A new ballet premiering this summer honors Catholic dancer Rafaella Stroik, a beautiful ballerina who tragically died in 2018. Inspired by her life and her vision to bring beauty to the world through her dancing, she believed that she experienced the beatific vision when she graced a stage. 

Sadly, Raffaella’s short life ended at the age of 23, when her body was found in a lake about two hours away from St. Louis, where she was a member of the city’s ballet. Her parents, noted architect and University of Notre Dame professor Duncan Stroik and his wife, Ruth, sought to make something to memorialize their darling daughter — and what better way than through what Rafaella loved most: dance. 

Loosely based on the life of the late dancer,  the traditional ballet incorporates elements of beauty and art — exactly what their daughter loved about ballet. Starting as a dream in 2019, the couple was close to reaching their $250,000 Go Fund Me goal in 2020; and now, through tears, toil and tremendous time, Rafaella will premiere in South Bend, Indiana, at the end of June. 

Speaking to the Register’s sister news agency CNA in 2020, Duncan Stroik said, “Raffaella’s passion was to bring beauty to the world in many ways. Her prime strength was in dance, and she really was trying in her own way to do things that were glorifying to God through traditional ballet and the beauty of the human body and what it can do.”

The ballet’s narrative, explained on an online page for tickets, follows Rafaella, “a young peasant girl from a miraculous birth in 18th-century Italy. During her adventures, she meets a mysterious Prince, and later a charming but false Prince, and she must choose which way to go.”

“[She is] really searching for the true prince, and she sees him from time to time in her life. And then the other prince who comes along sweeps her off her feet and is very attractive, and she’s totally compelled by him, but he turns out to be a deceptive prince,” her father explained to CNA in 2020.

Catholic composer Michael Kurek has written the music for the ballet. Named composer laureate of the state of Tennessee in 2022, Kurek spoke to the Register’s K.V. Turley about Rafaella, calling it “a fairy-tale ballet in the beautiful choreographic tradition of Tchaikovsky.”

Claire Kretzschmar, a dancer, teacher and former soloist with New York City Ballet, whose credits include Rachmaninoff Variations and Rhapsodie for the New York Choreographic Institute and A Ceremony of Carols for Ballet Hartford, choreographed the ballet. 

The ballet premieres on June 29 and 30 at the Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend, “Rafaella’s favorite theater to perform in, and she dreamed of returning there to dance," the ballet's website notes.