Surrounded by walls covered with paintings of ballerinas and photos of both himself and students performing, Laszlo Tamasik exhibits the passion that has fuelled his dance career for most of his life. His love for ballet has taken him all over the world, leading eventually to Powell River, where he settled down to teach dance over 25 years ago.
Tamasik, of Laszlo Tamasik School of Dance, began his dance career as a grade two schoolboy. When teachers from the Hungarian National Ballet scouted classrooms for new talent to audition, young Tamasik’s interest was peaked. “Of course, I didn’t tell my parents,” Tamasik said, laughing. “I amazingly never saw ballet in my life, but I could picture it in my head, how it’s supposed to look…everything came easy for me.” Tamasik then went on to become the youngest principal dancer, at 17 years old, for the national ballet located in Budapest.
After dancing in Europe for many years, Tamasik arrived in Halifax on Christmas Day 1967 with a T-shirt and a contract with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. While travelling to Winnipeg, Tamasik decided to disembark from his train early to escape the Manitoba winter. When he found himself at the train station in Montreal, he discovered that Quebecois French was very different from the French he knew from ballet. Alone in a new country of unfamiliar languages, Tamasik sought help from other people he heard speaking his Hungarian language.
As soon as the holiday season ended, Tamasik went to Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, where he became the principal dancer until his retirement in 1975. News of his retirement spread quickly and the prestigious dance company Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal soon hired him as ballet master.
“Of any form of movement, the best is ballet,” said Tamasik. “I believe very much in technique.”
Following his time in Montreal, Tamasik was asked to travel to Europe as a co-artistic advisor to form the first national ballet company in Portugal. “After a year, I came back to Canada,” he explained. “I missed Canada because it’s such a nice country…I love the nature.”
Upon his return to Canada, he formed Les Ballets Jazz de Québec, which unfortunately collapsed because of financial challenges. However, he was soon invited across the country to be a co-artistic director for Spectrum Dance Company in Victoria, where he taught a variety of ballet styles.
“It was interesting,” he recalled. “The artistic director was mostly jazz, but they wanted to have a spectrum, or all different forms of dance. The dancers enjoyed that very much.”
Tamasik was then approached to start a company in Calgary. He did so and was successful there for eight years. “In BC, art was very difficult. It was very hard to get support, but in Calgary, it was getting better.” However, financial support for the arts became increasingly more difficult to obtain, so Tamasik moved back to the West Coast shortly after his daughter was born. He worked in Vancouver at Goh Ballet and Harbour Dance Centre.
While he was touring in 1968 with the Montreal ballet company, he saw the whole country. “I knew I had been [in Powell River], and somehow I remembered that the arena had been close to the ocean. And I said, ‘it would be nice to visit one more time.’”
Upon reaching Powell River and much to Tamasik’s delight, he found a job posting for a weekend dance teacher.
“I like to work,” he said fondly, “[working] Saturday and Sunday would be fun.”
Tamasik’s introduction to teaching had come as an accident when he was a professional dancer. “When somebody said ‘how do you do this step,’ they’d say ‘go ask Laszlo!’” Then, the artistic director asked Tamasik to teach when he had time. “I was very busy as a guest artist and principal dancer but when I had time I was teaching dance. And then when I retired, I was a regular teacher.”
After a while of commuting back and forth between Powell River and Vancouver, Tamasik and his family decided to move to the small community in 1987 to teach full time at the Powell River School of Dance.
“The next year, we had over 270 students,” he said. Tamasik also sadly recollected the loss of many students as families moved away after the mill began downsizing. A year later, the school was handed over to Tamasik and became the Laszlo Tamasik School of Dance.
Tamasik has been teaching ballet in Powell River for 26 years and on Vancouver Island for 16 years. He works on a variety of styles with his students, many who have danced with him for years. He even has an adult dancer who has danced with him since she began as a child.
“Our school is not a professional dance school,” Tamasik said. “It is a recreational dance school because 99.9 per cent of the students, they don’t want to be dancers. They just love it. And I say ‘just try your best’ and I can see that when they perform on stage. And that’s it. That’s the best part.”
However, some of Tamasik’s former students pursued their dreams to dance professionally. One became the principal dancer of the National Ballet and worked with Goh Ballet in Vancouver. Another, a jazz lover, went on to dance with stars such as Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake. She also did choreography for Britney Spears. “It’s nice to see,” he admitted proudly.
Tamasik now enjoys challenging his students with new ballet styles and intricate music. By experimenting with ballet styles, Tamasik can appease his students who wish to try something more interesting and different without straying from the classical style.
“We started to do amazing things…we did Firebird by [Igor] Stravinsky, which is very difficult music.” Currently, Tamasik and his students are working on Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. “It’s so challenging, and they were just shocked.”
Tamasik sadly recalls how some of his dancers had been told by previous teachers that they might as well quit dance. With determination in his eyes, he said, “I never would give up on a student.” Instead, he continues to challenge them to be the best they can be. Right now he has a student who is learning the part of the principal dancer of the Paris Opera. “That’s not kid stuff,” Tamasik said.
For Tamasik, ballet is more than just a pastime. “You cannot have fun in ballet,” he said. “You work hard, and then you can have fun.”
Interested readers can see the work of Tamasik and his students at their Dance Revue at 7 pm on Sunday, June 16, at Evergreen Theatre, Powell River Recreation Complex. Tickets are $8 and free for children under five. They can be purchased at Massullo Motors, Anderson’s Mens Wear or at the door.
