Throwback Thursday: Principal Dancer Nadia Potts as the Swan Queen in 1979. Nadia was one of the first students of the National Ballet School when it opened in 1959 and later went on to dance with The National Ballet of Canada for 20 years until her retirement from the company in 1986. Nadia was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dance Ontario Awards Committee in 2013, after a nearly fifty-year career in dancing and teaching.