Mahallia WardMahallia Ward received her training from the Harid Conservatory on full scholarship. At Harid she was awarded the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Education Fellowship, the Ruth Nelson Kraft Award, and the Fred Lieberman Award for Excellence. At Harid she danced leading roles in their productions of The Nutcracker, Raymonda, Sleeping Beauty and contemporary works by Mark Godden. After Harid she received a full scholarship to study in The Joffrey Ballet’s trainee program. 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 Ballet in 2011, Mahallia has danced significant roles in Gerald Arpino’s The Nutcracker, Wayne McGregor’s Infra, Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs, Jerome Robin’s Interplay, Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain andContinuum, and Alexander Ekman’s Episode 31. Other repertoire includes Yuri Possokhov’s Don Quixote, Kurt Jooss’s Green Table, Stanton Welch’s Son of Chamber Symphony, Lar Lubovitch’s Othello, Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, Stanton Welch’s La Bayadere, and Krzystof Pastor’s Romeo and Juliet.

(Updated February 2014)