Black Ballerina by Syreeta Hector is not your everyday ballet performance; it’s also one woman’s deeply personal exploration of trying to find home in an art form that has not traditionally welcomed diversity.
Now a dance artist and educator, Hector began her journey in high school when a Black dance teacher encouraged her to train professionally. “Her offering kept me out of trouble in high school,” Hector recalls, “and really was the start of how Black Ballerina began.”
Growing up in New Brunswick and North Carolina, Hector experienced strict social divisions that dictated who “belonged” where. “When I started to do ballet,” she remembers, “there were people who I thought were my friends, and they said, ‘You don’t really belong there doing that kind of thing.’” Identity and acceptance consequently became defining themes in her work.
Through her performance, Hector asks: How can we bring our whole selves into spaces that have historically left parts of us out?
In Black Ballerina, Hector explores the rules and traditions that dancers are expected to follow in classical ballet, where pink tights, straight buns and pale ballet shoes are meant to match white skin, white features. Her performance challenges these ideas, asking: How can we bring our whole selves into spaces that have historically left parts of us out?
Her research for this performance went beyond dance. While studying at Canada’s National Ballet School and earning a master’s of arts in dance studies from York University in Toronto, she learned histories of Indigenous and African Canadian communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. “I’m reading these books thinking, why didn’t someone teach me this in school?” she says. “Why am I just learning about this now?” This journey of self-discovery shaped Black Ballerina, connecting these histories with the struggle for visibility in the arts.
Growing up, Hector experienced strict social divisions that dictated who “belonged” where. Identity and acceptance consequently became defining themes in her work.
Syreeta Hector, wearing a silver wig, runs a dress rehearsal of Black Ballerina at cSPACE Marda Loop in Calgary, on February 5.
Creating this work came with its own challenges. As a solo artist, Hector had to navigate the creative process alone, which was already challenging since dance is often a collaborative art form. However, when COVID-19 happened, things became even more difficult; live performances were canceled, in-person collaboration was no longer possible, and she had to find ways to keep developing Black Ballerina on her own.
She was committed to keeping the project alive, so she rented a shipping container and used it as a rehearsal space, continuing to improve her work despite the limitations.
In the end, her hard work paid off. During the pandemic, Black Ballerina was performed via live stream, reaching audiences remotely. It was through one of these online performances that Nicole Mion, artistic director and executive producer at Springboard Performance, saw her show and invited Hector to bring Black Ballerina to Calgary for the first time.
Black Ballerina will be showing at cSPACE in Marda Loop on Feb. 6 and 7, at Brookfield Residential YMCA in Seton, Evan Hazell Theatre on Saturday and BMO Theatre at the Shane Homes YMCA in Rocky Ridge on Sunday.
Presented by Springboard Performance, the solo performance explores identity, Blackness, and Indigeneity in relation to classical ballet.
