Ballet needs Tla'amin's Cameron Fraser-Monroe

BY PIETA WOOLLEY | pieta@prliving.ca

This is a rough time to start a career in ballet.

In June, Cameron Fraser-Monroe joined Atlantic Ballet Theatre – his first professional balletcompany. After years of training for the stage, he found himself dancing in front of video cameras this summer, on the company CEO’s property, next to the beach in Moncton. Like most other arts groups in Canada and beyond, Atlantic Ballet was pivoting – or pirouetting – to tell relevant stories and stay in the black while social distancing protocols made theatre impossible. So performances went online.

This may be a rough time to start a career in ballet, but for Cameron, it’s anything but quiet. PRL caught up with the 21-year-old Tla’amin member in October when he was in Lund, visiting his extended Adams family on a quick break from filming and rehearsals (see left). He was staying with his father, the pre-eminent actor and medical administrator Dr. Evan Adams, in a wing of his house, distancing with masks, before heading back to New Brunswick.

as an aspirant with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet – the company with Canada’s most substantial and longest work collaborating to tell Indigenous stories

“My dad inspired me to pursue a career in dance” Cameron said. “He was an actor for 12 years before he became a doctor. Quite a few people will cut you down for wanting a career in the arts, or discourage you. He always encouraged me.”

“Still, I don’t tell people who my dad is. It’s better for me to get my foot in the door first.” Cameron has more than a foot in the door.

He is currently the only First Nations ballet dancer with a professional company in Canada.

The adventure started when he was three years old; he tried a Ukrainian dance class in Kelowna – and loved it. At seven, he started grass dancing – a Northern Plains-style dance known for its colourful costumes and feathered headdresses. At 11, he added hoop dancing, and by 15, he was invited to join the Royal Winnipeg Ballet as a student, and stayed as an aspirant. All the while excelling in academics – like his father.

by Denis Duquette

“I was very lucky to try whatever my heart desired,” he said. “My two moms were supportive of sports, violin, and dancing. Eventually, the others fell away, and there was just more and more dance.”

Ballet, he said, attracts him because it’s challenging. “It’s technical,” he said. “You see what other dancers can do and you know it’s possible – you just have to keep at it.”

Cameron is breaking new ground by just being who he is, where he is. His seven peer dancers at Atlantic Ballet are multi-ethnic, coming from Kyrgyzstan, France, England, Spain, and cities and small towns across Canada. As a First Nations dancer, he said, he brings a sense of storytelling to his work – an Indigenous value that is at the heart of ballet.

In fact, as an aspirant at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, he choreographed a Tla’amin story for seven dancers – a contemporary piece – telling why Raven’s feathers are black and how there came to be light in the sky.

with dancer Brooke Thomas (photo by David Cooper.)

For 50 years, non-Indigenous ballet companies have been hungry to tell stories in collaboration with First Nations people. For example, Ballet Victoria replaced the racist “Indians” dance in Peter Pan with Esquimalt Nation drummers and dancers in its 2003-4 season. In 2018, Atlantic Ballet worked with the Mi’kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre at the University of New Brunswick to produce the Ghosts of Violence, part of a campaign to raise awareness about domestic abuse. In 2016, Royal Winnipeg Ballet created Going Home Star, a ballet for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (though there were no Indigenous ballet dancers on stage). Even as far back as 1971, the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood commissioned the Royal Winnipeg Ballet to adapt George Ryga’s watershed play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.

But so far, few Indigenous Canadians have chosen ballet as a career (though he points out that McKeely Borger is from Saskatchewan Metis Nation, and dances with Ballet Kelowna. Graham Kotowish is also Saskatchewan Metis, and dances with Northern Ballet in Leeds, England.) In other words, the Canadian ballet world is desperate for Indigenous dancers and choreographers who can bring authenticity and their own being to the stage. For Cameron, opportunities are endless – even without live audiences, even under COVID.

“I’d like to tell other young First Nations dancers that there’s space for you. Whatever you want to pursue. I’d encourage them to do that.”