Find Your Center

Photo by Bret Brookshire

Ballet Austin wants everybody to see its new digs, so it's throwing a big bash Sunday, Sept. 9, 3-8pm, at – where else? – the Ballet Austin Butler Dance Education Center and Community School, 501 W. Third. After a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 3pm, the ballet will offer:

• tours of the center;

• free youth and adult classes in yoga and dance (jazz, tap, salsa, hula, modern, and ballet at various levels);

• children's activities, including a Ballet Austin creative-movement class for preschoolers at 3 and 4pm, face-painting and spin art from Austin Children's Museum, story readings from BookPeople's BookKids, and a wire-sculpture workshop from Umlauf Sculpture Garden;

• a meet-and-greet with Ballet Austin Artistic Director Stephen Mills and company dancers;

• an interactive, dance-themed video-game competition on a big-screen plasma television;

• a dance party focusing on a different decade each hour – Fifties, 3pm; Sixties, 4pm; Seventies, 5pm; Eighties, 6pm; and Nineties, 7pm – with prizes for the best decade-appropriate costumes;

• beer and cocktail garden, 5:30-7:45pm; and

• live music by Rhythm Congress, 7pm.

For more information, call 476-9151 or visit www.balletaustin.org.