Funding Opportunities

Live music is integral to the development of the artist in dance, developing an intuitive reaction to music in movement through both dance instruction and music education. Contributing to musical accompaniment will help ensure that every class can continue having a live pianist for each class.

Pianos need to be tuned and maintained at least twice each year to provide good quality for the 119 classes we offer each week. That’s 4760 classes each year or 7080 hours, and that’s not counting summer school.

Providing world-class training quality is the first priority at the School of Alberta Ballet. As such, we need to recruit, support and retain our teachers to provide this level of quality for our students.

Our bathrooms are in a state of disrepair. Paint, patching, lighting, sinks and faucets all desperately need to be upgraded for the comfort of our parents and our students.

Bringing the School of Alberta Ballet into the next era of professional training institutions means also looking like a professional training institution.

Many of our computers are antiquated and in need of upgrades. As we move our registration systems online, new computers are required to run the software adequately. Used computers have often been donated to the School, but these are often too old by the time we receive them.

Currently, we have a fairly old multi-function printer that not only cannot print 11x17 but also cannot print in colour. Unfortunately, our lease is not up until September 2012 and we cannot afford to upgrade to a new one. Upgrading to a colour machine will also help us save on print jobs that have to be sent out to a commercial printer.

Operating a 21,000 square foot facility in downtown Calgary is not cheap. To keep the lights on and the doors open, we pay $36,000 each month, which is 30% of our budget. As such, our lease covers us for cleaning five out of the six days a week we are open. Contributing to this expense would mean staff would no longer have to clean the School.

Students use the library for audition research and for resumé building. Our library computers are older than some of our students. New computers would help us to help our students.

The chairs in the parents lobby are in great need of refurbishing. Most of the frames are still solid, but the cushions have gone (some are no longer attached) and they are grossly outdated, chipped and stained. Thanks to a generous donor last year, we were able to upgrade the tables in the lobby. We’d love to have our parents sit in comfort while they wait for their children to take class.

We believe educating our parents about ballet is as important as educating their children. When parents and children share an activity, they ensure that the intergenerational transfer of knowledge continues. We want to transform our Parents’ Lobby into an Education Centre, equipped with audio-visual equipment to watch ballets, subscriptions to ballet magazines and education nights all about ballet.

Tuition at the School of Alberta Ballet is less than half of what other professional schools in Canada charge and we continue to receive no government funding. But many talented students have difficulty affording these costs. We want to ensure that all students who have the potential to succeed can afford to attend the School. Finances shouldn’t be a barrier to ballet.

We are in desperate need of upgrading many of our office chairs as some are more than 10 years old and in horrible condition.

Did you know that we average $0.75 per costume in the Year End Performance? Without the help of our costume staff and the donation of old costumes from the Alberta Ballet, we wouldn’t have any costumes at all. But many of them are in poor condition and we need to get some new ones.

Did you know that staff take the costumes home to wash? We have no laundry equipment at the School and costumes need to be washed. Installing a washer and dryer would go miles toward helping the School and our staff.

We need racking, we need shelving and we need supplies. The Alberta Ballet warehouse crew is prepared to build the infrastructure we need, but all of this costs money. We also need more ironing stations and wardrobe supplies.

Playing music in class and recording music for rehearsals and performances is a necessity to run ballet classes. If you consider the nearly 5000 classes taught at the School each year, imagine how worn out some of this equipment gets and how often it needs to be replaced.

Each year, we bring in a guest teacher for Senior Summer School and this year, we brought in a guest for Junior Summer School as well. Our teachers and our students are extremely fortunate to have this opportunity. Guests, however, costs money in terms of travel, accommodations, pay and per diem. Contributing to this item would help us to continue bringing in world class talent to teach our students.

Professional development for teachers is very different than in other industries and is also much more expensive. We would love the opportunity to send our teachers to other schools to observe and learn how to improve their abilities to help our students develop to even further. This is a great opportunity to help our teacher reach new heights.

Bringing new talent from around Canada and around the world is key to the Professional Division’s success. This year, we are auditioning students in Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg. This means we need to advertise and we need to travel.

 

to donate.

School of Alberta Ballet   |   West Annex, 2nd Floor   906 – 12 Avenue SW   Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2R 1K7   |   403.245.2274

www.albertaballet.com