Margaret Ruth Pringle Carse (7 December 1916 – 14 November 1999) was a Canadian dancer, educator and choreographer. She founded the

Alberta Ballet Company Alberta Ballet (also known as the Alberta Ballet Company) was founded by Muriel Taylor and Dr. Ruth Carse in 1958 and became a professional company in 1966. The company is a resident company of both the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edm ...

dance company and is considered a pioneer in the field of dance in western Canada. She was born in

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city anc ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, and trained in Scottish dancing as a child. She went on to study

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form ...

. She performed with

Boris Volkoff Boris Vladimirovich Volkoff, (born Boris Vladimirovich Baskakoff; April 24, 1900 – March 11, 1974) was a Canadian-Russian ballet dancer, director, choreographer and ballet master. After studying dance in Warsaw and Moscow he defected from Ru ...

's company, with the

National Ballet of Canada The National Ballet of Canada is a Canadian ballet company that was founded in 1951 in Toronto, Ontario, with Celia Franca as the first artistic director. A company of 70 dancers with its own orchestra, the National Ballet has been led since 2022 ...

and with the ballet corps of

Radio City Music Hall Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for th ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. After suffering an injury, she was forced to retire from dancing in 1954 and trained as a teacher with

Gweneth Lloyd Gweneth Lloyd, OC (September 15, 1901 - January 1, 1993) was a co-founder of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, a ballet teacher and choreographer. Lloyd was born in Eccles, Lancashire, United Kingdom. She attended The Perse School in Cambridge, but be ...

. Carse returned to Edmonton, where she taught dance and developed choreography for operas and musical theatre there. With Muriel Taylor, she established a small amateur performing company called Dance Interlude, which was renamed the Edmonton Ballet in 1960 and the Alberta Ballet in 1971. Also in 1971, she established the Alberta Ballet School. She retired as artistic director for the company in 1975, but continued her association with the Alberta Ballet until 1983. She also developed choreography for television productions and ballets. In 1992, she was named to the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the c ...

. Carse died in Ponoka at the age of 82. In 2016, Ballet Edmonton's dance facility was renamed the Ruth Carse Centre for Dance in her honour. Carse Lane in Edmonton also named in her honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carse, Ruth 1916 births 1999 deaths Alberta Ballet Company Ballet teachers Canadian ballerinas Canadian choreographers Canadian female dancers Members of the Order of Canada People from Edmonton Canadian artistic directors Canadian women choreographers