Pairs to remember

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This article was published 12/02/2024 (574 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many a couple has found love at the barre in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet studios over the years.

Sometimes these relationship statuses are kept hush-hush; other times they go very public. Last season, former RWB principal dancer Yue Shi popped the question to fellow then-principal dancer Chenxin Liu onstage during the final bows of a performance of Nutcracker.

This propensity for pairing off makes sense. Lots of dancers move to Winnipeg on their own to pursue their ballet careers, and their social circles are mostly composed of fellow students or company members. These couples share a passion for dance, obviously, but they also understand the sacrifices required to pursue that passion at a level that is demanding in all ways.

In advance of this week’s performances of Rudi van Dantzig’s Romeo & Juliet — a marquee RWB production and arguably one of the most romantic ballets in the company’s repertoire — the Free Press shares two RWB love stories that, unlike Shakespeare’s enduring tale of star-crossed lovers, have much happier ever afters.

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Second soloists — and, as of six months ago, husband and wife — Liam Saito and Katie Simpson, both 26, grew up on opposite sides of the continent. He was born in Washington, D.C.; she hails from Cranbrook, B.C.

But they share a formative experience. The first professional ballet they both ever saw was American Ballet Theater’s production of Romeo & Juliet in New York City; it made them both want to become professional dancers.

The pair met as students in the RWB School’s Professional Division. Simpson came to Winnipeg to study ballet at the age of 11; Saito arrived a couple years later. They began dating in their graduation year, 2014-15, while they were understudies for the same piece.

“We spent a lot of time on the side of the studio not actively dancing, but chatting a lot,” Saito says with a laugh. “And it was probably distracting her quite a bit.”

The fact they both landed at the RWB after graduating from the Anna McCowan-Johnson Aspirant Program came as a huge relief to the young couple.

“Finding a job at the same company is hard — there’s only one company in a city and ballet can take you all over the world,” Simpson says.

“It’s extremely competitive,” Saito adds. “We were lucky to find jobs anywhere, but especially both in the same place.”

Saito popped the question in the summer of 2021 at a cabin in Onanole, suggesting that he and Simpson take their chihuahua, Azuki, for a walk, so their friends could stealthily set up a surprise engagement party inside.

“We made it back to the cabin and I proposed outside,” Saito says. “She said yes, we were really happy — and then we looked down and realized our dog was gone.”

“It’s extremely competitive.We were lucky to find jobs anywhere, but especially both in the same place”–Liam Saito

Azuki, all seven pounds of him, was somewhere in the woods.

“He likes to steal the attention so we think he did it on purpose,” Simpson says. “We went from, like, emotional happy crying to crying hysterically.”

In the end, Azuki was just sitting at the end of the driveway, waiting to continue on with his walk, and Saito and Simpson got married last summer.

Maintaining work-life balance can be tough when working with one’s partner. “We definitely spend a lot of time together,” Simpson says.

But because of their height difference — Simpson is on the tall end of the women and Saito is on the shorter end of the men — they don’t actually work together that often.

“But I feel like that’s for the best, maybe,” Simpson says. “We both have pretty strong personalities so I think we work better helping each other from afar rather than criticizing each other. I think we like watching each other succeed.”

That said, Simpson says she’s the more critical one of the two. “I give Liam lots of corrections,” she says with a laugh.

“I think we work better helping each other from afar rather than criticizing each other”–Katie Simpson

“I feel Katie is critical enough of herself already; I don’t need to perform that role,” Saito adds.

Having a partner who understands what ballet life is about on a cellular level is something they don’t take for granted.

“It does come with a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of high highs and low lows,” Simpson says. “And it’s hard to explain those lows to people that maybe don’t understand the physical toll, or the mental toll of the work environment and work demands and — “

“— things like injuries,” Saito finishes. “We’ve both experienced serious injuries in the past.

“We’re able to have a lot of compassion for each other because we have a deep understanding of each other, and work is such a large part of our lives and identities,” Saito says. “It’s really special for us to have somebody who we don’t have to explain everything to.”

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When Stéphane Léonard joined the RWB company as a soloist in 1998, fellow company dancer Vanessa Lawson (now Léonard) noticed him right away.

“I was very curious about this young, lovely-looking man from Montreal who seemed very exotic,” she says.

Stéphane, 56, who is now the director of the RWB School, and Vanessa, 46, who is now the director of the aspirant program, will have been married for 20 years this August, but they still remember their first date.

“I was a terrible cook back then — like, I had no idea,” Vanessa says. “I don’t know why I decided I was going to do this, but I decided to invite him over for dinner at my apartment.”

Vanessa had a recipe book her mom had given her, and settled on a pork stir fry that looked easy enough. She invited him over for 7 p.m.; he suggested 6 p.m. so he could keep her company while she cooked.

“Of course I’m panicking because I have to, you know, try to read this recipe and make the deal and talk at the same time — and feel lovely,” she says. “Anyway, it was a disaster. I think I boiled the pork. It was so chewy. It was, like, stir boil. It was horrible. I don’t know why we ended up dating after that.”

They got married four years later at Fort Gibraltar. Stéphane proposed with a ring he bought in Greece where he was staging, you guessed it, Romeo & Juliet for the Greek National Opera and Ballet. They now have an eight-year-old daughter.

“And her name is Juliet,” Stéphane says, straightfaced.

“No it’s not.” Vanessa immediately sets the record straight, which makes her husband crack up laughing. (It’s actually Veronique.)

While Vanessa and Stéphane’s dance careers overlapped a bit, like Simpson and Saito, they weren’t often paired together, owing to their difference in height. “And Vanessa was quickly moving toward principal dancer (the highest rank at the company), so then I was out of the game,” Stéphane says with a laugh.

“It’s so fun to connect with somebody on that level that really understands why it’s so important to you, and why it really moves you as a person”–Vanessa Léonard

“You’ve been my father a few times as a character artist,” Vanessa says, deadpan. The Lord Capulet to her Juliet, instead of her Romeo.

Stéphane laughs. “I’m a little bit older, let’s say, than Vanessa. Towards the end of my dance career I did the character roles.”

Since their retirements from dancing, they’ve both built subsequent careers within the RWB organization that have since taken them throughout the building, but they’ve never worked alongside each other.

“Oftentimes we really don’t even see each other during the day, which I think is probably a good thing that we’re not 100 per cent of our time together,” Vanessa says. “It’s kind of been like that throughout our careers here. We’ve both gotten into different areas but never actually been side by side, constantly working.”

However, a lifelong passion for ballet is something they’ve always shared. Vanessa recalls walking with Stéphane downtown early on in their relationship, having an animated discussion about French choreographer Maurice Béjart.

“It just fuelled it,” she says. “It’s so fun to connect with somebody on that level that really understands why it’s so important to you, and why it really moves you as a person.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com