| Nature and Scope of Activities HBC’s full-scale productions provide our dancers with an opportunity to teach and touch the minds and hearts of our large Harford County audience. Since 1999 HBC has presented the classic favorite The Nutcracker, a winter holiday tradition that is often a young person’s first experience at the ballet. Additionally since 1998, in the spring of each year HBC produces a ballet adaptation of a cherished fairy tale including Beauty and the Beast in 2003 and Cinderella in 2004. Sleeping Beauty is the feature of the 2005 season. In conjunction with its annual Nutcracker, HBC developed a Nutcracker Outreach Program wherein they invite children, ages 2 to 5, from Harford County child care facilities to the Fallston Child Care Center for entertainment with an excerpt from the ballet as an abridged version of the story is narrated. Afterwards, the HBC Dancers, still in costume, lead the children to a decorated Tea Party area for refreshments. Another successful program of HBC is the Parent-and-Tot creative movement class offered with the Associated Catholic Charities’ Early Headstart Program. This program exposes children to dance and creative movement, often for the first time, in a warm yet educational setting. In continuation of our outreach goals, HBC regularly provides blocks of tickets to performances to the Edgewater Village Center. Without HBC taking the initiative to facilitate the attendance of these underprivileged children, most would simply not have this opportunity to be inspired and educated by a professional theater performance. |
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HBC
also participates in community festivals such as the Harford County
ArtQuest Festival (yearly since 2000) and ArtView at the Festival
of the Arts in Bel Air, MD (2002, 2004). These venues enable HBC
to share their artistic offerings with a wide and diverse Harford
County audience. |
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Artistic/Cultural Merits and Contributions HBC has developed a unique, audience interactive performance style that is geared toward children, but has also enchanted adults in the Harford County community. Each of HBC’s productions includes a segment designed to allow children in the audience to feel that they are playing an essential role in the show. HBC feels that providing a cultural and educational experience such as this is not only fun, but also inspiring to out younger audience members. After each show, children are afforded the chance to meet and interact with the still-costumed cast members. This participatory format combined with our ability to attract professional guest artists adds even greater depth to our already high caliber productions. Because guests help us to reach a level that can be difficult to access in the Harford County dance scene, we are dedicated to providing underprivileged children an opportunity to experience our productions through ticket donations. |
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| Size and Composition of Audience and Methods Used to Publicize HBC has been active in continually developing our large and diverse audience from the Harford County community. Our first large-scale production, The Nutcracker in 1999 sold 667 tickets; Beauty and the Beast, in spring 2003 sold 1,111 tickets. This trend in growth enables us to touch more people in fulfillment of our mission to educate, enrich, and entertain though dance. Furthermore, HBC has been constantly moving to expand our outreach programs. We have dramatically increased the number of children involved in each Nutcracker Outreach Program in an attempt to meet demand. We are also expanding our outreach program to the Edgewater Village Center, increasing the blocks of tickets donated from 10 to 20 tickets. |
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| HBC employs a graphic designer to develop professional quality publicity materials. (Click the images on the right to enlarge samples of our materials.) Mass mailings are then sent out employing our extensive database and effectively generate ticket sales. Detailed news articles, including photographs, have been publicized frequently in the Aegis and other publications promoting HBC performances. HBC has also enjoyed a relationship with Comcast wherein Comcast provides multiple public broadcast announcements leading up to the performance and airs an interview with artistic director Pamela Villeneuve for the local cable television network.
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