The Demise of Le Groupe Dance Lab: The End of An Era, Part 2

By Michael Crabb

Ottawa’s Le Groupe Dance Lab, for more than twenty years a vital incubator of dance creativity under the artistic direction of Peter Boneham, closed permanently last summer. In making its decision, Le Groupe’s board of directors pinpointed, among many factors, the difficulty of evolving from a founder-led organization to one with new artistic leadership.

Le Groupe Dance Lab had initiated a plan that theoretically would provide for a smooth transition but, as Michael Crabb explains in the second installment of his account of the company’s demise, a concatenation of intricately entwined events conspired to bring Le Groupe down.

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Tony Chong, having served a three-year apprenticeship as Le Groupe Dance Lab’s associate director, formally took over the company’s leadership on July 1st, 2008, with Peter Boneham retaining a close involvement as senior artistic advisor. Boneham continued to teach and serve as a “monitor” for visiting choreographers as requested but Chong assumed the responsibility for artistic planning and daily operations. The circumstances in which Chong began his new job, however, were less than auspicious.

On the financial front things had been looking bleak since the spring. A major cash-flow crunch that could have triggered layoffs was only averted by board intervention. Board members covered a bridging loan until the grant money finally arrived. The departure of general manager Anthony Pan that summer meant Chong began his first season without a senior administrator; but then Chong himself, with what can only be judged the most inopportune timing, was initially absent in Toronto, creating Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things for Dancemakers.

Boneham kept the artistic side running more or less normally but in an atmosphere of uncertainty. Lainie Towell, an independent Ottawa dance artist who began working in Le Groupe’s office four years earlier, was, by 2008, occupying a fulltime position as director of communications. “Without a manager there were a lot of areas where we just didn’t know what was going on,” Towell recalls. “There was definitely a problem.” Eventually, a respected former manager of Le Groupe, Marlene Alt, was brought in on a part-time basis to try to figure out the finances. Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa, in one of its recurrent threats to economize by slashing arts funding, precipitated even greater worries.

It may sound merely technical but in terms of Le Groupe’s financial management there was a chronic problem with the timing of the city’s grant. The city’s fiscal year matches the calendar year. Le Groupe’s was July 1st to June 30th. Laura Cyr, Cultural Planner – Funding for the City of Ottawa, explains that some years earlier Le Groupe had forgotten to apply for an annual grant. From then on it meant that Le Groupe’s current grant, in terms of the city’s budget, was posted retroactively to the company’s previous fiscal year. For example, because of this six-month accounting discrepancy, Le Groupe applied the city’s 2008 grant of $125,000 to its 2007/08 fiscal year. It was thus unable, given the vicissitudes of city budgeting and recurrent threats of cuts to the arts, to draw up a current operating budget with a dependable estimate of the city’s subvention. With yet another arts funding cut looming, Le Groupe’s board of directors was understandably anxious.

The Ontario Arts Council’s annual contribution, despite modest increases in 2007 and 2008, had been declining for almost a decade – from $96,350 in 1999 to $75,750 in 2006. The Canada Council’s grant remained fairly stable throughout this period, ranging from $205,000 to $210,000.

The board was thus seriously concerned about Le Groupe’s financial situation and was looking to cut costs. The roster of dancers was reduced from six to five. Normand Vandal, Le Groupe’s longtime resident designer – a title that hardly comprehended the range of his activities – was peremptorily let go with only the reassurance that he might be re-engaged as needed on short-term contracts. Boneham was outraged. Vandal was his partner – and he was not well. Le Groupe’s decision could not have come at a worse moment for Boneham.

The termination of Vandal’s fulltime contract may also have been connected to Chong’s desire as the new artistic director to do things differently. Why would he necessarily accept the need for a resident designer? Like the board, Chong was seeking increased flexibility in terms of contracting needed services. Whatever the rationale, however, the decision was unlikely to sweeten relations between Boneham and his successor.

Chong was also mulling various ideas about how to heighten Le Groupe’s visibility. “People had a hard time understanding what we did. It made it difficult to raise private funds.” Chong was prepared to change the mandate if necessary, perhaps even remove Le Groupe to another city with a more developed dance culture. “All the talent had to be brought in,” he explained. “We could have had a more flexible structure.”

Chong was also aware that Le Groupe was at risk of becoming the victim of its own success and of Boneham’s proselytizing. You can copyright choreography but you can’t patent a process. Boneham so conclusively proved the value of the model he conceived – of creating opportunities for choreographers to explore and experiment – that it had spawned if not copies then certainly variations of Le Groupe’s approach in the form of creative residencies.

Chong’s ideas never went anywhere because in early December 2008 he resigned. Le Groupe had become too big a headache and his personal ambitions lay elsewhere. Chong’s decision may have been hastened by the board’s decision to cut the 2008/09 season short, ending it in late January 2009 with the scheduled residency of Toronto choreographer Susanna Hood. It was almost certainly influenced by his belief that any meaningful change would take many years. “I just saw the futility of it,” says Chong.

Boneham, needless to say, was not about to see “his baby” go down the drain; nor could he apprehend that his own desire to remain involved, even if only as a teacher and occasional monitor, might be an impediment to preventing that very calamity. Although, at age seventy-four, he did not want the burden of leadership, Boneham’s personal connection to Le Groupe was part of his identity.

Peter Boneham is a passionate man of single-minded vision; a formidably strong personality. He is also a volatile person who elicits strong and not always positive reactions. Even those who revere him acknowledge that at times Boneham can, as one described it “be very scary”, say dreadful things and then return to his more typical generous self without comprehending the hurt he has inflicted. With Chong gone and the finances uncertain, the issue of Boneham’s continuing place with Le Groupe made the task of finding someone else willing to take over the reins all the more problematic.

For Boneham the solution was obvious. In a proposal he submitted to the board, Boneham would return as interim artistic director in a collaborative arrangement with Tedd Robinson’s own company, 10 Gates Dancing. The board, however, had a counter proposal to consider, submitted by one of its stalwart volunteer supporters, Anika Houle. The board’s acceptance of hers over his, as it struggled to decide the best way forward, was tantamount to a rejection of Le Groupe’s founding genius. At least Boneham saw it that way and made it a war between himself and Houle. In the end both lost and Le Groupe perished.

Montréal-born Anika Houle entered the life of Le Groupe as a beneficent “fairy godmother” – Boneham, she says, dubbed her thus – bearing smiles, cookies and encouragement. Houle, forty, is married to a French diplomat. For some two decades she lived outside Canada, studying, travelling the world and “reinventing” herself, as she explains, in each location. She is a lover of dance and trained in both ballet and modern, but as an amateuse not a professional. Houle describes herself as a designer and event co-coordinator, and through her personal interests, travels and husband’s profession, she is well connected in international diplomatic and cultural circles. With her husband ensconced as cultural attaché at the French Embassy in Ottawa, she decided to take Le Groupe under her wing and help it any way she could.

Before Chong’s resignation and the board’s drastic decision to cut short the season, most people viewed Houle as a benign presence and emphatically positive spirit. Once the board announced in January that it had accepted Houle’s proposal to act, in effect, as interim artistic director (there is still some dispute about what her exact title was to be), stabilizing the organization and implementing Chong’s plans for the 2009/10 season while Le Groupe sought a new artistic leader, there was general bewilderment.

It was known that Boneham had offered to fill the breach. Why would the board put its trust in a woman who, however well meaning, had no apparent credibility in the Canadian dance community? For Boneham, who had previously considered Houle an amiable dilettante, she became a dangerous threat. His life’s work and his own continuing association with Le Groupe appeared to be in jeopardy. It was almost inevitable that his relations with Houle would soon disintegrate into outright hostility, on his part at least. Houle insists she had great sympathy for Boneham and tried to maintain a positive, non-adversarial attitude.

Boneham began badgering. Why had the board not launched an immediate search for a new director? Why was he, the founder – or for that matter anyone else of artistic stature – not being consulted?

Houle says she understands the emotional source of Boneham’s enmity but, with the board’s endorsement, was doing what was necessary to stabilize the organization at the financial and managerial level. There was no point putting out a call for a new artistic director, so she reasoned with board concurrence, unless there was a salary in place and the promise, going forward, of sound management.

Predictably, accounts of what happened over the ensuing months vary according to whom one asks. By raising his battle flag, Boneham had essentially asked the dance community to choose sides. You were either for his cause to save Le Groupe from the clutches of an ambitious but unqualified interloper or against one of the most senior and respected figures in Canadian dance. What Boneham did not comprehend was that there was a grey area in which people who certainly did not want to hurt him or diminish his achievement also felt it was time for Le Groupe to move beyond him. Their concern, however, was whether Houle was the right person to chart that course.

Houle claims to have consulted widely. She made overtures to Yvonne Coutts – not as a potential artistic director but as someone who might be interested in teaching and perhaps monitoring when, all being well, Le Groupe resumed operations in September 2009. Coutts came away unclear of Houle’s intentions.

Houle believed she had put together what she calls “an exquisite season” that only needed the support of government funders to be activated. There was no rush to advertise for an artistic director since with the appropriate line-up of choreographers, dancers, teachers and monitors and her own custodial supervision, Le Groupe would be on a solid footing. The only problem was that the funders were not so confident.

By the time these pressing issues were coming to a tipping point, Boneham had insisted that Le Groupe make clear that he was no longer associated with the organization. A suitable amendment to the website was duly made – and the locks to Le Groupe were changed.

Boneham, who felt humiliated to arrive at Arts Court and be denied access to his old office without advance permission, says he merely wanted to retrieve personal archival material that he intended to donate to the National Archives. Houle says there was some confusion over what rightfully belonged to Boneham and what was Le Groupe’s. The non-relationship had become toxic.

Boneham, by his own admission, had meanwhile orchestrated a write-in campaign from reputable figures in the dance community to protest the course the board and Houle were taking.

Houle still believed her plan could succeed and in late May put out the call for a new general manager. “The position works closely with the Artistic Director and reports to the Board of Directors,” read the posting. But what artistic director? Houle? The posting was perplexing to those still trying to fathom what was really happening at Le Groupe; a manager more important than an artistic director?

Then, as John Manwaring explains, the funding imploded. While the Canada Council remained stalwartly supportive, the Ontario Arts Council delivered what from Le Groupe’s perspective was a double whammy. Not only would the grant for 2009/10 be smaller but, because the organization had not fulfilled the terms of its 2008/09 grant, there would be a claw-back to account for the foreshortened season. The City of Ottawa’s 2009 grant – the threatened across-the-board reduction in arts funding had not materialized – was also reduced by almost fifty per cent. “They’d already stated they were only functioning for six months,” says Laura Cyr, “and the jury acted accordingly.”

Even if the funding had come through, Houle was discovering that some of the artists planned for the 2009/10 season were unwilling to cross the her-or-me line in the sand drawn by Boneham. In a contest of loyalties, Houle was inevitably proving the loser; but then so was Le Groupe. It is not hard to understand why a wearied board of directors, assailed by Boneham and without adequate financial resources, finally decided that effecting a transition of leadership was “too difficult”.

The question inevitably remains. Why did Le Groupe Dance Lab succumb? Can fingers be pointed specifically? Government funders? The board? Anika Houle? Peter Boneham?

There is no simple or conclusive answer. As with most seismic events it was a combination of things. Yet, beyond the predictable dismay of those with close personal attachments to Le Groupe, was it really that seismic?

Admittedly the midsummer closure notice came at a time when most people’s attention was elsewhere. Yet, given the purported value of Le Groupe, it is perhaps worth asking why the dance community – so far as it functions as a community in a country as large, diverse and regionalized as Canada – did not try to save the organization.

There were a few newspaper articles, quite a lot of tears among those closest to the action; then it was almost as if nothing had happened. The world moves on.

As Boneham, who turns seventy-five on November 7th, reflected in the aftermath of Le Groupe’s closure, with perhaps more explanatory resonance than he understood: “Maybe everything has its lifetime.”~


Michael Crabb is a Toronto-based writer, broadcaster and lecturer. He was a CBC Radio producer and on-air host from 1981 through 2000, and is still heard on the Toronto program "Here & Now". He has written about dance for thirty-five years.

The Demise of Le Groupe Dance Lab: The End of An Era, Part 1

By Michael Crabb

For those not watchful of events at Ottawa’s Le Groupe Dance Lab, the July 31st announcement that it would be closing its doors forever came as a stunning shock.

For more than twenty years – ever since Artistic Director Peter Boneham reinvented his performing company, Le Groupe de la Place Royale, to become a centre for contemporary dance research, experimentation and development – the Lab had been a vital incubator of dance creativity in Canada and beyond. In the late 1980s, as he surveyed the Canadian dance scene, Boneham detected a crucial need for choreographers to explore and hone their craft in a supportive environment, free of the distracting pressure to produce a finished work.

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Le Groupe – with rented headquarters at Arts Court in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill district – offered visiting choreographers a resident corps of dancers, technical, design and production support and, most importantly, the outside eye of an experienced mentor, or “monitor”. There were also public showings during which choreographers could engage audiences in constructive conversation – feedback sessions intended to help decipher the sometimes problematic gap between artistic intent and how it is perceived.

In 1988 Boneham’s idea was not entirely novel. Dance workshops and choreographic intensives had been around for years, mostly operating in compressed timeframes, simultaneously involving several choreographers and often without the benefit of monitorial oversight. What was unique and visionary about Boneham’s project was the creation of a permanent, integrated institution where choreographers could be individually nurtured over the course of several weeks in what came to be known as a “process”.

Boneham’s initial assessment of the situation proved accurate and his solution successful. “Peter was definitely ahead of his time,” says Yvonne Coutts, an Ottawa-based dancer, teacher and choreographer whose association with Le Groupe began when it was still a performing company.

Le Groupe Dance Lab became a seemingly indispensable resource, not only for emerging choreographers but for those more seasoned, such as former artistic director of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers Tedd Robinson, seeking creative revitalization.

“I had a great job,” says Robinson, “but nobody was telling me the things I needed to hear. Peter, on the other hand, does not hold back. He told me I had an innate theatrical sense but that my vocabulary sucked. He made a lot of sense.”

It was not only choreographers who benefited. Although their schedule was onerous, Le Groupe’s dancers had two invaluable benefits. They took daily class with a tough but inspirational teacher – Boneham himself – and worked creatively with a wide range of choreographers. For dancers who were often in the developmental phase of their careers it was an extraordinary experience – a crash course in endurance and versatility – and if they felt a strong urge to choreograph there was also the possibility of undertaking a “process”.

As a senior officer at one of our major public granting agencies recently remarked: “It’s rare in contemporary dance to open an applicant’s file nowadays and not find a connection to Le Groupe somewhere along the way.”

Even last fall, when Le Groupe was in the midst of a serious financial crisis and trying to adjust to new leadership, the work in the studio continued at its usual intensity with visiting choreographers from Canada, France and The Netherlands.

So why did it all unravel?

That July 31st announcement included a prepared statement from Le Groupe’s long-serving – and, one suspects, long-suffering – board chair, University of Ottawa law professor John Manwaring. “Many factors, financial and otherwise, have led to this extremely difficult decision,” Manwaring stated. “It is always difficult to move from a founder-led organization to one with new artistic leadership and while Le Groupe Dance Lab tried determinedly to do this, in the end the transition proved too difficult.”

The choice of words “too difficult” is telling. One might have expected something more emphatic, such as “impossible”. “Too difficult” suggests that perhaps, in other circumstances, there might have been a solution. And, since this was a decision made by Le Groupe’s legal trustees, its board of directors, it also hints at the understandable exhaustion – even exasperation – of those four public-spirited volunteers who had, for so many years, done their best to keep the company afloat.

Few would argue Professor Manwaring’s contention that moving beyond a founder-led organization is difficult. Canadian dance history is littered with examples, from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in the early 1950s to Toronto Dance Theatre thirty years later.

Choreographer-driven companies present particularly intractable problems since they are essentially founded to serve as platforms for a specific creative vision. When that creative vision appears to dim or loses the confidence of audiences – or the peer-assessment juries that decide who gets public funding – there is no clear way forward. It is no secret, for example, that the Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, Desrosiers Dance Theatre and Danny Grossman Dance Company – albeit in the latter case specifically in its form as a performing organization – suffered the painful death of slow, progressive cuts.

Although it was not strictly a single choreographer-founded company, a similar fate might have overtaken Le Groupe de la Place Royale had it not successfully convinced the funding agencies to support its refashioned mandate – one not only designed to serve the needs of the dance community but tailor-made for a then fifty-four-year-old director/choreographer seeking to redefine his role as a contributing artist.

Peter Boneham was part of Le Groupe de la Place Royale from the start. Its roots lie in the heady cultural milieu of early 1960s Montréal. Québécoise artists Jeanne Renaud and Françoise Riopelle, with a shared aesthetic forged by their youthful involvement with the modernist automatistes, launched Le Groupe de Danse Moderne de Montréal. Vincent Warren, then a principal dancer with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, was intrigued by the fledgling troupe’s intellectually rigorous avant-garde experimentation and introduced fellow Grands Ballets member Peter Boneham to Renaud and Riopelle.

Boneham and Warren, both ballet-trained Americans, had become friends in New York City before either joined Les Grands Ballets. Boneham agreed to dance with Renaud in a piece called “Rideau” at Montréal’s Expressions 65. The two quickly became artistic compadres in launching Le Groupe de la Place Royale. Dance was intentionally excluded from the title because of its founders’ cross-disciplinary, collaborative intentions. Although Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers proudly claims its status as Canada’s oldest modern dance company, in 1966 Le Groupe was the first to receive a Canada Council grant.

Renaud was gone within five years but Le Groupe continued under the direction of Boneham and company charter member Jean-Pierre Perreault. Perreault, thirteen years younger than Boneham, began as a dancer, learning as he went along, and by 1972 had begun to choreograph. Le Groupe became known for its boldly innovative approach to dance making, particularly the use of mixed media and new technology.

By the mid-1970s, however, Boneham and Perreault had grown restive. Le Groupe was struggling financially and it seemed that the Québec government was favouring the rival Groupe Nouvelle Aire. Boneham – an English speaker with less than functional French – thought it was time to get out. Initially he proposed moving the company to Toronto because it seemed to be “a happening place”. Perreault demurred. Finally, having sounded out the Canada Council, they agreed on Ottawa. Le Groupe moved its company and school there in 1977.

Perreault, meanwhile, was becoming a choreographer of note. It gradually became clear that his ambitions could not be accommodated in Ottawa or within the company. “Le Groupe didn’t suit his artistic needs,” says Boneham. Perreault formally resigned as co-artistic director in 1981. Dancer and choreographer Michael Montanaro, now chair of the contemporary dance department at Montréal’s Concordia University, served as Boneham’s associate director until 1985.

Le Groupe’s switch from being a touring performance troupe to a stay-put centre for creative development was not an overnight event but was formalized in 1988 with a new name and a new mandate. Whether one regards this as a completely fresh start or an evolution of Le Groupe de la Place Royale, Peter Boneham’s claims as a founding father are unassailable.

The issue then becomes how long the founder can continue to function and what happens when he can not. Although the fire in his belly was never dampened, Boneham’s health was sometimes a concern. And since Le Groupe was not dependent on Boneham to supply it with choreography, it could, as an institution with a clear mandate, reasonably look forward to surviving him – even if the mandate might require some fine tuning for the organization to remain useful and relevant.

Conversations about Le Groupe’s future, both within and without, had begun even in the 1990s. Robinson recalls Boneham asking him if he was interested in taking over at some point. Robinson, who had been Le Groupe’s resident guest artist after leaving Winnipeg in 1990, valued the organization highly and got on well with Boneham but was only interested in the mentoring part of the job. “I can teach if I have to,” says Robinson, “but I don’t enjoy it. It’s not my forte at all.” He identifies an important issue. Boneham was teacher, monitor and artistic director. Under the best conditions it would not be easy to find one person to fill all those roles.

The issue of transition came into clearer focus when the funding bodies Le Groupe depended on for almost ninety per cent of its income (in later years the annual budget was around $400,000) suggested it was time to act decisively.

The premature death of Jean-Pierre Perreault in December 2002 seems to have been a catalyst. Though long separated as colleagues, Boneham and Perreault still had a strong emotional bond. Those close to Boneham witnessed the profound impact of Perreault’s death. “It was devastating for Peter,” recalls Coutts.

Coutts, with as clear a knowledge as any of Le Groupe’s workings because of her former involvement as a dancer and choreographer, offered to help. Coutts could teach, she could monitor; she could even write grant applications. She saw Boneham’s acceptance of her offer as a sign that he acknowledged a need for a planned transition of leadership, but while it occupied his thoughts its exact form was not always clearly expressed.

Hiring extra help, of course, takes money and Le Groupe never had much of it. Cash-flow crunches were a cyclical occurrence that the organization somehow always managed to survive. Adding to the regular payroll would take special funding; and it was forthcoming, thanks to the Metcalf and Ontario Trillium Foundations, but it was specifically tied to implementing a transition of leadership.

Boneham, whose twin passions remain teaching and mentoring, certainly embraced the notion of a diminished role for himself but almost certainly never imagined withdrawing completely. The answer, as he saw it, was team leadership. Tony Chong now enters the story.

Originally from Vancouver, Chong moved as a young dancer to Montréal in 1984. There he became immersed in its vibrant dance scene. Chong performed with, among others, Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Carbon 14, José Navas’s Compagnie Flak and Perreault’s company. He danced in Germany’s Steptext Dance Project and with Belgium’s Ballets C. de la B.

Chong first connected with Le Groupe in 2003 as a visiting choreographer. Boneham was impressed. By late 2004 he’d convinced Chong to join Le Groupe as associate director, working alongside Coutts. “I’m not sure why I was specifically asked,” Chong reflects. “We had a shared idealism but maybe it was because I didn’t have an historical connection and came with a different aesthetic.”

Coutts was completely unprepared for Chong’s arrival in January, 2005. “It caught me quite off guard,” she explains; and probably left her feeling slighted. “I had committed a lot to Le Groupe. I’d developed the skill set to be artistic director.”

From Boneham’s viewpoint, the combination of Coutts and Chong was ideal. “Each had strengths and weaknesses and they kind of balanced out. I never saw Tony as artistic director on his own. He still wanted to be a choreographer.”

The team leadership concept, even if it could have been financed over the long term, was ill-fated. It was a sometimes tense ménage à trois that ended abruptly and unpleasantly in the winter of 2006. Coutts decided to bring in choreographer Ame Henderson, along with her own dramaturge/monitor.

Coutts says she felt Le Groupe needed to find new ways to meet the needs of the dance community, part of which involved bringing in “a different kind of outside eye”. Although for many choreographers a major attraction of Le Groupe was the opportunity to work with Boneham, other visiting choreographers had requested their own chosen monitor. According to Chong, Boneham was open to the need for the organization to evolve. “He knew it would need to change,” says Chong, “but Peter was also concerned about his legacy and his ideals.” For him, process and experimentation were the essence of Le Groupe, whereas visiting choreographers sometimes came to view a residency as a chance to produce a finished work. “At times it was almost becoming a production company,” observes Robinson. “That was not what Peter wanted.”

Henderson’s residency brought things to a head for Coutts. Henderson was inadvertently caught in a fomenting cauldron of conflicting ideas about how Le Groupe should function. “It was three weeks of hell trying to support her. I couldn’t understand what was going on. All I could see was this tightening of the grip.” Coutts decided the situation had become intolerable and quit– leaving Chong as sole heir apparent.

And so Chong’s apprenticeship continued until, on April 29th, 2008, Le Groupe’s board announced the passing of the torch with Chong’s official appointment as artistic director, effective July 1st.

Boneham – who by then had been honored with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for lifetime artistic achievement in 2005 and appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in April 2008 – would assume the position of senior artistic advisor. It was at this point that a concatenation of events, so intricately entwined that it’s hard to follow the threads, conspired to bring Le Groupe down.~

Read the rest of the story in "The End of an Era, Part 2" by Michael Crabb, posted in November 2009 (above).


Michael Crabb is a Toronto-based writer, broadcaster and lecturer. He was a CBC Radio producer and on-air host from 1981 through 2000, and is still heard on the Toronto program "Here & Now". He has written about dance for thirty-five years.