Brighton Ballet Theater

The story

A Russian ballet school shares a campus with a public college in Brooklyn — and that unlikely pairing has shaped Brighton Ballet Theater since 1987. Situated at Kingsborough Community College in the Manhattan Beach neighborhood, the nonprofit enrolls three hundred students and reaches five hundred more through New York City public schools. Its instructors trained in Russian, Ukrainian, and American institutions and performed with companies across the former Soviet Union. Each year the school stages two large productions, including The Nutcracker, at the Leon M. Goldstein Performing Arts Center, keeping serious classical training rooted in the community.