when the Bolshoi Ballet invited her to dance Giselle.

This triumphal decade of dance was not without cost, however. In her late twenties, Kain began to suffer from severe depression that put her into intensive therapy. Augustyn, in particular, remembers those dark days all too well: "It wasn't easy being with her, because Karen was going through a life crisis. Her dancing was affected, and she needed a great deal of support. I think she had put so much of herself into her career that her personal life had taken on a secondary role. Karen was always high-strung and sensitive, and when she faced this emptiness, her selfesteem plunged and she felt lost."

Kain recalls these bleak years as a time of re-evaluation: "I've always been vulnerable, and all the acclaim and attention I was getting put pressures on me that I couldn't handle. I became preoccupied with performing well, which only led to doubting my own abilities and a further loss of confidence. Therapy helped me see that I had to create friendships outside of dance, and find some balance in my life. I refused to be a workaholic any longer. I know pressure is a fact of life, and I still don't handle it well, but at least I am now able to accept that I have something of value to offer when I'm onstage."

An important milestone of Kain's new-found equilibrium was her marriage to Canadian actor Ross Petty in 1983. Another sign of her outward focus was donating countless hours on behalf of the Dancer Transition Centre, a counseling program for her colleagues who have had to leave the profession.

Anyone who has worked with Kain in the studio relates that the dancer is devoid of temperament. The consummate professional, she never blames anyone but herself for her own shortcomings. The ballerina has had an ongoing relationship with Eliot Feld and his company since 1984. The choreographer tells a story that shows the quintessential Kain and her relationship to dance: "We use more side light than Karen is used to, so when she was rehearsing At Midnight, she found the dark floor and the light in her eyes disorienting. In fact, she was crying because she was having such a terrible time doing things technically. When we offered to change the lights, she wouldn't let us, because she thought the ballet looked so beautiful as it was. She fought the good fight, but in the end she had to compromise. The incident is revealing, because she was a guest, and any other dancer would have demanded a change to make her world more comfortable, but Karen placed herself at the service of the work."

When Kain finally hangs up her pointe shoes, Magdalena Popa, her coach at the National, predicts that the ballerina will still play an important role in dance: "Karen has the potential to be an exceptional coach, because she has a gift of observing things. She can capture what is good in her own dancing, yet she can also accept and follow advice. This gives her a good balance in understanding what is necessary in movement. Last season, James [Kudelka] sent her to Houston to coach Musings, while I encouraged her to work with our dancers on major ballets such as Sleeping Beauty, say, and Coppelia."

First soloist Jennifer Fournier, twenty-five, has already been a recipient of Kain's wisdom and experience. "Karen helps you discover the essence of each role, because she stresses that you must find the character, that you can't go out onstage unless you know who you are. She won't let you paste a character on yourself, but you have to find the role from within, whether you're doing Swanilda or a fairy variation. She stresses that a dancer has to think what he or she is saying onstage, especially with classical ballet, because it's so easy to get caught up in technique. If you strive only for technical perfection, she says, your performance will be empty."

There is no greater source of accolades than one's professional colleagues, and the mention of Kain's name to past and present National members elicits immediate, universal admiration. From Veronica Tennant, former principal dancer: "It was while watching Karen dance that I first understood that music could become physical." From Linda Maybarduk, former first soloist and Kain's lifelong friend: "No one can match Karen in her musicality and dramatic ability. Watching her dance is a caviar diet." From Rex Harrington, principal dancer and Kain's frequent partner: "She never ceases to amaze me, because whenever she's onstage, something magical happens." From choreographer and artist-in-residence Kudelka: "When I create for Karen, it looks like I meant it to be; when anyone else dances the movement, it looks a bit like Karen. She's an artist who leaves her mark on things."

Kain is one of the most honored representatives of the arts in the country. In 1976 she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, and in 1991 she was inducted into the highest rank of Companion. Yet it is with her customary humility that she assesses her illustrious career: "I was never convinced that I was talented. I never had a deeprooted confidence in my own abilities. I only know that I loved to dance and I couldn't be without it. That's what has stayed with me through the years--my basic love of dance 4nd the need to do it."

Paula Citron is a Dance Magazine correspondent in Toronto.