Steffanie Casperson, the director of Ballet Aligned started the ballet school in Logan at the beginning of this year.
Casperson’s goal with her ballet school is to help her students learn and grow and experience ballet as an art form.
“I want them to experience ballet as an art and not merely as a recreational way to move your body," Casperson said. "And so I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could do that, especially being a young school and a new school.”
Casperson turned to writer Joel Ackerman for inspiration and help in coming up with an original ballet that her small school could put on.
Ackerman suggested the poem the Night Before Christmas as the inspiration, and wrote a libretto digging deeper into the story behind the poem. A libretto is the text used in musical works including the storyline of a ballet. It is Ackerman’s libretto that outlines the story in this ballet.
“In my libretto, it gives a reason for that whole experience — why did this man, this father, of all the people in the world, why was he privileged to see St Nicholas? And the reason which I proposed in the libretto, and which is presented in the ballet, is that he needed it," Ackerman said.
Along with performing the ballet, Casperson wanted to find a way for her school to give back to the community. So she partnered with the Little Lambs Foundation.
“You get to go and have an enjoyable hour performance experience and walk away going 'I just donated $20 to the Little Lambs Foundation,' or if you bring friends and family, 'We just made a big difference to kids placed in emergency foster care situations, and who need other care items that it can benefit,'" Casperson said.
The Little Lambs Foundation is an organization that supports struggling families with children and foster youth by providing necessary items that no child should go without.
The Night Before Christmas ballet will be taking place on Dec. 12 at 5:30 p.m. and Dec. 13 at 7:00 p.m. at the Utah Theatre.
Tickets cost $10 in-person and $12 if bought online.
