Community Engagement
See all of NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet's Community Engagement Programs:
Dance with Us Ballerinas teach, rehearse and inspire 6000+ local student dancers in Host Dance Studios every year on the US/Canada tour. The aspiring young dancers perform on stage side-by-side with the professional company of 40 members.
New Horizons Ballerinas share fascinating International cultural immersion sessions, pro bono and from coast to coast, using interactive exercises which develop healthy diet, movement and creative expression habits for over 6000 children to date.
Musical Wunderkind – Strings Ballerinas perform side by side with Concerto Competition winning youth musicians in classic ballet choreography to St. Saen’s The Dying Swan from “Carnival of the Animals.”
Musical Wunderkind – Choirs accompany the company live for the “Waltz of the Snowflakes” and welcome patrons to singing repertoire in venue lobbies.
Fine Art Program brings ballerinas and fine art students together for the rare opportunity to draw, shoot, and paint the ballerinas’ finely tuned musculature in schools such as SCAD, MICA, Syracuse Fine Art program, all pro bono.
Testimonies
Dance with Us ~ NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet Host Studio Owner Cathy Napolitano-Mucci, of Dance Center North in Syracuse NY, hosted auditions for the first Great Russian Nutcracker tour in 1993! She remarks, “I know from watching my students grow and advance since the very first Moscow Ballet tour, that this is one of the most significant experiences a young dancer can have. It lifts them up and humbles them all at the same time.”
Musical Wunderkind – Cellists and Choirs ~ “I had a great time performing, and was very interested in meeting the dancers and the other members of the troop...I was astonished by the grace and beauty of the ballerina! She was very, very skilled and kind. I appreciate the opportunity to perform with such a prestigious organization.” Ian Champney, Bethesda
“Award-winning teen violinist Annelle Gregory...[gave] an expressive account of the Saint-Saëns score and Mikhail Fokine’s [choreography to] "The Dying Swan," Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times
New Horizons – A Children’s Program for Life ~ “Thank you for all that you have done to make the NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet event happen. Wow! Svetlana did a great job with the students. Parents have told me that it is all their children would talk about when they picked them up from school. I wish you could have seen the eyes of the children and could have heard the squeals and applause. Please know how much everyone in our school district appreciates this marvelous experience. Svetlana is definitely a superstar in the eyes of our students and staff.”- Eleanor Powers, Director Ellis Performing Arts Center, Latta Schools, Latta SC
Past interactive outreach with American children
Cinderella Around the World was developed in conjunction with NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet's full-length production of Cinderella. This dance and literacy program combines Cinderella stories from diverse cultures with music and dance instruction to enrich the language arts curriculum for elementary school children. Launched at the Conte Community School in Pittsfield, MA, the program ran over a ten weeks and featured Russian, Korean, Chinese, and West African dancers and musicians who were brought in to conduct activities during and after school.
Intensives and the Swan Lake programs offer a host of technique classes, repertory and performance, and choreography workshops. Segments of the full-length ballets are taught. If a ballet school has a relationship with a children's museum a combined event can be coordinated.
NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet is Recipient of a Direct Federal Grants for Emergency School Aid for the reduction of minority isolation (ESAA), The Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) for on the job training in arts and education and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, which helped fund four pilots for PBS television. The company has also worked with school systems to create tutor training programs supported by 21st Century Learning Center (CCLC) federal funds in San Antonio, TX, Dallas, TX, Americus, GA and Jackson, MS.
In 1986, NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet, formerly Moscow Ballet, producers toured ABT’s Prima Ballerina Cynthia Gregory in the “Celebration Tour” which championed the “Just Say No” campaign for children, First Lady Nancy Reagan was Honorary Chair. Children’s TV programs were produced and aired on PBS stations and GM sponsored the educational program New Horizons which was presented over a semester in 13 public elementary schools in San Antonio.
On a collegiate level, NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet, formerly Moscow Ballet, producers Talmi Entertainment presented the “First International Glasnost Festival Tours" 1987-92 which starred artists from the Bolshoi, Kirov and other world class ballet companies. The tour included symposiums, film screenings, poetry readings, Master Classes and more for students and the public in universities including Dartmouth, Yale, Middlebury, and Vanderbilt.
Commitment to delivering hands-on programming to American children began in 1972 when NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet producers, then directors of Connecticut Dance Theatre, invited Karel Shook, co-artistic director of Dance Theater of Harlem, to work with Hartford, CT’s North End Dance Troupe. Shook invited several students to study at DTH on scholarship. Among them was young Charmaine Hunter, an extremely gifted dancer, who went on to become Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 2nd Prima Ballerina and star of Arthur Mitchell’s The Firebird.
Program Testimonials:
For more information, contact [email protected].