CHAMPAIGN URBANA BALLET

Founded in 1998, CU Ballet provides outstanding ballet opportunities for dancers and audiences in East Central Illinois and has diversified its repertory and earned a reputation in the community as a superb training ground for pre-professional classical dancers. CU Ballet actively collaborates with local performance venues, lighting/production designers, musicians, and choral artists to produce diverse productions ranging from classical ballets to original works. Through its expanding outreach programs, CU Ballet exposes children and families to the history and beauty of ballet.

CU Ballet presents two full-scale productions per year, an annual Nutcracker and one spring full-length ballet—chosen from a rotation of Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, and Cinderella. In 2003, CU Ballet moved its production of The Nutcracker to a larger venue, Tryon Festival Theatre at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (KCPA) at the University of Illinois. These Nutcracker performances have been accompanied by a live orchestra: Sinfonia da Camera (2003-2013) and The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra (CUSO), 2014-2019.

In May 2009, with a full-length premiere of Prokofiev’s Cinderella, CU Ballet’s spring production also moved to a larger venue, the historic Virginia Theatre, where all spring productions are now presented. In 2014, with the assistance of an IACA Summer Youth Employment Grant, CU Ballet inaugurated its yearly summer student production, with a performance of Peter and the Wolf. In spring 2016, the company introduced a second, smaller-scale spring production, including in-studio demonstrations and exhibitions of newly choreographed pieces presented at Second Stage Theatre at Parkland College, drawing on selections from Le Pas de Quatre, Arensky Variations, La Bayadère, Paquita, and Le Corsaire, among others.

CU Ballet is committed to providing access to dance for performers and community audiences: In 2006, CU Ballet instituted its first scholarship for ballet training of a dancer, and in 2008, the scholarship awards were increased to $2,000 annually. The Tickets for Families (TFF) program, inaugurated in December 2001 as Tickets for Kids (TFK) and later changed to Tickets for Families, continues to provide tickets to students deemed at-risk—either financially or due to hearing, speech, or physical disabilities—and their families, as well as to veterans and their families. The program has grown from providing 37 Nutcracker tickets to children and parents in 2001, to providing 150+ tickets annually.