Hudson Ballet Theatre’s (HBT) mission is to enrich our community by providing accessible and high-quality dance performances for NYC, Westchester County, and the US. We serve our local community through collaborative efforts with artistic narratives and community members to create new and innovative dance works that honor the art of storytelling.

In addition to annual public performances in Westchester with HBT’s youth company (Hudson Youth Ballet), we have performed multiple outreach shows throughout Westchester, including the Marie Fiarie Children's Hospital, The Bristal Assisted Living and The Ambassador of Scarsdale, and provide complimentary tickets to Family Services of Westchester for our public performances.

HBT also performs throughout New York City. We were recently awarded a 2022 Bronx Arts Fund, with the goal of bringing more dance performance to the Bronx community. In February, we presented two shows of Ho-Shia Aaron Thao’s original work, “Icarus” at Pregones/PRTT in the Bronx. To further our mission of providing accessible, high-quality dance performances we again offered comp tickets to different organizations throughout the community including ID Studio Theater and Summer on the Hill. We were also able to bring the Summer on the Hill students and their families who attended backstage after the show to meet the dancers and ask questions about the work, the rehearsal process, our company, and even show us some dance moves of their own. We hope (and believe) that this experience helped open the world of dance to those students who may not have otherwise had much exposure. 

Outside of New York, HBT has also performed in multiple cities in the US including Washington D.C. Last June we performed at the One Journey Festival held at the National Cathedral in D.C. We performed excerpts from Ho-Shia Aaron Thao’s “Songs of the Sea”, which explores the common principles of resilience and perseverance through adversity, particularly through the lens of refugees and immigrants seeking safety for their families. One Journey’s mission of amplifying refugee voices and celebrating the talents, stories and contributions of refugees goes hand in hand not only with the work we performed, but HBT’s mission to honor the art of storytelling and to use that art to share stories that are often left untold. We will be performing at the One Journey Festival again this summer. 

In August of 2021, HBT toured to Minniseota and premiered Ho-Shia Aaron Thao’s, “Diaspora: A Mother’s Elegy” with the Center for Hmong and Talent at the Cowels Performing Arts Center in Minneapolis. The work is a full-length ballet telling the story of the relationship between Ho-Shia’s mother and grandmother and his family’s journey during the Vietnam War from Laos to refugee camps in Thailand and finally the United States. Along with the performances, we hosted multiple dance workshops for the community to provide the opportunity for anyone to experience dance and learn about the storytelling aspect of the artform. 

At HBT, our goal is to continue to bring a wide range of individual’s and group’s stories to life through dance. We particularly look to tell stories that are not frequently told, especially those that are not a part of the mainstream, European-centric ballet world. While we do perform classical repertoire and feel that there is a place for those works as well, we hope that portrayals of unique stories will connect with a more diverse audience. Ideally, audience members who feel that they can relate to a story depicted through dance will also connect with the artform of dance itself.