Dance Courses
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Courses Offered
Introductory Ballet (B2) Course Description: This is an introductory course to classical ballet technique. The class follows the traditional structure of barre warm-up exercises, center barre and across the floor combinations, with more emphasis on body posture and barre work. Students can expect to learn and perfect the basic stance, foot positions, basic port de bras, and many barre exercises. Center work is composed of port de bras and simple adagio, preparation for turns, preparation for waltzes, fundamental petit allegro and reverence. Students perform in the end of year Spring dance concert, and must audition to perform in the Winter dance concert. Intermediate Ballet I (B1) Course Description: This intermediate level ballet class continues to refine classical ballet technique through barre, center work, and across the floor combinations. Dancers refine ballet fundamentals such as proper turn out, placement, and alignment. During center barre students focus on adagio and petit allegro, in order to build strength, flexibility, coordination and improved musicality. Epaulement is introduced. The class emphasizes dancing and performing with rhythm and poise. Students perform in the end of year Spring dance concert, and must audition to perform in the Winter dance concert. Intermediate Ballet II (A1) Course Description: This intermediate to advanced level ballet class focuses on artistic movements, musical interpretation, strength, coordination, and precision in movement. All ballet fundamentals such as proper turnout, placement, alignment, and epaulement are further refined, and students work on adagio, petit allegro and grand allegro. Attention is paid to the proper extension of the legs and shape of the feet, use of the head and upper body, and fluidity of port de bras. Students perform in the Fall, Winter and Spring dance concerts. Modern I: Beginner-Intermediate Level (B4) Course Description: This Modern dance class focuses on the study of basic movement principles, the elements of dance: space, time, and energy, and the refined fundamentals of modern dance, as well as dance composition. Modern dance history, the concepts and codified modern techniques of modern dance pioneers such as Duncan, Graham, Horton, Limon and Humphrey are introduced, along with the nuances and intricacies of each codified technique are also explored. Students perform in the end of year Spring dance concert, and must audition to perform in the Winter dance concert. Jazz Dance (A3) Course Description: This Jazz dance class will focus on learning proper jazz dance technique such as isolations, leaps, and turns. Class exercises are based on traditional jazz movement layered with ballet technique and includes a proper warm-up, stretches, isolations, across-the-floor progressions, and combinations. In addition to developing fundamental jazz dance skills, students will explore Jazz Dance history. As the class progresses, students will focus on improving performance quality as they are exposed to various styles of jazz dance such as Lyrical, Street and Contemporary. Open to academy and non-academy students. Academy students perform in the end of year Spring dance concert, and must audition to perform in the Winter dance concert. Non-academy students can audition to perform in the Spring Dance concert only, and must pay all required production fees. Theatre Dance (A4) Students will explore the fundamentals of musical theatre dance. Through the use of jazz, modern, and tap dance, along with elements of ballet, students will learn Broadway style choreography. The skill of dancing while singing and acting will be developed. If selected, theatre dance students may participate in the fall and spring theatre productions of the musical theatre class, for which all additional after school rehearsals, activities, fees and performances will be mandatory. This course is co-taught with the chorus and theatre directors. Open to academy students only. |
