Beyond Performance: Francisco Alvarez, Museum Curator

“When I was a dancer,” says Toronto museum curator Francisco Alvarez, “three things never happened–no strength training, no bottled water, and no career planning.”

Now, thanks to Canada’s Dancer Transition Resource Centre, even dancers in training are urged to think beyond a performing career. Yet, even without career guidance, Alvarez has ended up in a job he “never dreamed of having” as managing director of the Institute For Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). His latest exhibition features the drawings of Romanian satirical/political cartoonist Dan Perjovschi and aptly reconnects Alvarez with his original passion, visual arts.

Colombian-born Alvarez, 53, grew up in Ottawa, where his immigrant father started work as an airport janitor before successfully launching his own janitorial services business. The academically gifted Francisco, the eldest of six children, was placed in an accelerated, arts-enriched high school program and won a visual arts scholarship at Toronto’s York University.

By then, York had established Canada’s first university dance degree program under visionary leader Grant Strate. In his second year a friend encouraged Alvarez to register for a foundation course–with recently retired Cunningham dancer Sandra Neels. Strate spotted Alvarez’ talent and by third year he’d transferred to dance. “Whatever I’d wanted to express through the visual arts, dance gave me more,” he says.

Alvarez performed with modern companies in Vancouver and Winnipeg before joining Toronto’s thriving Dancemakers. In 1985, during a European tour, he left to become an independent freelance dancer, working with such choreographers as Jean-Marc Matos, François Verret and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Then, in 1987, he auditioned for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. “When Pina accepted me I felt as if I’d fulfilled my dream,” Alvarez recalls, but, at age 30, and with injuries piling up, he decided to quit. “I needed to take more control of my life and education and knew I didn’t have a vocation as a teacher or choreographer.”

With his high academic standing Alvarez was admitted to York University’s MBA program, graduating 18 months later, and eventually landing a policy advisor job in the Ontario government’s culture ministry. “It was great; very high pressure but exhilarating,” he says. With a change of government, however, his appointee position evaporated and Alvarez was recruited to become communications manager for one of Canada’s first specialty cable channels.

From there he moved to an equivalent position at the ROM, just as the venerated institution was launching a major, $275 million expansion. “It was media relations on a whole new level,” says Alvarez. “Projects like that don’t come along often in a lifetime.”

With the project completed, Alvarez was offered his current position three years ago. Since then he’s produced or curated 15 exhibitions, gets to travel to art fairs, liaise with other museum curators worldwide, and head up specialty ROM project teams.

And although dance is now largely in his past, Alvarez doesn’t regret the decade he spent performing. “Whenever I’m facing a tough assignment,” he says, “I just think back and remember that dance was way harder.”

Originally published in Beyond Performance, a supplement toDance Magazine and Dance Teacher, September 2010