DANCE COLLECTION DANSE

New
in the
Archives
Barbara
Cook
Photo: Travis Allison
BY AMY BOWRING
We recently acquired a small collection
from long-time DCD friend
and supporter Barbara Cook. I first
heard Barb’s name in my early days
at DCD doing research on London,
Ontario’s dance history. In my
interview with London-based ballet
teacher Bernice Harper, she talked
about her 1960s trips to Sudbury to
teach during the summer sessions
at Cook’s Sudbury School of Ballet.
Barbara Cook in Don Gilles’s I Want, I Want
Photo: E.E. Amsden
Members of the Winnipeg Ballet and the
Volkoff Canadian Ballet, May 31, 1948
Born in Hamilton on March 28,
1930, Barbara Cook began her dance
training with Nancy Campbell in
1933. A move to Toronto at six years
old brought Cook to Boris Volkoff’s
studio where she studied with him
and his wife, Janet Baldwin. Cook’s
theatrical training was further
enhanced by a decade with Dorothy
Goulding’s Toronto Children Players.
By 1946 she was performing with
the Volkoff Canadian Ballet. With
Volkoff, she participated in the
his toric first Canadian Ballet Festival
in Winnipeg in 1948; in the 1949
“Salute to Canada” pageant in Mid -
land, Ontario, commemorating the
300th anniversary of the martyrdom
of a group of Jesuit priests; and in the
Canadian Festival of Ballet in New
York City in 1950, which also featured
Ruth Sorel’s group from
Montreal. Cook danced with the
Janet Baldwin Ballet in the 1950s and
par ticipated in all six Canadian
Ballet Festivals. She was part of a
pioneering generation of Canadian
dancers whose efforts ultimately led
to the professionalization of ballet in
this country.
4 Dance Collection Danse