Adele McGovern, Dance Instructor
Bill Schenley
Adele McGovern lived for dance.
She taught generations of girls and boys to tap, kick and bend to her
exacting standards. Over six decades as an instructor, she drilled
into her pupils an appreciation of ballet's rigour that would serve
them far beyond the practice hall's beams.
Mrs. McGovern died of cancer Saturday night.
She was about 80, but she guarded her precise age with the same
determination she applied to teaching the secret of a plié.
"She had her rules," said daughter Marcia McGovern, who was also a
student. "I love tap, but in order to do jazz and tap, you had to do
ballet - she thought it taught so many skills and discipline."
Mrs. McGovern's passing is just the most recent step in a bittersweet
season for Canadian dance.
Earlier this month, National Ballet School founding principal Betty
Oliphant died at the age of 85. The British-born Oliphant, a friend of
Mrs. McGovern's, joined the school in 1959 and built it into a talent
factory with a global reputation. Less than a week later, an anonymous
donor shocked the dance world with a $15 million gift to the National
Ballet of Canada. The money will help build a centre named for company
co-founder Celia Franca, a rival of Oliphant's and another
British-born acquaintance of Mrs. McGovern's.
Unlike her better-known contemporaries, Mrs. McGovern was a local
product. She was born Adele Mazza in Toronto and grew up in a house on
Roncesvalles Ave.
Mrs. McGovern was a precocious instructor, forming her own dance
school before she was out of her teens. According to one account, it
was as a teenaged teacher that Mrs. McGovern met her future husband,
Thomas, whose mother sent him along with his brothers to study tap at
the feet of the young neighbourhood teacher.
During World War II, Mrs. McGovern's future husband served in the Air
Force as an engineer, while she toured Ontario, leading her pupils in
dance routines that entertained troops at places like Camp Borden.
After the war, Mrs. McGovern moved to New York City to teach and
dance. During her run there, she performed with Jackie Gleason and led
a tap class that movie star Gene Kelly took over when she returned to
Toronto to get married in the late 1940s.
In 1949, Mrs. McGovern founded the Canadian Dance Teachers Association
with help from Oliphant and others.
During the following period, her students put on critically acclaimed
shows at the Eaton Auditorium at Yonge and Carlton Sts. There were
also Rockette-style numbers at the old Exhibition Grandstand, which
another daughter, Jill Burnie, performed in.
"I danced as a Canadette," said Burnie, who also studied ballet, jazz
and tap under her mother.
Mrs. McGovern continued to teach after her husband's death at the age
of 50 in 1971. She also helped take the reins of Camp McGovern, which
her husband founded near Hanover as a summer escape for needy youth.
In 1996, the Canadian Dance Teachers Association honoured Mrs.
McGovern with a lifetime award it had only given to two others -
Franca and Oliphant.
As part of that tribute, students wrote their former teacher to thank
her for the lasting impact she'd made on their lives.
"I realize how extremely lucky Nancy and I were to have found you: Not
only did we receive impeccable training from the best, but we were
taught discipline and the patience to work to the highest standards,"
one former pupil wrote. "You always made class fun and the atmosphere
was always relaxed and encouraging. Many of my happiest hours were
spent in your studio. Many people teach dance in its various forms,
but not in the positive, careful, loving manner that your students
enjoyed."
Mrs. McGovern continued to teach out of her Etobicoke home until a few
years ago. A core group of students kept coming back for lessons
decades after they'd started with her.
"She was a very determined and strong woman," Burnie said.
In October, 2001, Mrs. McGovern was diagnosed with colon cancer. She
beat the disease back, but it recurred last fall. Earlier this month,
when Oliphant died, Burnie showed her Oliphant's obituary.
"She expressed some regret," Burnie said. But by that point, her
daughter noted, the disease had taken its toll.
Rene Collins, a friend of Mrs. McGovern's for more than 50 years and a
former president of the dance teachers' group, said what set her apart
from other instructors was her seriousness about the art.
"She was an excellent teacher," Collins said.
"She was a purist and believed in the old ways - dance was her whole
life."
As well as her daughters, Mrs. McGovern leaves a son, Peter; a sister,
Doris; and five grandchildren.