SUPPORT US

2025 ANNUAL APPEAL

October 6, 2025

Dear Friends,

When you look around at your community, you probably find that your friends and neighbors, like most Americans, share certain fundamental values—values such as cherishing family and community, and helping others—and that we all enjoy participating in communal activities. One universal source of pleasure is watching children perform. Whether they are our own or our neighbors’, onstage or on the court or the field, we can all thrill as we watch their fierce concentration, their pride as they discover new abilities in themselves, and their joy in every aspect of what they are doing. Watching children perform might turn out to be our true national pastime.

New Haven Ballet (NHB) has been in the business of helping children perform for forty years, through our school training for aspiring young dancers, our open division classes for recreational and continuing dancers, and our outreach programs for area schools and dancers with disabilities. These programs have introduced dancers young and old to the physical, emotional, and social benefits of dance performance, which combine music, visually exciting costumes and sets, and the special glow that comes from working with others, from being part of a larger whole that cannot exist without each member.

Today, cuts in government and other funding leave schools and organizations to make painful choices among many promising programs. Too often, the arts are among the first to go when budgets are being balanced. The New Haven Ballet’s community outreach programs are currently endangered in the new funding landscape. Programs such as NHB’s DanceAIR, in which NHB teachers go into local elementary schools and give children ballet training, and Shared Ability, in which aspiring NHB dancers and differently abled dancers train together, require special funding. In the past they have been largely funded by government and local grants. These grants are no longer available.

As we begin our Annual Appeal fundraiser, we note that NHB is committed to maintaining our outreach programs. The work we do in our schools and community is vital to our mission, and a core value of the Ballet. But we need your help. To offset our lost funding, we need to call on our community of families and friends to keep these programs going and our children dancing. Won’t you help? Anything you could give would go far toward putting smiles on our children’s faces and joy in their hearts.

To learn more about DanceAIR and Shared Ability, please click on the links below, and thank you for your support of New Haven Ballet during our Annual Appeal.

Click Here to Donate to NHB’s Annual Appeal

Click Here to learn about DanceAIR

Click Here to see Shared Ability in the studio

Sincerely,

Lisa Kim

Artistic Director

New Haven Ballet is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization; all donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

We are deeply grateful for your consideration and support. Your contribution, no matter the amount, will make a significant difference in our ability to continue bringing the joy of dance to all in our community. Thank you for your support!

DONATE