When Talia Bailes was eighteen, she took a gap year before beginning college, heading to a small Amazonian town in rural Ecuador.

Ballet & Books began in Ithaca and expanded into a national nonprofit with 13 chapters across the country.

Sandra Bradley pulls out her phone and leans forward. She’s sitting in the basement of a library in Walnut Hills when a smile spreads across her face.

Talia Bailes is the founder and director of Ballet and Books, a national nonprofit organization striving to reduce the literacy gap through the hybrid storytelling of dance and reading. Talia founded Ballet and Books in 2017 with a belief that dance can be used as a connector across differences and as a way to build literacy. Here, she shares the impetus for the organization and how she’s seen Ballet and Books make a difference.

BALLET & BOOKS - Helping Children how to read through dancing. Interview with Talia Bailes.

In this episode, Marisa interviews founder of national, non-profit Ballet & Books Talia Bailes. Talia talks about the inspiration behind Ballet & Books and how the organization works to reduce the literacy gap in children through the mergence of reading and dancing. With dance classes, dialogic reading, and mentorship, children are able to improve their reading skills and gain confidence. Currently a dancer and medical student, Talia hopes that through this program kids and young people “feel connected and a sense of belonging and are ready to thrive in life.”Follow Ballet & Books @balletbooksCheck out their website https://www.balletandbooks.orgBuy When We Read: A Children's Book.

In this episode, Talia Bailes, Medical Student at the University of Michigan and Founder of Ballet & Books, discusses her nonprofit’s mission to bridge dance and literacy to close the literacy gap in underserved communities. Talia shares her journey, the role of college students and community partners, and how the arts can positively impact children’s overall health and well-being.

When we first met Talia Bailes in 2020, she was a Cornell University college student and lifelong dancer balancing school with running the literacy nonprofit she founded, Ballet and Books. The program, which combines movement with reading to promote literacy in children ages 3 to 9, was starting to expand outside of Ithaca, New York when the coronavirus shut down in-person dance.

Ballet & Books, an organization that strives to improve children’s literary proficiency through “a combination of dance instruction and dialogic reading,” will begin hosting programs at the Walnut Hills Branch Library this fall.

A Cincinnati native and lifelong dancer is overseeing the expansion of a national nonprofit that’s grown to eight communities, published a book and is helping to bridge the literacy gap for 400 children nationwide.

That doesn’t mean the sentiment of turning 2021 into the year of your victory is a fairytale—that is, if your mind is truly willing to accept “Record-Breaking Optimism.”

Talia Bailes never imagined that her ballet training and her interest in early learning would collide. But Bailes, a senior studying global and public health sciences at Cornell University, now runs a successful non-profit called Ballet & Books, which combines dancing with the important but sometimes laborious activity of learning to read. And she has a trip to South America to thank.