Lillian Roberta ""Bobbie"" TAYLOR

Lillian Roberta “Bobbie” Taylor was born March 18, 1959 to Donald and Lorna Taylor in Oakville, Ontario. She spent her childhood surrounded by the diverse and remarkable people that shared her parents’ world, particularly her Godparents, the Klopstocks.

Beginning her certain path into dance at Toronto’s National Ballet School, she was trained by some of the brilliant minds of the day, and established connections with a community of vibrant art makers.

She followed her NBS training with time learning and performing at the Ryerson Dance Program and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, where she was instrumental in establishing the first Young Choreographer’s Showcase.

At Empire State Ballet in Buffalo, NY where she became Principal Ballerina, she took on, and excelled in her first full-length principal roles, triumphing in a broad range of ballets, notably Sleeping Beauty and Firebird, embodying the annual visit of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, and relishing long summer tours on the Empire State Ballet Caravan.

Taylor relocated to Columbus, Ohio to work with Ballet Met, where she continued to hone a training voice whose commitment to physically intelligent practice has profoundly influenced a great number of dancers.

While in Columbus, Taylor became a founding member of Columbus Dance Theatre, creating many memorable roles and developing CDT’s Intensive Training Program.

It was as Co-Artistic Director of Canadian Pacific Ballet that Taylor enjoyed one of her most fruitful periods as a dancer, choreographer, creator and trainer. Her reconstructions of 19th century ballets and compositions of new, narrative Classical and Romantic works shed fresh light on the theatrical and emotional range a classical language can possess. Her passion for theatre making and her encyclopaedic knowledge of ballet technique inspired.   Here, as well, her deeply, but clearly felt aesthetic became evident in a staggering number of premieres, each with their own voice but each, unquestionably, written in hers.

She passed suddenly of a brain hemorrhage on July 16, 2015, and is survived by her husband, Graham McMonagle and a host of people whose lives she influenced. Services will be held at 2:00 pm on Saturday, August 8, 2015 at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, 100 Chapel Street, Nanaimo, BC.