Born Mildred Herman on April 25, 1923, in Toronto, Canada, to a Jewish immigrant family from Poland.
Melissa Hayden was born Mildred Herman on April 25, 1923, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, and she grew up in modest circumstances in Toronto's Jewish community during the interwar years.
As a child, Hayden suffered from a mild curvature of the spine, and dance was recommended as a form of physical therapy. She began studying ballet locally in Toronto, first with Boris Volkoff, a pioneering figure in Canadian dance, who recognized her talent and encouraged her to pursue serious training.
Her early exposure to dance in a city with limited professional ballet infrastructure at the time makes her subsequent rise to become one of America's most celebrated ballerinas particularly notable. She would go on to leave Toronto for New York City in the 1940s to pursue further training, marking the beginning of a transformation from a Canadian girl with a physical ailment into a world-renowned prima ballerina.
Her Canadian origins remained an important part of her identity throughout her career, and she was later recognized as one of Canada's most important contributions to the ballet world, paving the way for future generations of Canadian dancers.