Mahallia Ward

Mahallia Ward joined The Joffrey Ballet in 2011.

Ms. Ward grew up in Austin, Texas. Early on, she trained with her mother, and with Eugene Slavin and Alexandra Nadal at the Slavin Nadal School of Ballet. During her freshman year of high school, she received a scholarship to study at the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida. While at Harid, she trained with Victoria Schneider, Olivier Pardina, and Svetlana Osiyeva. She was awarded the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Education Fellowship, the Ruth Nelson Kraft Award, and the Fred Lieberman Award for Excellence. She also danced lead roles in Harid’s productions of The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Raymonda, and contemporary works by Mark Godden. She graduated from Harid after three years and received a scholarship to attend the Joffrey’s Trainee program under the instruction of Alexei Kremnev and Anna Reznik.  During her year in the program, she danced lead roles in Alexei Kremnev’s Nutcracker Suite, Fire Bird, Blue Velvet and The Sleeping Beauty.

Since joining the Joffrey, Ms. Ward has danced significant roles in Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker; Wayne McGregor’s Infra; Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs; Jerome Robin’s Interplay; Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, Continuum and Swan Lake; Alexander Ekman’s Episode 31; Justin Peck’s In Creases; Stanton Welch’s Maninyas; and Nicolas Blanc’s Evenfall. Other repertoire includes Yuri Possokhov’s Don Quixote, Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table, Stanton Welch’s Son of Chamber Symphony and La Bayadère, Lar Lubovitch’s Othello, Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, Antony Tudor’s Lilac Garden, Krzysztof Pastor’s Romeo & Juliet, and Alexander Ekman’s Tulle.

Ms. Ward is passionate about cultivating a balanced and healthy lifestyle. She writes about her experiences on stage and off at her blog, onballence.com.