Fairy Boot Camp

By Bruce Deachman,
The Ottawa Citizen
August 4, 2009

On a magical night in New Edinburgh, three very different people are being taught the finer points of mime-like grace. Bruce Deachman reports from ...

Lumière Festival

What: An evening of art, performance and lanterns
When: Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m.
Admission: Free, although donations are welcomed
Where: Stanley Park, along Stanley Avenue and Crichton Street in New Edinburgh

For more information: lumiereottawa.com

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A metronome ticks a slack rhythm as Natasha Royka puts her charges through their languorous drills.

Despite the best efforts of a few electric fans turned to high, the air in the second-floor classroom of the Crichton Cultural Community Centre in New Edinburgh -- formerly Crichton School -- hangs warm, damp and heavy, as though brought to a near-halt by the metronome's slow deliberation.

Tick. Pause. Tock. Pause.

"Open your sternum to the sky," Royka instructs.

The recruits watch her carefully, trying with varying results to mirror the exaggerated precision in her march. Only three in number, they are nevertheless a diverse group.

Jillian Ade is a 30-year-old teacher at the Ottawa Waldorf School. It's clear as she imitates Royka that she's not unfamiliar with dance and graceful movement.

Kevin Lake, 40, brought his construction business and family to Ottawa from Toronto four years ago. He's 6-foot-4 and adds a lanky, track-and-field athleticism to the group.

The third member of this tiny regiment is Lake's daughter Ella. Not yet quite five, she hangs close to Royka, eager to impress the instructor. When an enthusiastic compliment falls her way, Ella turns to her father, her face beaming as though it's Christmas morning.

The three are attending Fairy Boot Camp, where for two hours on this sticky, magical night, Royka teaches them to walk the walk and talk the talk -- or, more accurately, mime the mime.

Here, they master the finer points of the flit and the curtsey. They learn to soundlessly beckon, to noiselessly thank, and, because you never know what company you'll find yourself in when you're a fairy in a park at night, to just say no without uttering a word.

This Saturday evening, the trio will team up with a dozen other similarly trained irregulars ranging in age from four to 50, don homemade fairy costumes and descend upon Stanley Park, where more than 150 performers, including stiltwalkers, acrobats, musicians, storytellers and fire-spinners, will close out the three-week Lumière Festival with a night of art, performance and more than 2,000 lanterns.

The festival, based on similar lantern festivals in such cities as Victoria and Vancouver, opened in Ottawa in 2003. When it received a grant from the city three years ago to hire a choreographer, Royka came on board.

"She and I came up with the idea of fairies because Lumière lends itself very nicely to fairies," says the festival's organizer, Joanne Hughes.

Audience members, she adds, are also encouraged to dress up -- as princesses, wizards, fairies and the like. Last year, approximately 10,000 people showed up to wander and watch, many in costume. Despite her preference for characters more puckish, her husband, she notes, came one year dressed as the superhero Green Lantern.

"He recited the oath whenever he was stopped," she recalls. "I pretended not to know him.

"It's bright, colourful, Midsummer's Night, medieval," she adds. "All of those kinds of influences, so it's not out-of-place to see grown women dressed as Snow White or grown men dressed up as wizards."

Joining the 15 Lumière fairies will be eight or so PhOOM! fairies -- professional artists more rigorously trained at Royka's Ottawa dance studio (PhOOM! is an acronym for Potentially Haphazard Objects Of Motion).

"We want to get people moving," says Royka, "and give people a very different image of what fairies can be and how magical movement can be."

For Ella, the Fairy Boot Camp and Lumière Festival bring with them the opportunity of a lifetime and something to tell her fellow kindergarteners about in the fall -- how she actually transformed into a fairy one night. She says she loves fairies because they can dance and fly, adding that, come Saturday, she will, too.

"I have my own fairy," she notes, "a real live one, but I've never sawn it yet.

"I think her name is Clara or something like that. She's a fire fairy, the one that puts out fires."