Michigan Travel · Petoskey
Crooked Tree’s Petoskey ballet school stages its 19th Fall for Dance on Oct. 30, with The Nutcracker set for Dec. 19-20
PETOSKEY, Mich. — The pre-professional dancers of Crooked Tree Arts Center’s School of Ballet take the stage Friday, Oct. 30, for the school’s 19th annual Fall for Dance, a mixed-bill evening that pairs the students’ own choreography with new work from three guest choreographers.
The show runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Harbor Springs Performing Arts Center, 500 N. Spring St., across Little Traverse Bay from the arts center’s Petoskey home. Tickets are $5 for students and $25 for adults, according to the arts center’s event listing. A $50 “Friend of the School of Ballet” ticket lets buyers reserve a seat ahead of time.
Who made the dances. The student pieces were mentored by Robin Pettersen, faculty emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Richard Walters, rehearsal director and school principal of Madison Ballet. Pettersen, Walters and Peter Sparling, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, will each premiere a new work. The program also brings back a 2015 piece by the school’s artistic director, Heather Raue.
Most people in the area know the school for its December production of The Nutcracker. Fall for Dance is the night its advanced students get to show what they create themselves, and it lands the evening before Halloween, which falls on a Saturday this year.
What comes next. The arts center has posted these performance dates for the rest of the year:
Saturday, Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m.: singer-songwriter May Erlewine plays the Downtown Sound series in the arts center’s theater at 461 E. Mitchell St. in Petoskey. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $45, or $40 for members, $10 for students and $55 for premier seating.
Friday, Dec. 11, 7:30 p.m.: TBD A Cappella, a men’s vocal group from Metro Detroit, brings its harmonies and beatboxing to the same theater. Tickets are $35, or $30 for members and $40 for premier seating.
Sunday, Dec. 13, 1:30 p.m.: the ballet school’s Sugar Plum Fairy Tea at the Inn at Bay Harbor.
Saturday, Dec. 19, at 3 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 20, at 3 p.m.: The Nutcracker at the Great Lakes Center for the Arts.
For families thinking about lessons. The school’s fall session runs Sept. 14 to Dec. 12, with a Thanksgiving break Nov. 23-28. Its beginning ballet class for ages 4 to 6 meets Mondays and costs $212 for nonmembers or $192 for members, according to the school’s class listings. The arts center also runs a tuition-free Adaptive Arts & Movement class for adults living with disabilities, paid for by donors Ann and Tom Stallkamp.
Why it’s worth a look. At $5 a student ticket, Fall for Dance is an inexpensive way to give kids an evening of live dance, and a chance to see what students in a program that holds classes six days a week can do before the bigger holiday shows arrive.
Tickets and updates are on the Crooked Tree Arts Center website. The Petoskey office can be reached at (231) 347-4337.
Sources:
Crooked Tree Arts Center, “Fall for Dance” event page (date, time, venue, ticket prices, choreographers), https://www.crookedtree.org/events-and-exhibitions/events/fall-for-dance.html
Crooked Tree Arts Center, “Downtown Sound” listings (May Erlewine Nov. 14, TBD A Cappella Dec. 11, prices, Fall for Dance venue and hours), https://www.crookedtree.org/events-and-exhibitions/events/downtown-sound.html
Crooked Tree Arts Center, School of Ballet page (Sugar Plum Fairy Tea, Nutcracker dates, fall session, class prices, Adaptive Arts & Movement), https://www.crookedtree.org/classes/school-of-ballet/school-of-ballet.html
Harbor Light News, “Fall for Dance set for Friday, Oct. 30 at Performing Arts Center,” Oct. 21, 2026 (date), https://www.harborlightnews.com/articles/fall-for-dance-set-for-friday-oct-30-at-performing-arts-center/
Photo: Scillystuff, “Royal Ballet School curtain call.jpg,” July 14, 2007, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Ballet_School_curtain_call.jpg
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