A book from high school English inspired Julianna Rubio Slager to write a full-length ballet.

Slager is the artistic director at Ballet 5:8 in Frankfort. She created and choreographed "Scarlet," a ballet-film hybrid adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, "The Scarlet Letter."

CHICAGO – Ballet 5:8 brings its film/dance hybrid production inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to Las Cruces after the company’s first visit in 2015. Ballet 5:8’s dramatic adaptation of the famous novel pairs original choreography by Ballet 5:8 Artistic Director Julianna Rubio Slager and a stunning score by American modernist composer Charles Ives with film elements directed by Preston Miller, and Spoken Word created by Chicago artist Kylla Pate. Scarlet delves into the timeless struggles of hypocrisy, shame and ultimately, the hope of redemption.

There are classic American novels that every high school student will leaf through in their academic careers. But if you are or were like most high school students, you read the book, scratched your head, and rallied through your assignments, often without fully grasping the gravity of the story at hand. Instead of relying on Wikipedia and Spark Notes to understand Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, consider seeing it on stage through Ballet 5:8’s full length, original ballet, Scarlet. Choreographer and Artistic Director of Ballet 5:8, Julianna Slager, has spent years meticulously researching and fine-tuning her choreography in preparation for Scarlet to return to the stage this February at the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin, IL. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera sat down with Julianna to learn more about her research, creative process, and the importance of taking time to edit an artistic work:

Ballet 5:8 has been located in the Chicago South Suburbs since its creation in 2012 and has a mission to engage communities in Chicago, the Midwest, and the nation in conversation of life and faith through innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance.

Ballet Five Eight NFP (Ballet 5:8), a nonprofit arts organization located in Frankfort, has been awarded a $8,800 grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency for general operating support. Ballet 5:8 has been located in the Chicago South Suburbs since its creation in 2012 and has a mission to engage communities in Chicago, the Midwest, and the nation in conversation of life and faith through innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance. The IACA grant will be partially supporting Ballet 5:8’s operations between Jan. 1, 2017 and Aug. 21, 2018.

If you had a chance to read our PRE-View for Ballet 5:8’s Compass (which you can read here), then you know that Artistic Director Julianna Slager and her company of incredibly expressive dancers have committed their season thus far to spreading compassion in every community they touch. This past Friday, Ballet 5:8 took the stage at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago and delivered an evening of inspired choreography and thought-provoking performance. The program touched on a number of politically sensitive topics including race, abortion, and immigration, but when these charged topics are approached through Julianna’s choreographic lens of compassion, it is clear that the purpose of the program is not political at all. Its true purpose is to inspire empathy and kindness, and all artists involved in Compass deserve congratulations for successfully emoting and delivering this message with grace. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera was in the audience for this one-night only performance, and invites you to join her as she RE-Views Ballet 5:8.

CHICAGO – Celebrating its sixth performance season, Ballet 5:8 will return to the Athenaeum Theatre this November with the Chicago premiere of Compass, presented by Dance Chicago. Ballet 5:8’s Compass features four one-act ballets inspired by the challenges of navigating cultural tension in the present day. From an alien society to 1970’s Chicago, Compass stretches across time and space to explore some of our country’s most pressing topics. At times witty and satirical, and at times deeply emotional, Compass is full of athleticism, power and poetry. A single performance will be held on Friday, November 10 at 7:30pm at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 North Southport Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Tickets are $30 for adults, $20 for students and seniors, and $15 for children. 

There’s an art to just being a dance company, but it’s a complex one. There’s a choreography to all of the moving parts, a movement to all of the emerging challenges and a design to how they’re met. At Ballet 5:8, you can see this art a lot of ways, and one of them is the way the Company presents to the world what it is they have to share. This is usually called “marketing” or “promotion”, but when done well, it’s a real art, not that different from arts like choreography and music composition, where an artist shares a vision, or a feeling, or a perspective, or a hope. At a dance company, marketing at its best is the art of sharing what the company’s artists have to share, both telling people about a program like Compass (Ballet 5:8’s evening length work at Chicago’s Athenaeum Theatre on November 10th), and making it possible, through all the arts of content creation, for people like us at DancerMusic do so as well.

There’s an art to just being a dance company, but it’s a complex one. There’s a choreography to all of the moving parts, a movement to all of the emerging challenges and a design to how they’re met. At Ballet 5:8, you can see this art a lot of ways, and one of them is the way the Company presents to the world what it is they have to share. This is usually called “marketing” or “promotion”, but when done well, it’s a real art, not that different from arts like choreography and music composition, where an artist shares a vision, or a feeling, or a perspective, or a hope. At a dance company, marketing at its best is the art of sharing what the company’s artists have to share, both telling people about a program like Compass (Ballet 5:8’s evening length work at Chicago’s Athenaeum Theatre on November 10th), and making it possible, through all the arts of content creation, for people like us at DancerMusic do so as well.

Ballet 5:8 is an imaginative, hard-working group of artists with some very carefully thought out ideas. Founded by Julianna Rubio Slager and Amy Kozol Sanderson in 2012, they have steadily built Ballet 5:8 into an aesthetically ambitious gathering of dedicated dance artists. From just six dancers their first year, “performing wherever there was an opportunity” as their site tells the story, their season — still growing — now includes forty performances a year.

Ballet 5:8 is an imaginative, hard-working group of artists with some very carefully thought out ideas. Founded by Julianna Rubio Slager and Amy Kozol Sanderson in 2012, they have steadily built Ballet 5:8 into an aesthetically ambitious gathering of dedicated dance artists. From just six dancers their first year, “performing wherever there was an opportunity” as their site tells the story, their season — still growing — now includes forty performances a year.

This weekend’s visit of the Chicago-based Ballet 5:8 dance company, and its original modern ballet/dance program “Compass”, choreographed by Julianna Rubio Slager, offered a welcome addition to what is a quality if not-so-plentiful spectrum of modern dance opportunities in the Grand Rapids area.