Cameron Fraser-Monroe on Tradition, Innovation, and the Future of Ballet

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Art-O-Log. Today I'm excited to share a conversation with Cameron Fraser-Monroe, a Canadian dancer and choreographer. I first encountered Fraser-Monroe's work as a choreographer when I went to see his ballet Tal at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, which we discuss later in this episode. Cameron Fraser-Monroe is a member of the Talaman First Nation. He was privileged to study with world champion hoop dancer Dallas Arcand, with elder Molly Bono in grass dance and with the Zyrka Ukrainian dancers.

Fraser Monroe has performed with many companies, including the dancers of Domil Hamid, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada, from Mexico to New Zealand. As a choreographer, fraser Monroe has received commissions from the National Ballet of Canada, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, wim Wim, seattle Ballet, kelowna, the Winnipeg Summer Dance Collective, artist Climate Collective, transformation Cabaret at the CULT and both Pulse and Indigenous Day Live on APTN. For the past five years, fraser Monroe has served as the Artistic Director of the Winnipeg Summer Dance Collective, making dance more accessible in downtown Winnipeg. In 2023-24, he was the choreographer-in-residence at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet their first in 20 years. Cameron, welcome to the Art-O-Log.

Thanks for having me.

Can you tell me about your journey to becoming a ballet dancer?

For sure. So I started in dance when I was three years old. My mom's put me into Ukrainian dance of everything, and it was mostly running in a circle. But every year I added more and didn't really follow the traditional path of going to a ballet school right away. I trained in grass dance and hoop dance and all of the studio styles until I was 15 and then made the move to the Royal Olympic Ballet School and that was the path for me. It was actually quite late, which is funny for people to think about, but 15 years old, moving away to ballet school is late.

Do you find that the other types of dance that you've learned have influenced you now as a choreographer as well as a dancer?

Absolutely and I think, more than influenced me. I think they've completely shaped the career I have. Being able to have these different backgrounds in, as I said, traditional First Nation dances has meant that I've always known there was more to dance than ballet and have always wanted to do more than ballet. And the other thing I guess I should have touched on in that introduction is that I also worked as a contemporary dancer. I did it a little bit backwards, and the other thing I guess I should have touched on in that introduction is that I also worked as a contemporary dancer. I did it a little bit backwards and having that experience, having that curiosity, had naturally transitioned into creating my own language.

When you were graduating from the Royal Winnipeg School of Ballet, you were considering a couple different options moving out, and one of them was mechanical engineering, which seems totally different to ballet. I was wondering could you explain your thought process there?

Absolutely yes.

I was accepted to the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia on scholarships for engineering and had seriously considered it.

I was not having a great time in ballet when I graduated, but I think that the main deciding factor for me was a conversation with my parents where they said really, if you want to do this, you need to do this now.

You can't decide at 50 to go back and be a ballet dancer, but you can decide to go and be a mechanical engineering after you've had your career. So that was a big decision for me, but I feel really happy that I did it, and it was nice that I wasn't the first to do it. My dad had given me a model to follow, in that he had been a professional actor for 12 years and then transitioned to medical school at whatever 30 years old. So I knew that there was a way to have two different careers for you, to have two different kind of lives, and I think the other thing, too, is that it wasn't black and white either. My dad continues to act and be involved in film and I don't know where I'll end up, but university is still on the table, if maybe not in the immediate future.

How has your career changed since graduating?

As I said, I did it backwards when I graduated from the Roanoke Ballet School instead of going right to a ballet company because I wasn't ready, I actually went into contemporary and I did that for a number of years as a professional and then decided that it wasn't for me and I went back to the RWB. I went back into the aspiring training program, which is the post-secondary education that they offer there, and then transitioned back into more classical work, and normally people would go the other way. They might have ballet, become disenamored and transition out. So that was a bit unusual. But, as I said, his influence to my creative voice in a really positive way, and so that was my shift. And then, going back to classical dance, I danced for the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada, I danced for Ballet Kelowna, I danced for a brief time with the Roanoke Ballet, but that was all done in a very odd order. So, yeah, that's how my career changed. I wanted to contemporary and then came back to it.

You're interested in so many more things other than just dance. Can you talk me through some other creative interests that you're pursuing right now?

For sure. I think the biggest one that I have been caught up in recently has been traditional cedar weaving. So I spent two weeks this year just with my Auntie Betty, learning more about weaving, and I had already made a Tejikap traditional hat with her. But it was so nice to sit and learn from her and I think that even within that, it was another art form to itself, in that not only were we weaving, we were talking, and so learning more about the language from her, learning more about the stories, whether they were mythological or familial, and just spending time on the land that my people have lived on for hundreds of thousands of years, and that's, I think, a big one for me.

The other one that we might touch on later is theater. I applied and been accepted to be the Indigenous Artist in Residence at the National Theater School and I'll be moving there in August, where you have access to any of the five programs playwriting, directing, acting, design programs, but focusing on playwriting and I'm so looking forward to approaching storytelling in a more literal sense than ballet has allowed me to. So those are two of the things that I'm interested in at the moment and pursuing fairly seriously. That would definitely be a key to my career is not just having one interest.

This is jumping the gun a little bit, but I know that there was basket weaving in Tal, so was that before or after experiencing it yourself that you decided to incorporate it into your work?

Yes, exactly, and I think that imagery was so inspiring for me. In the legend of Tal, he has a basket woven out of massive snakes, and that imagery was so alluring because something you have not seen and yet something you can totally see. And so I wouldn't say that the weaving made it into the story because of that it was already in the story, but I think that my interest in weaving definitely helped me to pick that story in particular. And I think when we're talking about crossing art forms, we're talking about crossing art forms Absolutely. The math, the symmetry and the kind of circularity of weaving finds its way into my patterning in ballet, in the way that I make those formations.

So, yeah, Can you walk me through a typical day as a choreographer?

For sure. I think what I like about choreography is that there isn't really a typical day. It depends on the company that you're in and that can change every three weeks. I'm really lucky that I'm able to travel to Vancouver and travel to Toronto and Montreal and Winnipeg and have different experiences and cultures and companies in each of those places, companies in each of those places, and on top of that we're contractors. So as much of my time that I spend in the studio, I also spend outside of the studio preparing and planning and, as I said, finding inspiration. So when I'm not in the studio, I'm spending a lot of time reading and writing and thinking and listening and pursuing these other interests.

So then, when we get to your actual question, which is what is my daily life like when we get in the studio, it means building the schedule based on my overview for the piece. This is where the writing comes in. I need to know where I'm trying to end up, I need to know how long it's going to take me to make a certain section of choreography and I need to know who to schedule for that hour of that section. And so it actually becomes a lot of math. It becomes a lot of scheduling and making sure everyone's in the right place and then, once all of that kind of heady stuff is out of the way, it actually for me means a lot of sensation and feeling and movement.

It's not as similar from when I was dancing. I still take class with everyone. I'm still dancing as a career, parallel to choreographing, and so when I get into that studio it's a lot of movement. We could get even more focused on this. It would mean making the schedule the night before, taking ballet class in the morning, choreographing for three hours, working through lunch to prepare for the afternoon and then choreographing for three more hours, going home and making the schedule, and it's a very intense process and it's part of the reason why you don't do it for 52 weeks out of the year generally, because it's so taxing.

You were just choreographer in residence at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Can you tell me about Winnipeg's significance as a ballet center in North America?

Absolutely. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet has such a storied past and history behind it. I'm sure you have heard that it is the oldest continually operating ballet company in North America, which is really a credit to Winnipeg and Canada that we were able to support this incredible cultural institution. But I think that our real significance is in and we'll talk about this more creating Canadian stories. It's bringing in Canadian choreographers and talking about that experience, because ballet is a huge institution and there are ballet companies all over the world, and I think that is where the key to Thoreau and a Pig Ballet's success has been, and you'll see it even with artists like Evelyn Hart. Part of what is so exceptional about her and David Peregrine is the fact that they are Canadian born and raised and trained, and that's something that we can be really proud of when we look at the RWB.

What have been some career highlights for you so far?

I think that one of the most satisfying moments in my career one of the most not satisfying that sounds so dry One of the most exciting moments in my career was the creation of Talkash back in 2020, during the pandemic, and it was my first professional commission for a company on ballet Kelowna and one of the first times bringing a piece of oral history to the stage through an alternative style of dance, in this case ballet and contemporary and seeing that story play out on stage it just gave me goosebumps. I almost was crying, seeing, in a way, the future. It felt like the way that stories would be told into the future, into. It felt like a window, into where ballet was going. And so that's not to toot my own horn, I'm not saying it was an incredible window. It was probably a pretty dirty window, but it was a very beautiful moment for me personally to see that.

And what have been some growing pains or hurdles in your career so far, and how have you overcome them?

I think that one of the biggest ones that I continue to face is about age. Many choreographers finish a long and successful career in dance and then transition into creating, or they wait until they're much older to be working with these larger companies. For myself, I decided to transition more away from performing into choreographing because that's where I felt I could have the biggest impact, but it does mean that I'm significantly younger than not only the choreographers that have come through those rooms before, but sometimes younger than the dancers I'm working with. So that would be a big challenge, but I think it's one that I'm learning to handle as I go.

Can you tell me a bit more about how it's challenging?

For sure. I think that you don't have the automatic respect to fall back on of experience. The people will look at you and think you know what you're doing just because of your age. They have to know, of course, that I've done this work, that I've worked with the biggest companies in the country and presented on international stages for them to trust me. But I think that it permeates a lot of the relationships. It's not just the dancers, it's not just the ballet masters, it's especially the artistic directors, who are, quite frankly, often older and whiter than myself, and so being able to connect with them and let them understand that I can be responsible with the work that I'm doing has been a real challenge, and yet it makes it sound so painful. I don't think that connecting with people is painful. It's not that at all. It's just helping them to see me, helping them to see who I am. That can be a challenge.

Do you think that being young in that sense is an asset to choreography?

I can absolutely see the advantages to being young, and I'm not the first young choreographer. I think that I've had this conversation with many people that some of the first people to found ballet companies were only in their 20s. But they have just grown up with those companies and the art form and so now we're used to seeing 60-year-old artistic directors. But there are definite advantages to not being looking for retirement and I think that comes down to energy and I think that comes down to physicality and I think it does come down to the human connection I was talking about with the artists in the room and that I am far closer to their experience than someone who has been retired from the stage for longer. As much as it's a struggle, there are also a lot of pluses to being younger.

Yeah, I would love to talk more about Tall, the production that you just did with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Can you tell me the story behind this?

For sure. Tal, the wild man of the woods, follows the story of its namesake as he is kidnapping children from the village, running up into the woods with them in his basket of snakes and gluing them down with pitch so that they can wait to be cooked over a fire and eaten. No one hears from these children again until the young woman ventures to free her sister, and so that's a bit of the story. It also, towards the end, tells us about the birth of the noceums and the mosquitoes, and so it felt particularly relevant for Winnipeg if you've ever been there in the same period. But it's a really, as I said, imagery-rich story, that all of the pieces of this story, while it's very simple, are very vivid, and so that's yeah, that's the story of Tal.

Yeah, so was there anything else besides the imagery that drew you to the story in particular?

I think that we'll talk about this in the context of ballet, in that ballet has some real strengths around physicality and grandeur, and this story felt very physical. The way that he was capturing children and carrying them on his back and throwing them across the room and able to hold them all down To me really suited the physicality of dance. And then talking about the scale that was kidnappings, that we talk about him having many children glued down up there, it felt like it suited the corps de ballet of the work of there. It felt like it suited the corps de ballet of the work, and so that felt like a really natural fit for both ballet and oral history.

Yeah, what was the process for developing this ballet from the commission to the premiere?

So I think the first time that we had a conversation about this was in August of 2022. That was with Andre Lewis. I think that's when it was where he, the artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, expressed that he would like to have me join as the choreographer in residence, and that would accumulate in a full evening commission. This is a very long process. I've been thinking about this for a year and a half before it makes it anywhere near creation, which is good because it takes that time.

Putting together an hour-length piece with 26 dancers and the full symphony does take a lot of thought, so I guess that was where it all started.

And then the next section was the music finding all of that to fit it together. And then the third section would have been physical research for myself, and then we would have gone into the studio with the dancers and then I left it. I actually we made it in the fall and then I left it until the spring, and then I came back for two weeks and cleaned it all up and made some revisions and then teched it in the theater for the performance, and that actually became. A huge part of the work as well was translating all of these different elements between the lighting designer, between the composer, chris Dirksen, between my vision and between the dancers and the symphony, and trying to pull it all together in the theater. It happened over 48 hours pretty much, which was very intense for close to 100 people coming together on a project. Yeah, that was the process. It took a year and a half and a lot of energy to make it happen.

So one of the unique elements for Tal was that there was a narrator telling the story throughout the production in both Hayajutham and in English, and that's something different for ballet. Can you tell me about this choice?

For sure. I have made ballets from First Nations oral history in the past, and what I find happens is that I need to explain to people the story in order for them to engage with the work anyways, and so I end happens is that I need to explain to people the story in order for them to engage with the work anyways, and so I end up doing this a lot and I don't mind doing it, but I thought this is not always my story to tell, even if it comes from my people, and why don't I build that connection into the work instead of being the connection? So for me, this meant going right to the source, going right to the elder who maintained the story of Paul, and that is LC Paul, and we went through a process with her as well of having heard the story from her and having a recording of the story, to trying to get a better version, so sending people to record with her, and then realizing that the version that we got, while it was better sound quality, was not the essence of the oral history that she had maintained, because she wanted to get it right, and so it sounded like she was reading. It sounded like she was telling it to me exactly as I had heard it, and I think that's a big part of the beauty of oral history is that it really depends on the day and it really depends on the person that you're sitting with.

They are so accurate, they are so attentive to detail, and yet you need to be there in some ways in order to really experience it. So we did the next best thing. We brought a recording of her speaking in the language and in English into that space, and I can speak to that a little bit as well, because, of course, in Winnipeg no one speaks Ayatollah. My dad might have been the only person at the show who would understand what she was saying, but it was important to me to maintain the integrity of the story within the language that it was maintained in through its whole life.

And another collaborator that you had for Tal was Chris Dirksen, the amazing cellist, Canadian cellist too. What was that collaboration like?

Yeah, chris is incredible and I am a huge fan of her work.

The way that this collaboration worked was by looking at the story and trying to figure out the key plot points. I did a script analysis and ended up working out what I needed to translate on the stage and then, from there, looking at Chris's huge category of work she has three albums publicly available you can go find her music for free at her website and then picking and curating, based on that existing body of work into a playlist that would tell the story with pauses, with sound effects and with soundscapes and with narration, as we discussed. So that was the process. And then we were very lucky that the Winnipeg Arts Council, for Winnipeg's 150th birthday, was offering additional funding for music, and so we actually brought Chris in to play live with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and not only was that incredible for the audience, it was really fulfilling for Chris, because some of that music had never been played with a full symphony, they had only been solo work. So to have that full force of energy behind the work was really exciting for everyone involved.

Speaking as someone who saw the production, that energy was very much within the room. It was so amazing to see how did ballet, as opposed to any other dance styles, lend itself to telling the story.

I touched on this a little bit earlier. I got ahead of myself in saying that I think two of the elements that ballet brings to storytelling is the mythic, the romantic and the scale. There are many forms of dance. Very few bring together so many people dancing together as they do with the corps de ballet, and so I really leaned into that the scale with the children and having all of their stories play out live on stage in real time, and playing with that shift between everyone dancing together and everyone dancing separately, and so that was one of the biggest things. And, of course, like I said, the mythical Tal has a mythical strength and a mythical physicality, and Erica, the lead, has a kind of mythical courage behind her to chase a man-eating monster up into the woods, and so I think that ballet, because of the art form, is really good at helping you to buy into these crazy worlds. So, yeah, those were a couple of the things that I really leaned into in creating Tall.

Yeah, how does ballet in Canada differ from ballet around the world?

I think what I want to say is that it doesn't differ nearly enough. I'm not sure if you've seen. There was an article in the Globe and Mail in I guess it would have been in May, and it was talking about how three of the four major ballet companies were presenting Don Q in the same year, and to me that is ridiculous. These are quite well-supported institutions by Canadian taxpayers, and so I want to see a greater diversity, a greater array of work and a more interesting curation of pieces being presented. And, as I touched on earlier, I think that's the strength of ballet companies we have coming out of Canada, some of the strongest choreographers in the world, people like Crystal Pite, people like Asger Barton, who we are exporting to the world, and I think that is the key. Is that what I want to see for Canadian ballet is us exporting Canadians to the international stage, not importing international dance to the Canadian stage. So yeah, that is my answer to that question. How is it different from the rest of the world? It's not, and it shouldn't.

Where do you see the future of ballet in Canada going?

I think that the future that I want to see very hard for me to predict the future that I want to see is much more diversity represented on stage amongst the dancers, because ballet is something that is, a technique, is taught and should be shared and, of course, a greater diversity of voices being heard of storytelling of leadership, of inspiration, and I think that, yeah, like I said, I touched on that a little bit earlier where I think that the Canadian public is owed, that they're owed an art form that represents themselves, that looks more like Canada.

Yeah, that's the future I see.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. How does this art form continue to stay relevant in the 21st century?

Yeah, I was thinking about this and my first thought was storytelling. I thought that the stories of Nutcracker and whatever are enduring, but I don't know that's fully yet, because some of the most famous ballets, like Swan Lake, I don't know that everyone that goes to see them could even tell you the story by the time they leave, and yet they are still moved by it. So I think that the thing that's endured is not even the classical technique, because technique technologies can get very old and very outdated very quickly, and in some ways ballet has and in some ways it hasn't. But I think the thing that endures to this day is the physicality, the human expression and experience and sheer determination that can come out no matter what style of dance you're doing, and the sheer joy that can be expressed physically. That was so rare in this world. So I think that is why the art form is still relevant and will continue to be. Relevant is that we will always want to express ourselves physically and want to see others doing it too.

What advice would you have for someone hoping to become a dancer?

This isn't just my advice, I heard it from someone else. But the first step is always don't give up. Keep dancing, keep doing your art form. I think that some of the most incredible artists that I've met were people that were told they wouldn't make it, and particularly for choreographers, I'd say this is advice that I follow and would really offer up, as helpful is, of course, know the technique and know your art form and know dance. But if you want to be inspiring, if you want to be different, if you want to express yourself in your own language, don't look at dance, don't look at what exists. Go look at other things outside of the art form, and so that means going to art galleries and listening to rivers and painting and weaving. As I said, that would be my advice. I think that extends beyond dance. If you want to be an artist, if you want to nurture your own artistic voice, then go absorb.

That's excellent advice. Is there anything that you'd like to let us know about Cameron in the upcoming future for you?

So I think the next thing that I'll be working on is a fundraiser up in the Tla'aman Nation, which is my home nation, to bring Takesh which, as I mentioned, I created in 2020, back to the community that cared for that story, and I could not be more excited about this opportunity to bring the dancers that have been performing to that space and to bring to the community something that is very much a part of me. So that's the next thing I'm working on, and then later this summer, I'm really excited to be going back to the National Ballet of Canada to restage Paillet for the U-Dance program there. It's something that I created last summer on Jurgita Dronina and Kelly Skalnik, who are principal and soloist dancers there respectively, and revisiting this one will be very nice. Yeah, those are the next things I'll be working on.

That's so exciting. Cameron, thank you so much for being a guest on the Artilogue today. It's been so much fun to talk to you.

Thank you, madison, for having me. It's been really great to dive into the art and, yeah, I really appreciate you having me on.