ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION – Three months after her first child was born in June 2024, choreographer Claudia Schreier had to figure out how to care for a fussy newborn while creating a challenging new ballet nearly 900 miles from home, in Atlanta. It wasn’t easy.
Schreier, 39, is Atlanta Ballet’s choreographer-in-residence but lives with her husband in New York. She couldn’t leave their baby with a caregiver because Hana wouldn’t take the bottle and needed to be nursed every couple of hours. Besides, Schreier couldn’t imagine being away from her. Faced with a no-win choice between her family and her Atlanta Ballet responsibilities, she made a decision. “Either I come down to Atlanta with my family,” she told the company, “or I don’t come at all.”
Schreier is an important member of Atlanta Ballet’s artistic staff, but she’s not a full-time employee and therefore not eligible for benefits. There was no system in place that could give her and her family the help they needed.
Ballet donors are encouraged to support lavish new productions, not child care. But Chicago philanthropist Elizabeth B. Yntema was eager to address a clear need.
“Most performing arts philanthropy, ballet especially, is being done the same way it was 40 or 50 years ago,” she says. “It’s static, deadly dull. Nobody feels empowered to try something different.”
But she did — in coordination with Tom West, Atlanta Ballet’s executive director.
West knew Yntema as president and founder of the Illinois-based Dance Data Project, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting gender equity in the dance industry, specifically ballet, but he had never thought of her as a prospective individual donor.
“When I shared the news that Claudia was expecting, Liza told me how hard it is for a female choreographer who is starting a family to continue to travel and create work,” he says. “She asked if we’d consider extra support.”
Together they crafted a unique two-year, $14,000 grant that has made it possible for Schreier to bring Hana and family caregivers to Atlanta multiple times while creating “Rite of Spring” in 2025 and her newest work, “You Dig,” which premieres April 3-5 as part of the Ballet’s mixed repertory “Golden Hour” program.
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