Anna Blewchamp

Artist

Anna was born in London, England, and trained at the Corona Theatre Academy and the Ballet Rambert School. She also studied and danced with Gary Cockrell’s jazz company and then continued her jazz training in New York with Luigi and Matt Mattox. Later studies include the Martha Graham School and Alvin Ailey, among others. She moved to Toronto in 1969 and soon connected with Elizabeth and Robert Swerdlow and their Global Village Theatre where she taught and performed. That relationship led her to Factory Theatre founder Ken Gass who engaged Anna to teach movement classes to actors.

Freelance teaching in the early 1970s put her in contact with students at Toronto Dance Theatre (TDT) who spoke glowingly of the Martha Graham technique. Though she did not enjoy her experience of Graham in England, she found a new affinity for the technique at TDT and was inspired by founders Peter Randazzo, Patricia Beatty, and David Earle. By 1973, she was teaching and performing with the company – a favourite role being the Lady in Red in Randazzo’s Nighthawks.

Anna did the first show in 1974 at 15 Dance Lab, a theatre created by DCD’s founders Lawrence and Miriam Adams. By the mid-1970s, Anna was choreographing regularly for the newly created company Dancemakers (where she was associate artistic director from 1977-1978) including Arrival of All Time, Baggage, A.K.A., Terminal, and Homage. Arrival of All Time, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s suicide note, was later remounted by the Danny Grossman Dance Company. The original costumes reside in DCD’s collection.