Start your summer off right with our new Summer Prep Program! Choose either half or full program to hone your ballet technique, strengthen your pointe work, and maintain your fitness during this transitional period. With only two evening classes per day, this program is perfect for dancers who are looking to build strength and stamina heading into a busy summer of intensive training, or for dancers looking to cool down after a fruitful spring season!
José Mateo Ballet Theatre is a vibrant and diverse community of artists, arts educators, students, audience members, and partnering organizations working at the intersection of artistic excellence, innovation, and social change. Directed by Cuban-born founder José Mateo and incorporated as a not-for-profit in 1986, JMBT has developed from a single studio dance school into the largest minority-led performing arts organization in Greater Boston, forging a new model for a ballet organization through innovative programming, artistic excellence, and extensive community outreach.
The defining feature of José Mateo Ballet Theatre is the successful alignment of excellence, innovation and creativity, social responsibility, and financial sustainability to build and strengthen community. While José Mateo Ballet Theatre is widely recognized as New England’s leading producer of new, critically acclaimed ballets, it is also renowned for its inclusive, humanistic approach to training, extensive outreach to disadvantaged children and families, effective community engagement and the integration of diversity in thought, appearance, ability and cultural backgrounds.
In 2000, the organization secured a long-term lease on Old Cambridge Baptist Church, listed in the Registry of National Historic Places and centrally located in Harvard Square. The facility houses the organization’s administrative offices, four classroom studios and the company’s 6,000 sq. ft. performance venue, The Sanctuary Theatre. Currently, The National Trust for Historic Preservation is developing a case study highlighting the development of José Mateo Ballet Theatre’s home as an outstanding example of “best practices” in adaptive reuses of a house of worship in the United States.
