OUTREACH & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Ballet, within reach
Cost, sensory needs, and simple unfamiliarity keep people out of the theater. We work to remove all three.
Gwinnett Ballet Theatre is a professional ballet company based in Gwinnett County, drawing audiences from Gwinnett, Fulton, Forsyth, and Hall counties and well beyond. We believe a professional performance should be within reach of the communities that support it. Our outreach serves schoolchildren, families, first-time patrons, people with sensory sensitivities, seniors, and aspiring dancers: on stage, in schools, and in the community.
School Performances
Each year we present daytime school performances of The Nutcracker at Gas South Theater. Student tickets are $9, and teachers attend free based on group size. Title I schools, public and private schools, and homeschool groups are all welcome.
For most of these students it is a first: first ballet, first professional company, first live orchestra, first time inside a theater of this size. They see dance as an art form and as a career.
Sensory-Friendly Performances
Our sensory-friendly Nutcracker is built for guests who find a traditional theater difficult. Lighting and sound are adjusted, the house stays relaxed, and guests are free to move, make noise, or step out and come back.
We change the performance rather than asking the audience to change. Families who would otherwise stay home can come together.
Community Tickets
We distribute complimentary and reduced-cost tickets through community organizations, youth programs, and assisted-living communities across the region, so that a family’s first professional ballet does not depend on what they can spend.
These are not leftover seats. A child who comes in through an outreach ticket becomes a future audience member, student, or supporter of the arts.
Meeting the Artists
After family productions, children can meet the dancers in costume and take photographs, keepsakes they come back to long after the curtain falls.
Our company artists take part in community events, school visits, and public appearances throughout the season. For a young dancer, meeting a working professional makes the career real.
Service at the Theater
Our productions double as gathering points for causes beyond the stage: a food drive benefiting the North Gwinnett Co-op, and a blood drive with the American Red Cross alongside Dracula.
The community supports this company. We use our audience, our artists, and our stage to give something back.
The Next Generation
Because our professional company trains and rehearses at Sugarloaf Performing Arts Center, students see professional standards up close every day, and in The Nutcracker, they share the stage with the company.
Emerge goes further. Our dancers take on choreography, design, production, and marketing, and present the results in the Black Box at Gas South Theater, a few feet from the audience. Artists develop; audiences get inside the creative process.
Partner with us
If your school, nonprofit, or community organization would like to bring a group to the theater or work with us on a program, we would like to hear from you. Email tickets@gwinnettballet.org.