When sailors and Hudson Bay Company employees performed aboard the H.M.S. Trincomalee in Esquimalt Harbour in 1853, it was the first recorded theatrical production (in the European tradition) in the yet-to-be named province of B.C. The first opera house opened in Victoria in 1885. A social club called the Midnight Adieu Club held fortnightly dances at Vancouver's first theatre, Blair's Hall, prior to the Great Fire of 1886. New Westminster's first opera house, Herrings, opened in 1887, four years before Vancouver's first opera house was opened by the CPR in 1891.

Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinksy and Martha Graham are among the dozens of dancers whose appearances are recalled in Kaija Pepper's Theatrical Dance in Vancouver: 1880s-1920s (Dance Collection $21). Among lesser-known dancers profiled is Margaret Severn, who retired to Vancouver in 1971 and died in B.C. at age 96 in 1997. She became ballet mistress for the Ballet Russes de Paris after touring throughout North America in the 1920s, twice dancing in Vancouver. 0-929003-38-1

[BCBW AUTUMN 2000]