Nurturing New Choreographers

Madison Ballet nurtures new choreographers by featuring works by company artists, local choreographers, and emerging national choreographers.

 Madison Ballet partnered with the Bayview Foundation for its Emerging Choreographers Program where young students choreographed and presented their own dance creations on stage at the Overture Center’s Promenade Hall.

Diversity

Madison Ballet’s Artistic Director Ja’ Malik upholds his promise to feature female-identifying choreographers of color and actively diversify the ballet repertoire to which audiences are exposed.

 Madison Ballet has presented world premieres from emerging and evolving choreographers Marika Brussell, Andrea Long-Naidu, Yusha Marie Sorzano, Alia Kache, and Stephanie Martinez.

Behind The Curtain: The Nutcracker

Behind the Curtain performances offer significantly reduced ticket prices for public, private, and homeschool students and chaperones. During intermission, Madison Ballet raises the curtain to provide a peek at the work that goes into a full-scale production like The Nutcracker. Madison Ballet hopes to eliminate ticket fees for Behind the Curtain.

 Over 1000 children attend Behind the Curtain: The Nutcracker annually.

Community Participation

Each year, community members join our production of The Nutcracker for a variety of roles from party parents to rats. To cover the costs of costume fitting and care, auditions, rehearsals, and performances, community cast members are asked to pay a performance fee. Madison Ballet hopes to eliminate performance fees for community cast members in the future.

Over 80 children and adults participated in The Nutcracker in December 2023.

Outreach

Madison Ballet has made it a mission to ensure communities in all areas of Dane County can experience the performing arts. We have partnered with local community centers such as the Lussier Center and MMSD to bring dance workshops and classes to kids, teens, and adults. With a limited amount of funding in arts education, a commitment to expand outreach is a major priority for our organization.

Financial Aid

Your contribution will help us provide more financial aid opportunites to our students. Madison Ballet supports 10% of students with financial aid. Considering the cost of tuition over the span of an academic year, our current allotment can only help so many students. The annual cost of tuition for a single trainee student is $4500 alone.

The School of Madison Ballet offers $15,000 in financial aid annually toward student tuition.

Madison Ballet Live Music Fund

At Madison Ballet we truly believe that music is the heartbeat of dance. We want to continue and expand the tradition of live music in our performances and classes. Our Live Music Fund has a goal to raise $200,000 which will fund our live music endeavors throughout the season. This includes the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra performances of The Nutcracker and other full-length and reportory ballets, in addition to hiring local musicians to play for our school and company ballet classes. Live accompaniment enhances performances and the education of our students at the School of Madison Ballet. 

Did you know ticket sales make up only half of Madison Ballet’s annual budget? Contributions like yours are vital to the continuation of our programs. That’s why we created the Live Music Fund—to keep live music at the ballet.