“Sometimes you don’t even realize you’re living between worlds—until one of them starts pulling you harder.”

When I first read The House on Mango Street, I felt like someone had cracked open my chest and put words to what I couldn’t name: that quiet, constant negotiation between who you’re told to be and who you might become. This ballet is my love letter to that experience—to the tension of tradition and the ache of independence. To the moments when culture feels like home and also like a boundary.

The House on Mango Street Ballet is about the in-between spaces we learn to live in as women, as daughters of immigrants, as artists. It’s about hearing the voices of your abuelas, your neighbors, your street—and still daring to imagine a different future. Not in rejection of your roots, but in conversation with them.

Through an all-female cast and movement inspired by spoken word, community rituals, and coming-of-age, this work follows Esperanza's journey—but really, it’s all of ours. Those of us who’ve ever felt the push to stay small and the pull to step out. Those who carry their neighborhoods in their bones while dreaming beyond them.

This isn’t a story with a perfect ending. It’s a story with an open door.

- Julianna Rubio Slager