Ballez is an American ballet company based in New York City.
[1][2][3] The creation of Ballez was funded by a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Exchange and was originally an outreach program to provide ballet classes to LGBTQ people that felt disenfranchised in traditional classical dance settings.
[4][5] The company aims to portray and include lesbian, gay, transgender, and queer people in ballet through their performances, public engagement programs, and classes that are open to the public.
[6] Original takes on classical and story ballets that the company has performed include The Firebird, a Ballez, featuring a lesbian princess and a transgender prince, at Dancespace Project in 2013, Variations on Virtuosity, a Gala with the Stars of the Ballez at American Realness at Abrons Arts Center in 2015, and Sleeping Beauty & the Beast, based on historic events in queer history from the 1982 garment workers' strike to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, at La Mama in 2016.
[7][8][9][10][11] Other original works by the company include Slavic Goddess, which was a collaboration with Paulina Olowska in 2017, and a pas de deux for Kyong H. Park's PILLOWTALK in 2018.