This off season, Tucson’s local ballet company Ballet Tucson continues to perform, offering a series of pop-up ballets in May throughout Southern Arizona – all free to the public.
In an effort to make dance performances more accessible, Ballet Tucson will share the art of ballet with the community in five free performances at the Tucson Museum of Art, Children’s Museum Tucson, Tohono Chul Gardens, La Encantada and the Reid Park Amphitheater.
The performances are designed to eliminate barriers that may prevent audiences from attending shows in traditional theater spaces.
“Not everyone can join us in the theater for various reasons in their lives,” said Margaret Mullin, the artistic director of Ballet Tucson. “We care so much about our form and we think it has such a beautiful profound impact on people that we want to make sure that we are reaching as many people as we can in the community.”
The performances will include a tango pas de deux by Mullin, the Dying Swan solo from “Swan Lake” and a three-section Caroline King Tribute.
In the spirit of collaboration, Ballet Tucson will also be accompanied by artists like the Tucson Pops Orchestra, Khris Dodge and Catherine Burns in select performances.
“One of the things I’m very excited about is at Tohono Chul Gardens, I’ll be sharing a world premiere pas de deux that is from a piece that I’ll be choreographing for our winter concert in February 2026,” Mullin said. “It’s a piece called ‘Desert Dweller.’”
The performance will be a piece of a longer work and kick off the gardens’ 40th anniversary celebration, she said.
Madeleine Kuebler and Edward Oyarce-Solomon, principal dancers in the upcoming performances, added that some of the performances will include an interactive community dance class for the audience.
“It’s a lot of fun to see kids and their parents or older people or even people with certain disabilities, they find that there’s something that they can do, they can still be dancers,” Keubler said. “We are both faculty members with the School of Ballet Tucson as well, so it’s really important to us because we’re very passionate about our teaching and what it is that we do in terms of coaching the next generation of dancers.”
Oyarce-Solomon added that past community shows have been rewarding.
“I can’t get over the last time that we performed at Reid Park. It was a really wonderful thing to experience seeing, while we were dancing, a little space in front of the stage and watching many children come up and start to dance with us,” he said. “It was a really impactful thing to see in the moment, how much this art really inspires kids.”
Experiencing dance in a more casual setting also redefines the way audiences interact with ballet, Kuebler said.
A newer generation of ballet is coming to the forefront, she added, which is more open and approachable for audiences. The idea of ballet “being this very scary thing, very limited and exclusive” is something that Ballet Tucson is trying to come away from, she said.
“Having been a dance student myself, and a low income one, I really believe in the power of arts education,” Mullin added. “I had a challenging family situation growing up and that level of expression was pivotal for me as a young person and developing my ability to express myself.”
She said these performances strive to inspire people who may not know about ballet. She added that the Tucson community “might not make a decision to buy a ticket and come see us without meeting them where they are in the world.”
These pop-up performances will be taking place at La Encantada on May 3 at 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., Tohono Chul Park on May 4 at 2 p.m., Tucson Museum of Art on May 11 at 12 p.m., Children’s Museum Tucson on May 15 at 5:15 p.m. and 6:15 p.m., and Reid Park Amphitheater on May 18 at 7 p.m. More information can be found on Ballet Tucson’s website.
