At the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2023 a new Canadian musical playing at the Al Green Theatre sold out its entire run on the morning of the second day. Dancer: A Musical in Ten Furlongs written by Canadian musical theatre veterans Jim Betts (book & lyrics) and Marek Norman (music) is the story of Northern Dancer, the “horse nobody wanted” — the too-small, too-ungainly, too-willful thoroughbred who, in 1964, overcame doubt, injury and history to become the first Canadian-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derby and capture the heart of a nation.
I still remember the chagrin so many of us Fringe-goers felt at not getting to see this show that everyone was raving about, so when I heard that Dancer was going to make its MainStage debut in October at Toronto’s Terminal Theatre (formerly the Premiere Dance Theatre) I reached out to the creators to find out more about the show and their journey to the Fringe and beyond.
Betts and Norman both have wonderfully long resumes. Both started their careers as performers but soon added long lists of shows they created: Betts usually writing both his own book and music for shows such as Colours in the Storm (about Group of Seven painter Tom Thompson), but also collaborating as with Little Women (with Nancy Early) and Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang (with Dennis Lee & Philip Balsam); Norman more usually collaborating with various book writers for shows including Larry’s Party, Wanderlust (with Morris Panych about Robert Service), and Dracula (with Richard Ouzounian).
Both are also multi-award-winning artists who have spent time teaching the next generations of Canadian musical theatre talent. They have worked together over the years, often as director (Betts) and music director (Norman), including Norman also music-directing Betts’ own Colours in the Storm several times. But they had never actually created a show together until Dancer. So how did that happen?
Back in 2010, as both told me, they were working as director and music director of a musical called Smile at the Randolph School for the Performing Arts and “needed to take a break”. As Norman recalls it, he said to Betts, “Let’s take a breath and talk about something fun. Do you have anything going right now that you're excited about, that maybe I can become involved with?” And Betts replied “Well, funnily enough, I've been sort of thinking for quite a long time and done a little bit of work on a play about Northern Dancer”.
“My eyes lit up,” Norman says, “because I have an emotional connection with Dancer through my grandfather who loved horses and racing and I can still remember sitting with him and listening to the Kentucky Derby in 1964. So, as soon as Jim said ‘Northern Dancer,’ I said ‘I’m in, let’s do this,’” and the journey had begun.
This kind of visceral connection with the story of Northern Dancer would pop up throughout the show development process, starting of course with Betts, whose idea it was. He also remembered “sitting in front of the television set along with the rest of Canada in 1964, watching Dancer win the Kentucky Derby, and it stuck with me for a long time. I was also a big fan of the Sea Biscuit movie, and it struck me how similar that story was to Northern Dancer’s (although in a different time period) – an undersized, under-appreciated horse who did things that no one in their right mind expected him to be able to do.”
Putting the dance in Dancer: The two started writing, sending each other scenes and music, working so quickly that in about “three or four months,” according to Norman,”we had eight or nine complete songs, some fleshed out scenes, and it was starting to come together.”
But how do you put horses onstage at the centre of a musical story? This was the trickiest thing to work out, yet led to exciting solutions that in turn led to the overwhelming excitement of audiences at the Fringe. One of the first of those ideas was the correlation of dancers and horses. As Norman explained: “There are so many similarities in terms of having to be taught as athletes, to train, and to be constantly focused and the short span of their careers — we thought, let’s start there.”
As the show grew, it had to develop almost its own genre of musical: “The show doesn’t work as traditional musicals work,” Betts told me. “We have a musical where the lead character never speaks or sings, he only communicates through dance, so immediately the approach is different. There are limited traditional songs in the show because so many of the crucial moments of the story are shown completely through music, dance and movement.”
“We’ve all seen horse-related shows in the past,” he continued. “Warhorse, was a gigantic success, and Equus was a great success, but in both of those shows they represented the horse though costuming and puppetry, and in our case we decided to have the dancers look like dancers and, in fact, we love playing on the fact that part of our set is based on railings, like the curved railings at a racetrack — but they also double as company barres.”
With dance firmly planted at the centre of telling the story they started to put together a list of possible choreographer/directors. As Norman told me, “we felt that they should have input at this point, and we should have that kind of artistic experience to guide us on the next stages of development of the show.”
Once they had a list they turned to an acquaintance of Norman’s who just happened to be Artistic Director of The National Ballet of Canada – Karen Kain – for advice. Norman quietly included on the list a favourite — an “almost secret agenda”, he told me: “My wife Barbara and I had been following the television program So You Think You Can Dance for a couple of years and we had been so taken with this wonderful spark of a Canadian choreographer named Stacey Tookey, so she was there on the list with a lot of other wonderful names.”
The extraordinary thing was that Kain, after looking at the list, told them “Of all the people you have listed, all of whom are spectacular artists, the one person, I think who is perfectly suited to this is Stacey Tookey.” Kain then offered to write to Tookey herself to introduce the project, Norman followed up with a letter and Tookey quickly wrote back saying (as Norman told me): “I absolutely want to be a part of this. I’m a proud Canadian. I love this story. If Karen tells me I should be involved with you two, I believe her.”
From that point on Tookey became an integral part of the creative team, auditioning dancers from around North America for the first workshop in 2011 and staying through the whole development process to the 2016 workshop, to the Fringe in 2023, and to the upcoming premiere.
Muscular emotion: You can see from the short video clips online that Tookey has created a unique muscular physical language for the dancers — like nothing I had seen before. Norman explained: “She doesn’t hide her emotions as a dancer or choreographer, and that’s why I feel that she is absolutely perfect choreographically for this piece. Her work is so insightful, so visceral, and for a story about horse racing, you need someone who can conjure up those incredible images and make you feel that same amount of excitement and earthiness” that you would at a horse race.”
“Stacey gives them ideas,” Betts adds, “talks about the emotional content of what’s going on, tries to find individual horse personalities for each of the dancers, and gives them each specific things to do. They are a group of dancers, a herd of horses, but they are all also individual characters.”
Back on track: Dancer was an overwhelming success at the Fringe, winning the prize for best new script of a musical, and then selling out in record time. It continued to be talked about around the city afterwards, and Betts and Norman found themselves constantly being encouraged to take the show further. The upcoming production will feature about half the same cast as at the Fringe including Barbara Barski as Winnie Taylor who forms a deep attachment to Northern Dancer, Sterling Jarvis as Jim Brevard the stable hand who befriends him, and Sam Rosenthal, as Daryl the track announcer, leading the company of 25.
Perhaps most importantly, Keanu Uchida who stunned audiences at the Fringe with his portrayal of Northern Dancer is returning. Both Betts and Norman praise his dedication and determination to act as well as dance all the detailed emotions of Dancer’s story.
“The structure and story of the show are the same as at the Fringe, [and] I hope we’ve sharpened a lot of the moments,” Betts says. “We have also been trying to draw parallels between the Northern Dancer story and the story of Winnie, E.P. Taylor’s wife (they owned Windfield Stables and many horses including Northern Dancer) and stable hand Jim Brevard, whose places in society in the ‘60s – as a woman and a black man respectively – were not secure.”
Musically the score echoes the time period, invoking echoes of the Beatles, and also whiffs of Henry Mancini and early Gordon Lightfoot, but it finds its own character, particularly through the magical scores for each of the races run by Dancer, each race different musically and choreographically.
And now Dancer runs again! – from October 6 to November 1 at the Terminal Theatre.
Presented by Oh What a Ride! Productions Inc. in association with Crow’s Theatre, and the Toronto Stage Company. https://dancerthemusical.ca/
PARR’S PICKS
October
Speaking of dance, October sees the return of Fall for Dance North, the popular, populist festival showcasing a great international selection of dancers and choreographers.
ffdnorth.com October 15-25.
Karate Kid at Mirvish: I spotted a couple of fun “by the way” Stratford Festival connections in the announcement of the Canadian premiere of The Karate Kid - The Musical which Mirvish Productions is bringing to the Princess of Wales Theatre Sept 29 to November 1. The iconic role of young Daniel’s teacher, Mister Miyagi, is played by Singapore star Adrian Pang who starred in the 2024 Stratford production of Salesman in China. And that show was co-written and directed by Chinese Canadian Jovanni Sy, who also played Mister Miyagi for an earlier incarnation of the show in St Louis in 2022. Recommended for ages: 6+, this tour started in the UK and the show has not (yet) been to Broadway.
And also at Mirvish: October will also see the Canadian premiere of multi-award-winning British hit Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical – “how a dead body, a fake love letter, and — of all people — Ian Fleming turned the tide of WWII.” Olivier Award winner for Best New Musical and a 2025 Tony® winner, is ”the fast-paced, hilarious true story of the secret mission that won WWII. ” Directed by Robert Hastie and choreographed by Jenny Arnold, it begins an open-ended run on October 27 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. www.mirvish.com
November
Musical Stage Co: In November the Musical Stage Company will celebrate the 20th anniversary of their always popular annual Uncovered concert series, November 10-12 at Koerner Hall, this year titled Bee Gees & The Beach Boys, and promising a blend of “sun-soaked harmonies and falsetto-fuelled disco brilliance.” Guess which band is which. Arranged and orchestrated by Kevin Wong, back for his fourth year of curating what is often an unforgettable musical theatre concert experience.
November will also see the return of Soulpepper’s 2024 hit that won that year’s Dora Award for best new musical: De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail, featuring Damien Atkins and Colton Curtis in their original roles as Wilde and Bosie. Adapted and Directed by Gregory Prest, with original music and lyrics by Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson. Nov 3-29. www.soulpepper.ca
Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.
