Love Letters — Ballet Des Moines

This season, Ballet Des Moines invites those identifying as a member of the LGBTQ+ community to write a love letter to your past self or your future self. Your letters will serve as the inspiration for a new work by choreographer and Ballet Des Moines Artistic Director, Tom Mattingly.

At Ballet Des Moines, we believe collaboration and creativity are some of the strongest tools to affect positive change. We would be honored to have your partnership and participation, and we promise to treat your submissions with the utmost care and respect. We see you, we are inspired by you, and we wish to honor you by creating a new ballet based on your words and your lived experience.

This statewide community artwork provides space to contemplate and amplify your queer joy, hope, love, and bravery as a unified act of resistance against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Ballet Des Moines would like to extend our thanks to One Iowa and the members of their LGBTQ Leadership Institute, Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus, Capital City Pride, and Central Iowa Rainbow Families for collaborating with us on this project.

Please submit your letters through this online platform by or before January 31.
Tom Mattingly's new work Love Letters, based on your submissions, will premiere in Des Moines on March 8 & 9.

Name

Please list your first name. If you would like, you may list an alias instead. If you would like, you may list your first and last name.

Age

Please list your home region in the state

(ie. Southwest Iowa). If you would like, you may list your hometown instead.

Please list the number of years you have lived in Iowa

May we contact you should Tom Mattingly like more information, hold an interview, or ask you questions to support his creative process?

Would you like to receive information about the performance of Tom Mattingly's ballet, Love Letters?

(including discount tickets to the performance, free events leading up to the performance, free access to open rehearsals, etc.)

How do you define queer joy?

In the space below, please write a letter to your past self or future self. Think about what that version of needs to hear or advice you might want to share. Where do you find joy in your community? How do express strength? Where do you hope to be vulnerable and loving?

Your love letter may be long or short, but you may want to write it and save it somewhere else and then copy it into this form.

Do we have your permission to make your name/age/hometown public?box

Name

Age

Location

How else can we support you and our community?

Is there anything else you would like to add