Donate to Dance

28 ships, 55 different shows, 1000+ performers a year = tens of thousands of costumes. While one set remains on the ship for the current cast, we house multiples of each piece in a 5-level racking system in our 4000-sf costume warehouse.

Throughout the year, we are thrilled to be able to assist organizations in our community with donations from general cleanout of no longer used items or gently used shoes returned from previous casts. 

Donate 2 Dance, started by two sisters, is a non-profit organization that collects dance shoes and attire for dancers in need around the world. They are always so appreciative of the gently used dance sneakers and shoes we send them. donate2dance.org/

Hope Children’s Home originated in Tampa Florida, and has been providing a safe, loving Christian home for up to 80 children between the ages of infant to 18 years old, for over 50 years. These children, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a situation of needed rescue. We help them in several ways. First, they are our designated AMAZON SMILE recipients, with Amazon donating 0.5% of the price of our eligible purchase to them. Second, we donate any new or like new street clothes and shoes directly to the Children’s Home in Tampa. These are costume pieces that may have been used and returned from a previous cast for Footloose or Kinky Boots. Lastly, any items that are less than gently used or are not usable for the children are donated to the Hope Children’s Home Thrift Store, where 100% of the profits go back to caring for the children. hopechildrenshome.org/

Donate 2 Dance connected us with Charmaine Hunter, the Director of Community Enrichment at the Orlando Ballet. To save on shipping costs, she is able to pickup any donations we have. She recently stopped by and we were able to fill her car with costumes from retired shows and other gently used accessories. She was so appreciative! orlandoballet.org/community-enrichment/

Our fourth organization we donate to helps those with autism and other disabilities. Many of our shirts are altered, for a quick change, by replacing buttons with Velcro. While the Autism Awareness Shop in Tampa is part thrift store, they do not sell the shirts we donate to them. Instead, they give the items away to those who have a more difficult time completing tasks like buttoning a shirt or tying their shoes. aastampa.org/

At times, we have specialty items that could help organizations other than those mentioned above. In November, we purged our fabric wall in the costume shop and thus donated many rolls of fabric to The Mask Project of Tampa Bay. They have made and donated over 60,000 masks to medical workers. We feel honored to be able to support this volunteer-based organization. facebook.com/themaskprojecttampabay/

We were also thrilled to be able to assist one of our very own NCL team members, in more ways than one. For the past several months, the Tampa facility has been working to complete a renovation. Part of that renovation was to turn one of the dance studios into a Costume Staging Area. We no longer needed the ballet barres in that studio space. Just at the right time, we heard Cassie Plumridge, Theatrical Operations Specialist, was able to fulfill a dream of opening her own dance studio (see the full article in this newsletter). It was perfect timing and the bars will now be utilized by the next generation of dancers.

The second part involves Cassie’s husband, Leland. He works for the Manatee School for the Arts, an arts charter school in Palmetto, FL, home of over 2,000 aspiring student performers and technicians. As a charter school, there is no tuition to attend, so the theatre department relies heavily on donations and fundraisers to be able to produce professional level performances. Norwegian Cruise Line has generously donated to MSA costumes and shoes that appeared in the musical productions of Godspell, Pippin, and Oliver. The costumes have also been relied on by the dance department in Aladdin: The Ballet along with various dance showcases. Any pieces that do not get used on stage are used as materials for the students to practice on in the costuming classes. The large donations of shoes have outfitted hundreds of students in the dance department, who would not otherwise be able to afford shoes of this caliber.

We, at Norwegian Creative Studios, are proud to have a part in promoting the Values outlined by Norwegian Cruise Line. One of those Values is “Dedication to Family and Community”. In these unprecedented times, it is an amazing feeling to be able to make others smile. It has been an honor and a privilege to meet the people behind these amazing organizations.