A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF BALLET NORTH

By Matthew Reinschmidt

Ballet North was begun in 1977 by Artistic Director Laura Reinschmidt (then Laura Luzicka) as the Northland’s first and only dedicated classical ballet training program known as Laura Luzicka Classical Ballet. During those years students were trained by Ms Laura who went on to perform with major professional Ballet Companies like Boston Ballet, New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, and televised performance events with the Liberty Symphony Orchestra of an all original “Peter and the Wolf” were presented in 1983 and 1991 broadcast by KCPT; In 1994, Youth Movement Inc dba Ballet North was created from this original effort, in a manner similar to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo or George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet (because as Mr Balanchine famously stated, first a school and then a company!), and was granted non-profit 501(c)3 status with a mission to provide broad based arts education and perform rarely seen full-length classical ballets to audiences throughout the Northland region of Kansas City through annual School Tour and Theatrical performance events. As part of this effort, professional guest artists are engaged in key roles of performance events, and Ballet North also seeks to perform innovative new works with local choreographers.

As a corollary to these efforts, in 2001 Ballet North began a partnership with the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation to provide arts education and mentoring to urban core youth known as The Three Faces of Dance. Operating through 2006 at the Whittier Elementary School campus in the Kansas City, Kansas School District, The Three Faces of Dance resulted in documented instances of avoidance of gang life, avoidance of teen pregnancy, completion of high school, and admission into College all in an effort to break the poverty cycle among participants.

Through the annual School Tour, since 1994 Ballet North has performed for well over 85,000 students. Theatrical events have included world renowned ballets like Swan Lake, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Paquita, The Wayward Daughter (La Fille mal gardee), Peter Pan, original works like Carmina Burana, Cinderella, Watermark, and of course the Nutcracker.

In 2020 Ballet North encountered the most extreme challenge to it’s survival it has ever faced, the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns. Despite historic and disastrous conditions, Ballet North constructed an outdoor stage to safely perform on; in 2021 facing closed theaters due to staff being unavailable in the aftermath of COVID, Ballet North constructed a 55 ft, portable telescopic backdrop truss and then performed the 4 Act grand Classical Ballet “Sleeping Beauty” at William Jewell college in the Mabee Center Field House. From there, Ballet North has continued to operate through unprecedented circumstances and has continued to recover and operate through today in this very different and changed environment, while still carrying out it’s mission of performing full length works in theater, and presenting touring programs to local schools on an ongoing basis.

((Recently, during this past Spring of 2024, a powerful storm that came through Gladstone caused significant roof damages. The week of Peter Pan in June of 2024 an entire roof replacement was done; the solar power array was re-installed in the following weeks and at this time, Autumn of 2024, we are preparing to shift into interior repairs which will be somewhat tricky as we need to continue using the building at the same time. With cooler autumn weather approaching it will be feasible to ventilate the studio for fresh paint and not have 100 degree air from the hot outside come into the building. We wish to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as we navigate through this process.))