Frank Augustyn
Frank Joseph Augustyn ( born January 27, 1953 in Hamilton, Ontario ) is a Canadian ballet dancer.
Career
Augustyn was born the son of a steelworker, and grew up in the East End of the city. At the age of seven, he turned to the gym training. A presentation of the National Ballet at the Palace Theatre from Hamilton awakened his passion for ballet. He studied at the prestigious National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto and graduated in 1970, the ensemble of the National Ballet of Canada at. He quickly grew into the role of a solo dancer and was from 1972 to 1989 principal dancer of the ballet.
Together with his long -time partner Karen Kain, he became an internationally acclaimed star. In 1973 he won with her at the 2nd International Ballet Competition in Moscow the award for Best Pas de deux and joined later at the Bolshoi Theatre in a production of Giselle. Your choreography for Giselle, La Fille mal gardée and Sleeping Beauty were in literary and film by Canadian director Norman Campbell.
From 1980 to Augustyn was principal dancer at the Ballet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, but returned in 1981 to the National Ballet and was from 1985 to 1986 is also involved as a guest dancer at Boston Ballet.
1986 called Augustyn in Montreal, the annual Gala des Etoiles in life, one with dancers of international stature occupied and aligned in several cities in the world charity event to benefit the children's hospitals of the city.
In 1989 he became artistic director of the Theatre Ballet of Canada, today's Ottawa Ballet. During this time, he expanded the repertoire of the ensemble to works of José Limon and Flemming Flindt and commissioned works by Edward Hillyer, Serge Bennathan, Michael Downing and others. For Canadian television CBC, he produced an adaptation of the steadfast tin soldier, for which he was awarded the 1993 with a Gemini Award. In 1994 he gave up his post and was from then on worked as a guest dancer, lecturer and consultant in a number of North American Ballet schools, the fifth School of Ballet, of Unionville School of the Arts, Ryerson Polytechnic University, York University, Earl Haig School of the Arts, the Boston School of Ballet and the National Ballet School of Canada.
Produced between 1995 and 1997 he hosted for the channel Bravo! Television Network series Footnotes: The Classics of Ballet, a series of 20 half-hour documentary on the history of ballet.
Since autumn 2000 he has been a director of the dance department at Adelphi University in Garden City (New York) worked.