Date Set for 2024 DCD Hall of Fame

Celia Franca was born in London, England in 1921. She began her ballet studies at age 4 and was a scholarship student at the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Dancing. She performed with Ballet Rambert before joining Dame Ninette de Valois’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet (now The Royal Ballet) in 1941

A performer of acclaim in both Canada and abroad, David Moroni is also founder of Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School Professional Division. He has dedicated the majority of his life’s work to the education of dancers, and his dance legacy encompasses his work behind the scenes where he taught, coached and nurtured generations of dance artists at the Winnipeg school.

Grant Strate’s choreography brought an original Canadian perspective and a contemporary aesthetic to the repertoire of the National Ballet, but his contribution as an educator and nurturer of choreographic talent has been even more important for the development of Canadian dance.