FOR Tene Ward, Australian corps de ballet member of the National Ballet of Canada (NBC), trying on her first pair of pointe shoes matched to her skin tone was a “momentous occasion”. This moment, late last year, was filmed by fellow NBC company members and shared on Ward’s Instagram account (@Ward_ward), receiving an outpouring of support she never expected.
Ward, who was born in Sydney, identifies as Sri Lankan and African-American. Before joining the NBC in 2018, she trained at Canberra Festival Ballet School, the Australian Ballet School and the Dutch National Ballet Trainee Program; she describes her experience as a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) ballet student as “generally, tough”. “No one looked like me,” she reflects, “It was hard to have
