Help Mileena to get to the finals in New York and a Summer Intensive for Ballet

Mileena is an 11 year old Maori girl from New Zealand who has been dancing from age 7yrs. She has a strong work ethic and strives to improve everyday in everything.

Mileena has been blessed to be offered these two amazing opportunities.

Mileena has successfully auditioned for the YAGP New York Finals 10-20 April 2019, which is the most elite ballet competition in the world for her age group. Around 10,000 children enter into the competition, but only around 3% worldwide get accepted into the finals. Artistic director of Next Generation Ballet on Fox News, has said this competition is like the ‘Olympics for ballet’.

Also, she auditioned for the ABT N.Y. Young Dancers Summer Intensive for two weeks, but they offered her a place in the older age group being a 5 week program in June. This is the top program offered and the most challenging. Over 8,000 students worldwide audition for the program with only 120 students being accepted, making Mileena one of the top 1.5% of all who auditioned. Only around 5-10 12year olds are selected each year, and Mileena has been selected at age 11 years. ABT is one of the worlds leading dance companies and she will get to work with the directors and ballet masters and mistresses while training.

We are seeking any donations, grants or sponsorship for Mileena to attend both the highly regarded Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) Ballet competition, and the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) Summer Intensive workshop. These opportunities are extremely important to a dancers’ career, being seen, known and making contacts helps open doors to companies and contracts for both her and other dancers.

She participates in lessons 4 days a week during the day and has one private lesson each week. Mileena attends ballet classes in a program. Mileena focuses and makes the most of every ballet class, as she does less than half of the classes than her peers because we are unable to afford extra lessons. Despite her getting what seems the bare minimum in classes/lessons for her age/level, her drive and passion for ballet have still led her to excel and perform well.

On top of this she has to do extra conditioning classes every week because she is hyper mobile. This means her body is super flexible and she needs additional strength to control her body. Over the Christmas period she progressed using a conditioning program daily at home, to ensure she would come back to ballet stronger in preparation for the upcoming events she would like to attend.

So far we have raised $880 through sausage sizzles, selling cupcakes, and selling daffodils.

If you are able to share this givealittle Page with your contacts that would be honoured and very grateful!

Any donation amount is greatly appreciated!

May you and your family be blessed and rewarded for your generosity with lots of health and joy in life.