Crash Course Leads Mark Godden to Post at Royal Winnipeg Ballet

While there has never been a clearly established route to becoming a choreographer, the one Mark Godden has followed is more unusual than most. The 34-year-old Dallas native, resident choreographer of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, didn’t even begin to study dance seriously until he was 21.

Two of his recent works, “Angles in the Architecture” and “La Princesse et le Soldat,” will be performed on the programs the 26-member Canadian company is bringing to Palm Desert, Claremont, UCLA and Lancaster this week.

“When I walked into dance class, it was like the two elements of my life were joined together,” he recalls. While a late starter might be expected to gravitate more to modern dance rather than the rigid discipline of ballet, he did not.

“I was attracted to ballet’s technique, to the structure of class,” he explains. “It was like a crash course.”

In 1984 he joined the company, the oldest in Canada, which is known for its varied repertory ranging from the classics to contemporary works by Tudor, DeMille, Robbins, Balanchine, Kylian--and now Godden.

“Angeles in the Architecture” grew from his admiration of Copland’s 1944 “Appalachian Spring”--Godden was aware it had been composed for Martha Graham’s now-famous dance of the same name, but he had never seen the work. “I decided I couldn’t let that bother me; I knew I had a completely different vision of the score.”

Named resident choreographer in 1990--the first in the company’s history--Godden creates at least two works each season, and his ballets have been winning awards in recent years--including choreographic prizes at the Varna and Helsinki ballet competitions. After more than a decade in Winnipeg, his ties to the company are close (he’s married to soloist Amy Brogan, also an American). But he makes one thing clear: “I’ll always be a Texan!”