Peggy Baker

Peggy Baker, C.M., O.Ont., LL.D., is acclaimed as one of the most outstanding and influential contemporary dancers of her generation. Her unique abilities are the product of an education in both dance and theatre, pursued initially through the drama department of the University of Alberta, with The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and in New York at the Martha Graham School and the Herbert Berghof Studio. Born in Edmonton in 1952, Baker began her professional career in Toronto, in 1974, as a founding member, and later artistic director, of Dancemakers, where she participated in more than 50 premieres by Canadian choreographers and contributed three works to the repertoire. She toured internationally as a prominent member of Lar Lubovitch’s celebrated New York company throughout the eighties and joined Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mark Morris for the inaugural season of their White Oak Dance Project in 1990, subsequently forging important creative relationships with Montreal’s Paul-André Fortier and New York’s Doug Varone through numerous performance projects.

Baker made her debut as a solo artist in 1990, her work distinguished from the outset by collaborations with extraordinary creators and performers. Among them: choreographers Sarah Chase, Molissa Fenley, James Kudelka, Tere O’Connor, and Tedd Robinson; composers Michael J. Baker, Chan Ka Nin, Ahmed Hassan, Christos Hatzis, Debashis Sinha, and Ann Southam; dancers Margie Gillis, Larry Hahn, Christopher House, Sylvain Lafortune, and Susan Macpherson; directors Daniel Brooks and Denise Clarke; actors Conrad Alexandrowicz, Jackie Burroughs, and Michael Healey; visual artists and designers Ina Levitsky, Janet Morton, Caroline O’Brien, Marc Parent, Kurt Swinghammer, Jane Townsend, and Peter Vogel; Amici, Arraymusic, Art of Time Ensemble, The Modern Quartet, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under Jukka-Pekka Saraste; and instrumentalists Andrew Burashko, Denise Djokic, John Kameel Farrah, Henry Kucharzyk, Shauna Rolston, James Sommerville, and Robert W. Stevenson. 

Her concerts have been presented at major festivals and dance centres across North America, Asia, and Europe including Danspace, The Kitchen, and Symphony Space in New York; the Luckman Center in Los Angeles; Jacob’s Pillow; the Copenhagen International Dance Festival; the Time Festival in Ghent, Belgium; MoDaFe in Seoul, Korea; the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa; The High Performance Rodeo in Calgary; and three seasons at L’Agora de la danse in Montreal. She has premiered two all-night choreographic events for Toronto’s Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche; situated her hour-long choreographic installation move – danced by local community members – in a public market in St. Catharines, Ontario; and presented interior with moving figures – four dances, performed simultaneously in four different spaces for a span of 70 minutes – at the Art Gallery Ontario.

Baker has been honoured with numerous awards including the Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement (2009), the 2006 Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, three Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Performance (Why the Brook Wept / 1996, loin, très loin / 2000, Portal / 2008) and two for Outstanding Choreography (Portal / 2008, Radio Play with Denise Clarke / 2009), a 2002 Cadillac-Fairview Salute to the City Award, the Toronto Arts Council’s 2002 Margo Bindhardt Award, an Honourary Doctorate from the University of Calgary, and the 2010 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.

A master teacher, Baker teaches regularly at universities and professional training programs throughout Canada and the United States, including the American Dance Festival, the Juilliard School, New York University, Philadelphia’s Dance Advance, the School at Jacob’s Pillow, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, UC Santa Barbara, and York University.  She was director of dance from 1991-1994 at the Contemporary Arts Summer Institute at Simon Fraser University. She is the first ever Artist-in-Residence at Canada’s National Ballet School, appointed in 1992.  Irene Dowd, Patricia Miner, Risa Steinberg, and Christine Wright, her primary teachers since the mid-eighties, continue to exert a powerful influence on her development.

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