Person
Biography
Eva von Gencsy was a pioneer of Canadian dance who was born near Budapest in 1924. She emigrated to Canada in her early 20s and soon began performing with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, later relocating to Montreal where she joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. It was with Les Grands that she made her only Pillow appearance, performing lead roles in the company’s 1959 U.S. debut engagement. She became enamored of jazz dance after studying with Luigi in New York and co-founded the company now known as Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal. After leaving that group in the late 1970s, she spent the rest of her life as a busy freelance teacher. She was still active when she took the stage in April 2013 to introduce a film evening featuring two of her seminal works, but she suffered cardiac arrest during her remarks. She was revived and lingered for a few days, but died after blowing a kiss to her doctors and murmuring a trademark phrase, “Everything is beautiful!”
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