The secret to excellence: Why this Indigenous Royal Winnipeg Ballet student is keeping his options open

When he was 16, Cameron Fraser-Monroe ran away to join the ballet.

He was a Grade 10 student in a "normal" high school in Kelowna, B.C., who had been crowned the top academic student in his class.

"I'm much better at academics than ballet," Fraser-Monroe admits while sitting in a boardroom in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet building, having finished a class just minutes before — the first of many that day.

Originally, Fraser-Monroe had come to Winnipeg to see his father, a member of the Tla'amin First Nation in Powell River, B.C., receive an Indspire Award, which celebrates Indigenous successes and achievements. His dance teacher encouraged him to audition for the school during his trip. Before that summer, he says the idea of being a professional ballet dancer hadn't been "realistic."

'I was not talented enough to blow off my academics'

Now on his last of three years at the RWB school, he's getting ready to launch a career as a professional ballet dancer. However Fraser-Monroe is dubious of how easy that will be, which is why the dancer has always kept the academic door open.

"Our whole careers can be based on a little bone in your ankle snapping, and that's it," he explains.

While at the ballet school, the students take academic classes at the University of Winnipeg Collegiate, which allows more flexibility than a regular high school. Some dancers at the RWB may be inclined to neglect their classes, says Fraser-Monroe, but he doubled his course load at the collegiate.

"I was not talented enough to blow off my academics," he insists.

That's slightly hard to believe, since that fateful summer he auditioned for the RWB the teen was offered a scholarship on the spot. At that point he had only been dancing ballet a couple of hours a week.

'We're not being handed anything'

Although he says he wants to be "well-established" with a dance company in five years, he is refusing to close the door on a life outside of ballet. He has applied to the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia for mechanical engineering, and it's not surprising to find out the overachiever has been offered a scholarship to both schools, which he has deferred.

"I do know if I injure myself, or lose passion, I have that door open to me," he said, adding, "We're not being handed anything. Graduating from the school doesn't mean we'll have a job when we get out."

If he succeeds at a life in dance, Fraser-Monroe says he may still end up going to school later in life. The Tla'amin First Nations offers 30 post secondary scholarships to its members.

"Which means [because] I have that available to me, I don't have to save a ton of money dancing," he says, adding that most ballet dancers don't make very much money to begin with.

As well as finishing up his final year at RWB and receiving two university scholarships, Fraser-Monroe is also student council president and he has a part time job as a kitchen assistant.

When asked about the lessons he's learned in the past three years, and what he would tell his younger self, he says, "make your level of achievement a habit."

"Make it a habit that you are always disciplined, so you are always good at what you do so you're not turning it on and off for what you're passionate about," he says. "And stretch more."