Free youth program combines literacy and dance with U-M student/teachers front and center
U-M SMTD students work with children participating in the Ballet & Books program.
The University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance has a unique partnership with the nationwide nonprofit Ballet & Books, founded by Talia Bailes, a fourth-year U-M medical student.
Ballet & Books is redefining what arts education can look like for young children by merging dance and literacy in an inclusive, community-based setting—and for the U-M chapter, the free program is run through the federally funded Head Start program at the Beatty Early Learning Center in Ypsilanti, with SMTD students teaching the children.
Michigan is the first university to build Ballet & Books into its university curriculum. By helping children tap out syllables with tambourines, draw letters with ribbons and translate rhythm into comprehension, the SMTD students are making abstract concepts tangible for the kids.
“The kinesthetic skills they’re gaining in the ballet portion really do translate—they’re using movement to help them learn how to read,” said Kara Roseborough, SMTD lecturer of dance and co-founder of the U-M chapter of Ballet & Books.
In addition to improving the children’s reading comprehension, the program may inspire the young dancers to see a potential future at SMTD or in a ballet company, she said.
“We are serving low-income families, which disproportionately tends to be Black and brown families—but not exclusively,” Roseborough said. “For a lot of folks, especially some of the Black parents I’ve talked to, there’s this idea that ballet is not welcoming for us—that you’re stepping into a community that is stuffy and exclusive. We’re rewriting that narrative.”
The U-M chapter of Ballet & Books is currently recruiting mentors for their winter term programming.
Bringing dance and literacy together
Before beginning college, Ballet & Books founder Bailes took a gap year in “this rural, tiny Amazonian region of Ecuador with an Indigenous host family” where she taught English and danced with a local group.
“The kids that I worked with were amazing storytellers, but not great readers, because reading wasn’t a part of their culture—but dance was. And so I was interested in how kids learned to learn, and what influence their environment might have on their brain development,” she said.
Upon her return to the U.S., Bailes worked with a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital who was studying how kids learn to read.
“We were looking at their brains under MRIs and looking at how it’s different when they’re told a story versus watching a cartoon or reading a book, and how their environment influences that—how much they’re read to at home or what words they’re exposed to at home,” Bailes said.
“We know kids who are raised in lower-income communities tend to fall off track in reading and fall behind. But how can pediatricians be the ones to help get them on track and keep them on track?”
Bailes developed a national Ballet & Books curriculum to bring dance and literacy together for children ages 3-9. The curriculum is taught by college students across the country at 13 university chapters that volunteer to run programming at a local level. This model allows for an innovative generational form of learning and teaching. By joining forces with Roseborough, who developed the university curriculum for SMTD students to teach community engaged pedagogy, a credit-bearing course was established at Michigan.
n November 2025, the U-M chapter wrapped up fall programming with a performance at the Department of Dance’s Student Choreography showcase. The children opened the show with the dance they have been working on in front of their families and SMTD students.
“Seeing these little kids actually perform on a stage at a university—their parents are so proud. Every time, it’s just magical,” said Katie Gunning, Department of Dance administrative specialist and co-founder of the U-M chapter of Ballet & Books.
