Peggy Baker
artistic director, choreographer, dancer

Peggy Baker is acclaimed as one of the most outstanding and influential contemporary dance artists 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, she began her professional career in Toronto in 1973 as an apprentice with Toronto Dance Theatre, joining Dancemakers as a founding member in 1974. 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 Molissa Fenley (New York), Paul-André Fortier (Montreal), James Kudelka (Toronto), and Doug Varone (New York) through numerous performance projects.

She established Peggy Baker Dance Projects in 1990, and for the first 20 years she dedicated herself to solo performance, winning rapturous praise for the eloquence and depth of her dancing, and accolades for her collaborative partnerships with extraordinary musicians and designers. From 2010-2023, her choreography focused on group works, culminating in her largest work, who we are in the dark, in 2019. Featuring seven dancers and live performances by musician/composers Sarah Neufeld and Jeremy Gara, this work was performed in seven Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton, Banff, Whitehorse, Kingston, and Ottawa) and toured to The 2019 Cervantino Festival, Guanajuato, Mexico; and the 2020 Holland Dance Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands.

The extensive list of the company’s collaborators includes: choreographers Sarah Chase, Molissa Fenley, Paul-André Fortier, James Kudelka, Tere O’Connor, Tedd Robinson and Doug Varone; composers Michael J. Baker, Chan Ka Nin, John Kameel Farah, Jeremy Gara, Ahmed Hassan, Christos Hatzis, Sarah Neufeld, Heather Schmidt, Debashis Sinha, Ann Southam and Phil Strong; vocalographer Fides Krucker; guest dancers Margie Gillis, Christopher House, Sylvain Lafortune, and Susan Macpherson; directors Daniel Brooks, Denise Clarke and Eda Holmes; actors Conrad Alexandrowicz, Jackie Burroughs, and Michael Healey; filmmakers Jeremy Mimnagh and William Yong; visual artists and designers Gillian Gallow, Larry Hahn, John Heward, Ina Levitsky, Janet Morton, Caroline O’Brien, Marc Parent, Kurt Swinghammer, Jane Townsend, and Peter Vogel; instrumentalists Andrew Burashko, Denise Djokic, John Kameel Farah, Jeremy Gara, Henry Kucharzyk, Sarah Neufeld, Shauna Rolston, James Sommerville, and Robert W. Stevenson, as well as Amici, Arraymusic, The Modern Quartet, Art of Time Ensemble, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

Over its 33-year history Peggy Baker Dance Projects was presented at major festivals and dance centres in North America, Asia and Europe, including Danspace, The Kitchen, Symphony Space, and the Harkness Festival 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; Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan; the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa; The High Performance Rodeo in Calgary; three seasons at L’Agora de la danse in Montreal; and Fall for Dance North at Toronto’s SONY Centre.

Additionally, Ms. Baker premiered five all-night choreographic events for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche; situated her hour-long choreographic installation move – danced by local community members – in public spaces in St. Catharines, Fredericton, Kingston, Calgary, Burlington, and Hamilton; staged The Perfect Word, a 3-hour sound/video/dance installation, for in/Future on the abandoned west island of Toronto’s Ontario Place; presented interior with moving figures – four dances, performed simultaneously in four different spaces for a span of 70 minutes – at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO); and presented land | body | breath – an hour long installation for 8 dancers and 2 vocalists – at the AGO and the National Gallery of Canada. her body as words, created with filmmaker Jeremy Mimnagh, was presented on media screens in Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square and for Festivale Internacional Buenos Aires; streamed globally via Baryshnikov Arts Centre, New York; and was presented as a lobby installation for Tanzmesse 2021 in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Ms Baker’s history as a teacher at universities and professional training programs throughout Canada and the U.S. includes The Juilliard School, The School at Jacob’s Pillow, American Dance Festival, New York University, UC Santa Barbara, Philadelphia’s Dance Advance, York University, University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University (as director of dance for the Contemporary Arts Summer Institute from 1991 – 1994), The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, L’Ecole de danse de Quebec, and Canada’s National Ballet School, where she was appointed Artist-in-Residence in 1992. Irene Dowd, Christine Wright, Patricia Miner, and Risa Steinberg, her primary teachers since the mid-eighties, continued to exert a powerful influence on her development throughout her career.

Under the banner The Choreographer’s Trust her company published a series of booklet/DVD sets that document six of her landmark solos. She is the subject of a book by Carol Anderson, Unfold - a Portrait of Peggy Baker, published by dance Collection Danse, and of a film by V. Tony Hauser, Dancing Darkness.

Ms Baker has been honoured with numerous awards for her extraordinary achievements and contributions including the Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts, the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, the Eldred Family Dance Award, honorary doctorates from the University of Calgary and York University, the Toronto Arts Council’s Margo Bindhardt Award, six Dora Mavor Moore Awards, TAPA’s Silver Ticket, the George Luscombe Mentorship Award, and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. She was a 2008 Paul D. Fleck fellow at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, a 2017 fellow with the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, and a 2023 inductee to the Dance Collection Danse Hall of Fame.

For more information, watch the NFB short film about Peggy Baker, made for the occasion of the 2009 Governor General of Canada Awards.