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By Jack Clifford
Oregon Daily Emerald
k hen Toni Pimble
gave up dancing in
r1986, the Eugene
Ballet Company
artistic director’s mind
said the time was right to
quit, but the rest of her
had second thoughts, so
to speak.
“If you’ve been dancing
since you were 8 years
old, every single day, and *
then all of sudden, you
switch off, your body misses
it,” Pimble said. “That was in
teresting to me, that your mind
and your body really are closely
associated in that respect.”
So, with her ballet slippers
tucked away, Pimble turned her
full focus on the job she had been
carrying out since 1978 anyway:
choreographing dances for the
company.
Some 40 works later, her mind
is still going strong, and anyone
who saw Pimble’s vibrant pre
miere production of “Silk and
Steel” in October at the Hult Cen
ter for the Performing Arts can
verify her mental agility.
Pimble’s next work, “The Nut
cracker,” comes to life at the Hult
beginning Dec. 17. She toyed
with the holiday classic two
years ago, revised certain aspects,
and like most of her other works,
relied heavily on the dancers
who carry out her ideas.
“I like to get in the studio with
them and play with ideas be
cause all kinds of things happen
creatively because they are my
medium and they add so much to
what I’m creating,” Pimble said,
then laughed a bit. “Plus, if they
say something I’ve choreo
cfc
nee a cancer,
always a cfancer
Drawing from her own experience as a
dancer, Toni Pimble (below) now focuses
her efforts on choreography
graphed is physically impossi
ble, then I have listen to them.”
Of course, Pimble can also
draw on her own experiences as
a dancer to determine if a certain
piece will ache or not. Born in
England, she studied at Elmhurst
Ballet School and the Royal
Academy of Dance in London,
before sprouting her wings and
performing professionally with
three German ballet companies.
During her time with the Kiel
Stadttheatre Dance Company in
the early 70s, Pimble became ac
quainted with a fellow dancer,
Riley Grannan. In 1978, the
pair had an opportunity to buy a
dance company in Eugene. Once
the deal went through, the Eu
gene Ballet Company was born.
“The remarkable thing was
when we came to Eugene, there
was a large number of dancers
with professional experience,”
said Grannan, the current manag
ing director for the EBC.
Thanks to strong support from
the arts community, he said, the
dancers’ brainstorm flourished.
In fact, throughout the years, the
TurntoPimble,Page7
007690
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_ For information on how to freelance for the Emerald call 346-5511.