Miriam Adams

Miriam Adams was born in Toronto on January 29, 1944. She studied with Betty Oliphant and became a student at the National Ballet School in 1960,[1] graduating in 1963.[2]

From 1963 to 1969 she performed with the National Ballet of Canada[1] as a member of the corps de ballet.[2] While there she met her husband, Lawrence Adams, also a dancer.[3]

After leaving the National Ballet of Canada, Adams taught at the Lois Smith School of Dance. In 1972, Adams and Lawrence formed a dance compnay called 15 Dancers[3] and created 15 Dance Lab as a small studio theatre in Toronto,[4] which was the first theatre to present experimental dance in Toronto.[1] Adams wanted to avoid the hierarchical structures she experienced in ballet companies and instead promote the independence of dancers from various styles of dance.[5] In 1974, Adams and Lawrence incorporated 15 Dance Lab as a not-for-profit organisation.[6] They received various grants for their organisation which allowed them to pay artists 75% of the box office revenue for their performances.[4]

Adams' choreographic works contained humour, parody and satire of current events.[1] She presented ode to yogurt at 15 Dance Lab on June 13, 1972.[7] She choreographed Another Nutcracker in 1973 which parodied various aspects of ballet. In 1975 she satorized the defection of Mikhail Baryshnikov from the Soviet Union in Sonovovitch.[1]

In 1990 Adams choreographed and composed the score for So What’s This Got To Do With God Already? at Inde 90 at the Harbourfront Centre. The piece was a humorous look at Jewish culture and featured modern dance, ballet, ballroom, and basketball movements.[8]

From 1976 to 1978, Adams and Lawrence published Spill. In 1979 she published a dance photography book.[9] From 1980 to 1983 they published a monthly newspaper called Canadian Dance News.[3][2] During this time Adams worked as a conference and special projects coordinator for the Dance in Canada Association.[3]

In 1983 Adams and her husband created Encore! Encore! to reconstruct dances from six choreographers from the 1940s and 1950s.[3] Former dancers and choreographers helped them recreate, film and write down these works through dance notation. They chose works whose choreography, dance costumes and scores were created in Canada and danced by Canadian dancers.[10] The choreographers were Gweneth Lloyd of Winnipeg, Jeanne Renaud and Francois Sullivan of Montreal, Nesta Toumine of Ottawa, and Boris Volkoff and Nancy Lima Dent of Toronto.[11] Adams worked with her brother-in-law David Adams to reconstruct Boris Volkoff’s The Red Ear of Corn.[12] Excerpts of these dances were performed in Vancouver at Expo 86.[3]

In 1986 Adams and Lawrence created the Encore! Dance Hall of Fame to honour Canadian dancers and choreographers.[13] They also renamed their not-for-profit company to Arts Inter-Media Canada and established Dance Collection Danse as a publisher[6] and museum. The first iteration of the museum was hosted in Adams' home.[2] She acted as its director until 2019, but remains part of the organisation as an advisor.[14]

In 1989 Adams published Encyclopedia of Theatre Dance in Canada after its original editor lost their funding to create the project.[15]

Adams married Lawrence Adams in 1967.[3]

In 1980 Adams and her husband won the Dance Ontario Award for their work showcasing modern dance in their theatre.[9] In 2009 Adams received the Rita Davies and Margo Bindhardt Cultural Leadership Award at the Mayor's Arts Awards Lunch.[16] In 2011 Adams was named a member of the Order of Canada for "contributions to preserving and popularizing Canadian dance history."[3][17]