Zoomer Magazine – September 2019

(^18) – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 everythingzoomer.com
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NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA artistic director
Karen Kain, 68, laughed when I asked her in 2015
if she longed to dust off her ballet shoes for one
more performance. “My spirit still dances, but the
rest of me – no.” Instead, in her 50th year with the
NBC, Canada’s most celebrated ballerina – who per-
formed alongside legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev
(including in London for audiences that included roy-
alty like Princess Margaret), won an award for her
dance pairing with Frank Augustyn at Moscow’s
International Ballet Festival and was captured in a
colour screenprint by Andy Warhol – is finding new
ways to break new ground. In August, when Britain’s
Royal Academy of Dance brings the prestigious
Genée International Ballet Competition to Toronto,
the company will bestow upon Kain its highest hon-
our, the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award, for
her NBC tenure and her “incredible contribution” to
the artform, “both as a renowned dancer and one of
the most distinguished leaders in dance today.” Kain,
who also once performed with the London Festival
Ballet (now the English National Ballet), will become
the first Canadian and the first person outside of the
United Kingdom to receive the award. —MC
Zoom In Etc
“I believe in the idea of the rainbow,” Judy Garland, who died
50 years ago this year, once said. “And I’ve spent my entire
life trying to get over it.” In 1968, three decades after deliv-
ering her career-defining performance alongside misfits and
munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, the screen legend landed in
London to kick off a run of shows at the Talk of the Town the-
atre, hoping to jumpstart a career hampered by years of drug
and alcohol abuse, failed marriages and mounting debt. It’s
the final act for this Hollywood legend – one brimming with
music, hope, strife, even romance – brought to the big screen
in Judy, an adaptation of the hit stage musical End of the
Rainbow, starring Renée Zellweger delivering her own ren-
dition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” —Mike Crisolago
Praising Kain
THE OTHER SIDE OF
THE RAINBOW
Garland performing in 1960.
Top: Garland during a happier
moment in 1955.
Kain and
Augustyn,
1977
Renée
Zellweger
as Garland
in Judy.