Farewell to the 'tiny perfect dancer'
Andrea Boardman bids adieu to Les Grands Ballets Canadiens

Dance has always been a matter of "life or death" for Andrea Boardman. With that in mind, consider how mightily the 40-year-old ballerina has wrestled with one of the sadder aspects of ballet: the dancer's mercilessly short career.

Now, just before her final curtain with Les Grands, Boardman mulls over her career. "What is it about me? What is my trademark? I go through my clippings and realize it's not so much what I danced, but how I danced it."

Convinced her body - "really turned in, really stiff" - would be rejected by today's ballet schools, she says proudly and quietly: "I made it work. I made the most of the good and the bad. I have virtuosity in terms of a range of styles and my spirituality is in my work."

Andrea Boardman: Three Decades with Les Grands Ballets
Born in Pennsylvania, Andrea Boardman began her ballet studies in New Jersey and moved on to pursue her training at the National Academy of Arts in Champaign, Illinois, where she was awarded grand prize in the National Merit Scholarship Award. In 1978, she joined the American Ballet Theater's Ballet Repertory Company before moving to Montreal in 1980 and signing on with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal.

She's no diva
At 38, Andrea Boardman was told her days with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens were over. She could have fought the decision, as some advised, but she didn't want to split the company and force people to take sides

Eighteen months ago, Andrea Boardman got the message every ageing ballerina dreads: Her boss had decided it was time for her to go.

The message was delivered during a personal interview with Gradimir Pankov, the newly installed artistic director of Montreal's Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. "As soon as he started saying I needed to begin planning my future," recalls Boardman, "I knew he was telling me he didn't want me around. I was crushed."

Boardman, then 38, had been with the company for almost 20 years. She had risen quickly through the ranks to become a principal dancer. She was also an audience favourite and popular among her colleagues. Thirty-eight might seem a premature retirement age in the regular workaday world, but in the strenuous and unforgiving universe of dance it is certainly a point where most ballerinas must begin looking for a place to hang up their toe shoes.