Ballet brought into the heart of your home
The Living Room Series is an intimate, site-specific performance experience featuring Ballet 5:8 company artists, live piano music, and spoken word.
Personally curated by Artistic Director Julianna Rubio Slager, each performance is shaped for the host, the space, and the gathering itself, creating a one-of-a-kind event that is both breathtaking and deeply personal.
Life happens in the living room.
It is where generations gather, wisdom is shared, children play, couples argue, families grieve, friendships deepen, and relationships are both built up and torn down. The living room is not simply a room in the house. It is often the emotional center of a home, the place where private moments become the stories we carry into the world.
Through The Living Room Series, Ballet 5:8 brings company artists directly into homes for an intimate evening of dance, live piano music, and spoken word.
Each performance is customized for the space and designed to make guests feel close to the breath, effort, tenderness, humor, memory, and humanity inside the work.
Bring Ballet 5:8 into your home
The Living Room Series transforms the center of the home into a place of beauty, memory, and connection. Artists move close enough for guests to experience the performance in a personal, immediate, and unforgettable way.
Private Gatherings
Host a meaningful evening with friends, family, donors, or arts patrons in the intimacy of your own home.
Live Performance
Each experience includes Ballet 5:8 company artists, live piano accompaniment, and spoken word.
Personally Curated
Each performance is shaped by the home, the host, the space, and the emotional tone of the gathering.
- House parties
- Donor gatherings
- Private salons
- Intimate celebrations
- Arts-focused evenings
- Small community spaces
What happens in a living room?
Inside the home, people seek approval, forgiveness, safety, companionship, romance, healing, and belonging. Children snuggle into parents. Couples dance, argue, reconcile, and begin again. Siblings play, fight, and invent worlds together. A single adult moves to a new city and wonders where they belong. A senior sits in a quiet house, waiting for someone to visit. Families face grief, fear, betrayal, joy, boredom, tenderness, and care.
These emotional cycles form the foundation of The Living Room Series. Some moments are playful. Some are tumultuous. Some are tender. Some ache with memory. Together, they reveal how the private life of a home shapes the public life of a person.
No two living rooms are the same, and no two Living Room Series performances will be exactly alike. This is ballet up close. Personal. Human. Unrepeatable.
Mi casa está viva / My House Is Alive
At the heart of The Living Room Series is the poem “Mi casa está viva / My House Is Alive,” presented in both Spanish and English. The poem gives language to the living presence of the home: its sounds, smells, light, silence, memory, and care.
The bilingual text anchors the series in the idea that a house is never just a structure. It laughs, sings, watches, protects, remembers, and holds us. Through dance, music, and spoken word, Ballet 5:8 invites audiences to see their own homes with new eyes.
Mi casa está viva / My House Is Alive
Español
Mi casa, mi casa,
mi casa está viva;
mi casa me ríe,
mi casa me canta,
mi casa me mira.
Olor a comida,
olor a jabón,
olor a cocina
y olor a salón.
Olor a lavanda,
olor a jazmín,
olor a madera
y olor a verdín.
Mi casa, mi casa,
mi casa está viva;
mi casa me ríe,
mi casa me canta,
mi casa me cuida.
Suena la canilla,
suena el calefón,
y hasta las estufas
cantan su canción.
Suenan en el piso
todas las maderas,
las tablas del techo
y de la escalera.
Mi casa, mi casa,
mi casa está viva;
mi casa me ríe,
mi casa me canta,
mi casa me mima.
Luz en la terraza,
luz en el balcón;
luz en el helecho,
luz en el malvón.
Luz en las ventanas,
luz en los espejos;
luz en los cristales,
luz en los reflejos.
Mi casa, mi casa,
mi casa está viva;
mi casa me ríe,
mi casa me canta,
mi casa es mi amiga.
Silencio en la noche,
silencio seguro,
silencio que anda
sin ningún apuro.
Silencio en mi pieza,
silencio en mi cama;
y en silencio duermo
hasta la mañana.
English
My house, my house,
my house is alive;
my house laughs with me,
my house sings to me,
my house watches me.
The smell of food,
the smell of soap,
the smell of the kitchen,
and the smell of the living room.
The smell of lavender,
the smell of jasmine,
the smell of wood,
and the smell of mildew.
My house, my house,
my house is alive;
my house laughs at me,
my house sings to me,
my house cares for me.
The faucet makes sound,
the water heater makes sound,
and even the heaters
sing their song.
Sound from
the floorboards,
the boards in the ceiling,
and the stairs.
My house, my house,
my house is alive;
my house laughs at me,
my house sings to me,
my house spoils me.
Light on the terrace,
light on the balcony;
light on the fern,
light on the geranium.
Light on the windows,
light on the mirrors;
light on the window panes,
light on the reflections.
My house, my house,
my house is alive;
my house laughs at me,
my house sings to me,
my house is my friend.
Silence at night,
safe silence,
silence that moves
without any hurry.
Silence in my bedroom,
silence in my bed;
and in silence I sleep
until morning.
Bring Ballet 5:8 into your home
The Living Room Series is an invitation to gather differently. Host an evening where guests are not only entertained, but moved. Create a space for beauty, conversation, memory, and connection in the most personal venue possible: the home.