Hip Hop is Exciting — Many students are excited to try hip hop dance for the first time because they know they’ll get a chance to listen to contemporary music and learn the latest dance moves that their friends and popular music artists and their dancers are currently doing. It’s fun, current, and a great conversation piece. Hip Hop uses the latest sounds in rap, R&B and pop music together with movements influenced by some of today’s hottest video choreographers.  Hip hop encompasses movement that has elements of poppin', locking, and breaking as well as freestyle movement to give students the opportunity to develop their own sense of style.  Hip hop is urban, it’s street, it’s diverse and forever changing. Please do not wear street shoes into class. 

Contemporary dance is a style of expressive dance that combines elements of several dance genres including modern, jazz, lyrical and classical ballet. Contemporary dancers strive to connect the mind and the body through fluid dance movements.

Contemporary dance stresses versatility and improvisation, unlike the strict, structured nature of ballet. Contemporary dancers focus on floorwork, using gravity to pull them down to the floor. This dance genre is often done in bare feet. Contemporary dance can be performed to many different styles of music.

Pioneers of contemporary dance include Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. These contemporary dancers all believed that dancers should have freedom of movement, allowing their bodies to freely express their innermost feelings.

Beauty, flow and elegance are inherent in the elements of ballet. Ballet is the classical dance form that can be mastered by itself or used as a technical base or supplement to other dance forms. Classes focus on overall body alignment and awareness with emphasis on proper usage of feet and legs and execution of turnout. Carriage and usage of upper torso and arms are also stressed. Traditional barre work, center work and combinations are included in all classes.

The quickest answer to the question, "Why study jazz dance?" is that it is joyful. Jazz dance grew out of the social dance forms that young people had used over many decades. It is what people do when they are celebrating, relaxing, and enjoying themselves. Jazz dance today, in all its forms, still maintains that joyous excitement. But studying jazz dance offers benefits beyond just sheer enjoyment, such as physical fitness, artistic expression, and practical cross-training skills for aspiring dancers. Jazz dance is an exciting and ever evolving dance form full of rhythm, syncopation, passion and life.  Steeped in the rhythm of jazz music, a true American art form, jazz dance brings energy and life to all those who dance it.   Classes explore body isolations of the head, shoulders, ribcage, feet and arms and encourage individual expression and the development of personal style. Jazz can be powerful and percussive or expressive and lyrical.  Ever evolving, jazz dance is taught with the music of today together with the classical jazz of yesterday.  Classes teach basic jazz dance technique, terminology and movement quality with an emphasis on proper execution of jazz isolations, rhythms and style performed to contemporary music.

Classes emphasize the development and strengthening of basic tap technique and terminology highlighting the importance of rhythm and sound.  Tap focuses on rhythms and intricate footwork, creating a percussion instrument out of the dancer’s feet. Just like jazz vocalists who add rhythms to music by scatting, tappers add their voice by “scatting” with their feet. Rhythm tap tends to be a heavier or harder-hitting form of tap than Broadway tap, and sounds are made not only with the bottom of the shoe, but also with the back, sides, and tip. Rhythm tap is a broad category that encompasses the hoofing styles of current stars such as Savion Glover and the late Gregory Hines and past masters such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Jimmy Slyde.

Pre Ballet/Pre tap and Primary Ballet/Primary Tap

We teach our baby ballet and baby tap to preschool children in our studio so that you know your little one is learning through a proven system to help increase their confidence and express creativity while learning in a safe environment with our experienced staff.

This advanced ballet class  incorporates both soft shoe as well as training en pointe.  Your instructor will inform you when you have reached the level in your training that will allow you to begin training "sur la pointe". This means on the points.  The raising of the body to the tips of the toes.  First introduced in the late 1820's at the time of Taglioni.  It is very harmful to the body to begin pointe training before the body is strong enough, all students are different. 

En pointe dancers employ pointe technique to determine foot placement and body alignment. When exhibiting proper technique, a dancer's en pointe foot is placed so that the instep is fully stretched, with toes perpendicular to the floor, with the pointe shoe's platform (the flattened tip of the toe box) square to the floor so that a substantial part of its surface is contacting the floor.

Proper technique is also evident from a dancer's body alignment, by visualizing a straight line that extends from the center of the hip through the toes. When a properly aligned dancer is viewed from the side, the line passes through the knee, ankle joint, and big toe joints. When viewed from the front, the line passes through the knee, ankle joint, and the joints of the second toe or middle toe or the area between those toe joints. In cases of unusually high instep or metatarsal joint flexibility, it is sometimes necessary to flex the toes to achieve proper alignment.

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We offer Competition Teams for the student who wish to attend a minimum of 4 classes per week. Please contact us for more information.

Leaps and turns used in Jazz, lyrical and contemporary dance. This class will work on basic thru advanced leaps and turns in Jazz technique.  From the most basic of turns (chaine, pique, pirouette) through the advanced turns (attitude, arabesque, coupé, fouetté, à la seconde, multiple pirouettes) and variations of all of the above. The student's goal is to execute a series of complicated turns jumps and leaps, This class is strongly reccommended to be ground work for jazzz, lyrical and contemporary dance.